Cibola Burn

by James S. A. Corey

eBook, 591 pages

English language

Published June 16, 2014 by Orbit Books.

ISBN:: 978-0-316-21762-0

(17 reviews)

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.

3 editions

Benjamin Hollon reviewed Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey (The Expanse 4, #4)

Review of 'Cibola Burn' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

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.

adastra reviewed Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey (The Expanse 4, #4)

Review of 'Cibola Burn' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This was certainly a major improvement over the terrible book 3, but it's still by no means perfect (the slugs were a bit ridiculous). It feels like an interesting introduction of what's to come... can't wait to keep reading these books.

Geekess reviewed Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey (The Expanse 4, #4)

Review of 'Cibola Burn' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I liked this one better than I'd expected (based on the reviews I read before reading the book). No, it isn't the big scoped space stuff we saw in the previous books. But it deals with the very realistic problems there always are when a group of humans colonizes a new piece of land. There's is the colonists, and the rich land owners, and the indigenous population, and the new land itself.
This story feels real. Yes, it is a bit inconsistent, but the human reactions feel authentic. Even if we could go anywhere in space, colonize new planets, we would still drag our human shit with us and our thin veneer of civilization would disappear very quickly.