624 pages
English language
Published Feb. 16, 2015 by Little, Brown Book Group Limited.
The fourth novel in James S.A. Corey’s New York Times bestselling Expanse series
The gates have opened the way to thousands of habitable planets, and the land rush has begun. Settlers stream out from humanity's home planets in a vast, poorly controlled flood, landing on a new world. Among them, the Rocinante, haunted by the vast, posthuman network of the protomolecule as they investigate what destroyed the great intergalactic society that built the gates and the protomolecule.
But Holden and his crew must also contend with the growing tensions between the settlers and the company which owns the official claim to the planet. Both sides will stop at nothing to defend what's theirs, but soon a terrible disease strikes and only Holden - with help from the ghostly Detective Miller - can find the cure.
As with every book from The Expanse that I have read before this one, the authors do a great job of imagining a possible future for humanity and to take those premises to places that feel extremely plausible.
Also, murder mystery on a galactic scale, which is always nice. Looking forward to the next one!
To tell the truth, I was saddened to see the Expanse universe expanded beyond our minuscule solar system. I really loved the limited scope of the first books, where you had people trying to fight a vast incomprehensible menace when they could hardly manage their own system.
But this book has pacified me a bit. The colonists in this story are limited as well; in fact, this one's even more limited than the first books were. I like that. It gives me hope that this series won't end up with humanity being a huge advanced civilization akin to the very one they're trying to find/investigate.
(spoiler for 2001: a Space Odyssey) That's possibly the only thing I didn't like about the 2001 book (the movie was terrible in regards to explaining things to the viewer, so I'll pretend it didn't exist): the transcendence of humanity. I get that the whole …
To tell the truth, I was saddened to see the Expanse universe expanded beyond our minuscule solar system. I really loved the limited scope of the first books, where you had people trying to fight a vast incomprehensible menace when they could hardly manage their own system.
But this book has pacified me a bit. The colonists in this story are limited as well; in fact, this one's even more limited than the first books were. I like that. It gives me hope that this series won't end up with humanity being a huge advanced civilization akin to the very one they're trying to find/investigate.
(spoiler for 2001: a Space Odyssey) That's possibly the only thing I didn't like about the 2001 book (the movie was terrible in regards to explaining things to the viewer, so I'll pretend it didn't exist): the transcendence of humanity. I get that the whole point was showing the development of humans from apes into extremely wise seemingly omniscient beings, but it didn't work for me. I would much rather have had humanity see these other beings and decide that they could handle things on their own. I always doubt it when an entire civilization, or even a tiny subset, can somehow put aside everything that's wrong with them.
The longest it took me to finish a Expanse novel so far. Meanders a lot, and doesn't get to the point till the very end. The ending was surprisingly well done, but the remainder was just meh.
Kept going through it, since the reviews for the next couple of books are great and I really want to read them.
New trilogy in this series. The quality remains high with excellent world building. However, I found this book a little too centered on Holden and there was not enough Avasarala and Bobbie. Quality writing throughout though.
