Book Review: Caliban's War - James S. A. Corey
By @edent
· Book Review Sci Fi · 5 comments · 250 words
After finding the first Expanse book mildly interesting, I was badgered into reading the sequel.
It isn't good.
The first book made for some interesting "engineering" sci-if. What would it take to travel at excess g-force? What are the practical implications of living on a low-gravity moon? That kind of thing. But it was let down by being a mish-mash of recycled plots - big evil corporations, vomit zombies, hard-bitten alcoholic detectives. Yawn.
The sequel is, basically, Mass Effect without the charm. It's just trope after clichéd trope. The authors have belatedly realised that women exist. So we get Private Vasquez from Aliens and a sweary-comedy-grandma to even out the gender balance. We get taken on a series of self-contained levels. Find the thing, walk through the corridor, shoot the baddies, have some forced banter with your team-mates, exit. Repeat. You've played this game a hundred times before.
The political machinations are a child's view of what grown-ups do. The characters rarely do anything unexpected. Oh, and the cliff-hanger at the end is totally unearned.
I'm not trying to be contrarian. This is sci-fi which would have been stale 50 years ago. There's so much brilliant original sci-fi out there - tackling big ideas in new and unexpected ways - go read that instead.
| Verdict |
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- Buy the eBook on Amazon Kindle
- Get the paper book from Hive
- Author's homepage
- Publisher's details
- Borrow from your local library
- ISBN: 9780748122974
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@Edent
If you political, military and a bit more internally consistent physics then you might like the Honor Harrington Series by David Weber.
Assuming you have read it already 🙂🤷♂️
I started reading the books, got part way through book 4 and literally threw the book across the room. This is one series where the TV shows are waaay better than the books.
@Edent
This is sci-fi which would have been stale 50 years ago.
100,000 times this. you can’t even call it derivative, because it seems to exist completely outside any of the developments in SF since 1960.
@Edent hahaha. I enjoyed these books (and the TV show which did some things better and some worse) but, whew, you hit the nail dead-on. Trope-y to the max.
Corey (the two authors) does human interactions well enough and physics well (handwave the magic bits) but the proto-molecule as ongoing macguffin is frustrating. I want more of the colonial relationship between Earth and the Belt, and a lot more of the Belt gaining power over the colonizer (which is def. USA analogue).
I watched the show before reading the books. I like the show better.
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