Reviews and Comments

Well, it's hard to judge a book by its sneak peek. The storytelling is fairly exciting and compelling, the setting in Africa is a welcome change from pretty much every other book I read, but some things are a bit much... like the strange creatures that are supposedly like giant cats and that can be used as mounts? Also, the escape was a bit heavy on the deus ex machina...

Well that was very strange. I hope it doesn't take the series too much into a fantasy direction. I guess we won't find out what this means until book 9...

Well, this was a game changer for the series. I'm glad that some long forgotten plot points seem to finally be coming back, albeit slowly. Can't wait for the conclusion to the series in book 8 and 9.

Nice backstory of one of the scientists who worked on the protomolecule. Actually one of the novellas I enjoyed most so far, in spite of the topic. It has a very nice style of storytelling which sets it apart from everything else in the series, I think.

What is this book, even? It's hard to tell. So little happens. Similar to book 3, the entire story could have been told in about a third of the book. There are just too many characters here, many of which don't add any significant insight to the story (Clarissa... 🙄) and just drag out the end forever. Everything important literally happens in the last 3 chapters of the book. Way too many things remain unexplained, like the whole thing with the disappearing ships and why that's even happening. I still don't know the reasons for the great mystery behind the alien races and planets. And I miss Miller (seriously). Is that stuff ever gonna be explained? sigh. I hope eventually it will have been worth it reading these books, but I have the suspicion that I won't find out until 2019.

Wow, what a thrillride! This book is soo much better than the deeply flawed book 3 and the mediocre book 4 - though it's still not perfect. What I really don't understand are the motivations of some of the characters - why would Amos want to visit 'Peaches'?! It doesn't make sense at all, and also, that was one of the worst characters of the previous books and I was not happy for her to pop up again. Similarly, I cannot fathom Naomi's motivation to go back to an obviously dangerous, toxic, manipulative abuser. No woman in her right mind would ever do that. Pretty much all the reasons that these character had for leaving seemed like lame pretenses just to break up the crew and get everyone in position so we can experience all the stuff happening from their perspectives...

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.

Very nice backstory of one of the Rocinante's core characters, but I had a bit of a hard time getting into it (maybe because my mind was already set for book 4?). The end was pretty cool though.