Thoughts on the Expanse
Literally all I’ve read this week other than a couple of shorts was blitzing The Expanse to get book 9 read before the Hugo packet dropped.
(They said in a few days a couple of days ago, so here’s hoping it drops before Balticon so I can start reading it on the train. Never mind, it dropped while I was writing this).
So, I’ve always liked this series a lot. The Heinlein homages are awesome, but Corey writes women like they have actually known a few.
(Note that I am using the singular they for Corey because it’s a pen name used by a collaboration, not because they’re NB. Both halves of Corey are he/him).
The Expanse TV show ends with book six. This was the right decision. The last three books, after the thirty year time jump, don’t quite match up to the first six.
And the ending hugely disappointed me. I give a longer explanation in my paid post, but the short and less spoilery version is: Wrong character.
They put two characters in positions that would have worked better for the other character. There were narrative reasons for it, but doing it that way actually retrospectively wrecked a major character, making them look like a hypocrite.
As is often the case, the epilogue was unnecessary. And they abandoned a character. There’s a pretty significant character who vanishes at the end of book 6. We know he’s alive.
We never see him again.
I think that Corey should have moved on to something new after book 6 and made the series as a whole too long. They had a point, they had an ending to move towards, but it didn’t entirely work.
Despite this, I’m looking forward to checking out their new space opera series, The Captive’s War, which is going to be a trilogy influenced by, of all things, the book of Daniel. Yes, from the Bible.
But there’s some very interesting concepts in there. This one doesn’t start in the solar system, but on a lost colony. It might even be in the same universe as The Expanse. Maybe.
Hopefully I’ll get some other books read this week!