Reviews and Comments

As I read more of these books, I am increasingly impressed with houw the authors can keep widening the scope, such that every time ou as a reader think you have nailed what kind of book this is, they manage to "zoom out" and reveal thwt so far we've only been looking at a smaller part of the greater picture.

Also, I am impressed with how they use their world in a new way in each new book, making each book a different kind of experience even though they are all part of the same greater narrative. Cibola Burn was no exception, possibly the best of the books so far, in my opinion.

I partly agree with some other reviewers that not all the new POV characters are equally interesting. Especially, Havelock was a bit boring IMO. But I liked Basia well enough, and Elvi was a great addition to the gallery.

And the Big Rescue was so well thought out it made me want to learn to paint, just so I could make a painting of it. Good stuff.

I was kind of split about Leviathan Wakes. I think it is one of the few cases wjere I like the TV adaptation better then the book. I really like the main plot of this story, but for Leviathan Wakes compared to the first 1-and-a-bit season of The Expanse the TV show, the latter seems so much more elegant and well done. The writing here is a bit ham-fisted, the characters are two-dimensional and the narration is a bit clumsy. The script writers of the TV show have made a lot of good calls when it comes to altering the story to trade gore for suspense, and they did absolutely right in introducing Chrisjen Avasarala much earlier in the story - the character gallery in the book is too narrow, and the story line too linear, it feels a bit claustrophobic.

This is not to say I dislike the book. It's just a great story written by unseasoned writers (Caliban's War, the next in the series, is already much better). And on the upside, the prose has a good flow to it. It is an easy and fast read and, despite all my criticisms above, often hard to put down. No, it's not a bad book at all, it's just that the TV series has shown how brilliant it could have been, and it isn't, not quite.

Still, definitely worth the time.

I read this one as a kid and really, really loved it, so I thought I'd give it a go as a read out loud book for my son. And I have to say.... It hasn't aged well. Well, in certain ways it has, and I don't regret having read it for him, and he really liked the story and its wild imagination and surprising twists to a deliberately predictable plot. I had forgotten how genuinely horrifyingly scary it was in places, I remembered it as only fun, but that's okay, that is not the author's fault.
But the book is steeped in sexist stereotypes and horrible body shaming which I of course was blind to as a child. I simply had to leave out or on.the-fly change certain parts just to take the worst edge off. This was a real downer since I remembered the books with such joy, and it actually was very good, especially once we got to the last parts of it (the plot with Sir Simon and Madame Olympia is brilliant!) .
So... Mixed feelings on this one.