Levi reviewed Abaddon's Gate by James S.A. Corey (The Expanse, #3)
None
5 stars
I love this book, even though it isn’t perfect. Massive spoilers in this review. But basically, the whole idea of discovering the ring that the alien intelligence built for them, and the three main factions of humans gathering around it, and then how it all unfolds with exploring the ring and finding all the other rings to the other civilizations…it’s all so mind-bendingly awesome that it boggles the mind.
I love learning about the ring and the mysterious “slow zone” station through the hallucination of Detective Miller: "Doors and corners, kid...doors and corners." And: "So there was this unlicensed brothel down in sector 18…”
The first part of the story starts off nice and slow, and it's cathartic to see the crew of the Roci finally get a chance to rest a bit and enjoy the fruits of their labors before the next intense action sequence begins.
And that’s nice. …
I love this book, even though it isn’t perfect. Massive spoilers in this review. But basically, the whole idea of discovering the ring that the alien intelligence built for them, and the three main factions of humans gathering around it, and then how it all unfolds with exploring the ring and finding all the other rings to the other civilizations…it’s all so mind-bendingly awesome that it boggles the mind.
I love learning about the ring and the mysterious “slow zone” station through the hallucination of Detective Miller: "Doors and corners, kid...doors and corners." And: "So there was this unlicensed brothel down in sector 18…”
The first part of the story starts off nice and slow, and it's cathartic to see the crew of the Roci finally get a chance to rest a bit and enjoy the fruits of their labors before the next intense action sequence begins.
And that’s nice. But, and here’s my only main hangup with this book, the whole first quarter of the book continues to be slow because too many POV characters makes for a confusing time. With that said, as the story goes on, it all starts to converge and come together as everyone converges on the Ring.
I love how the Belters finally get their seat at the table in this book; they are growing up as an organized nation-state and participating jointly in huge events that will shape the history of mankind.
I love how they show that the Belter’s government, the OPA, has its origins more as a union or terrorist organization than anything else, and its culture is so distinct.
The addition of the character of Clarissa Mao is really brilliant for a few reasons. First, being in the mind of a character who is completely opposed to our main group of characters is really eye-opening. She could have just been cast as a typical villain, just a baddie with no soul. But instead we are made to actually feel for her, and while still believing that what she’s doing is bad…I found myself having empathy for her. I love that.
The addition of the character Anna Volovodov is also very interesting to me. Here you have a minister…someone you expect to be totally boring, but she’s implemented in such a way that we really find ourselves rooting for the minister who actually wants to make the world a batter place, the one who is more practical-minded who hasn’t forgotten that she’s here to help people, even as she swims in a shark tank of spiritual leaders who have all forgotten that because they’re enthralled with the quest for power, little better than the typical politicians.
And Anna is the perfect person to intercept Clarissa’s attempted acts of terrorism. It challenges her in unique ways. And also, I love that her intervening is what saves the crew of the Roci from destruction…not EVERYTHING is solved by our main characters, because after all, that’s not the way life is. Sometimes we need help.
It’s also very interesting to see how minister Anna interacts with the crew of the Roci. You have people with different worldview but because of life circumstances (such as Anna basically saving all their asses singlehandedly), they are beholden to her, and so give her the favor she asks, which is to “forgive” Clarissa Mao for trying to kill them all. Now that’s very interesting.
Another topic. It’s also very interesting to me how because of the alien intelligence choosing James Holden to speak to in visions of Miller, it essentially makes him out to be an even bigger megalomaniac than he really is. He ends up having to tell the rest of humanity: yeah, I’ve been seeing visions that are telling me that I alone have been called to the ring to unlock it. This turn of events is really interesting because 1) he gets unfairly judged for it, but also 2) does he not kind of deserve that unfair judgment? And 3) only certain types of people would follow visions telling them that there is secret truth that only they can unlock…if he wasn’t that kind of person, would the alien intelligence even have picked him? Or would it have picked him and been unable to do what needed to be done? Is it perhaps necessary that society has certain people in it with enough hubris to believe in themselves that much?
In short: lots of books have charismatic leaders with hero mentalities. But I don’t see the other books exploring the interesting questions around that archetype that the Expanse explores. It’s made me ask a lot of interesting questions.
One other word about the plot. I love that it’s basically the alien-created intelligence that is the adult in the situation, and the human factions are behaving like children. It's always humans who create the catastrophes that threaten the end of the world as we know it. Not the aliens. We want to blame the aliens. We are already blaming them before we've even discovered them, making all of these stories about aliens coming to invade Earth. But it's not them we have to worry about. It's us.
