Abaddon's Gate is book 3 in The Expanse series, a truly compelling set of space opera books. For some reason, The Sword And Laser podcast said that space opera can be something of a perjorative, but it is one of my favorite science fiction sub genres and The Expanse is one of the best space operas around. Start with Leviathan Wakes and work your way along, including the novellettes like Gods Of Risk and you will love it too.

In this book, we find Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante heading towards the orbit of Uranus, where the "protomolecule" of Caliban's War has set up shop, after having ejected itself from Venus and has created some huge ring, where especially strange things have happened since a Belter launched himself into it, kind of on a bet.

Miller is back, in some sort of fashion, to haunt Holden, drawing him ever closer. In the meantime, another person holds a grudge against Holden and is willing to take down the entire flotilla heading to the ring just to get back at him, while Anna, the priestess, tries to make sense of the "big picture".

Told in point of view chapters like the other novels, Abaddon's Gate covers some big ground, both in distance and in thought. But there's plenty of action and Holden (and his crew) get in some mighty tight jams. They'll need to take over the Behemoth and keep the crazy captain from ending all of life in the solar system. He thinks, anyway!

Pretty great outing, as usual. Told from Jim Holden, Anna the religious one, Bull, the Behemoth's security lead and a crazy terrorist, the story flies right along, despite the book's hefty over 500 pages. As usual, they (James S.A. Corey is a pseudonym for two authors) do a good job of both telling a complete story yet leaving enough interesting things at the end for the next one, in this case,
Cibola Burn. And, like Caliban of the previous novel, I still have no idea who Abaddon is!

Other nitpicking things include the fact the society really hasn't changed much. Maybe that's their point, that despite all the huge technological leaps, human society really doesn't move that quickly. So, disappointingly, we still have an unhealthy respect for religion and it holds too tight a grip on our imagination. And speaking of imagination, like the previous novels, sometimes their ideas are either too big for words or I just don't get it. This time, I had a hard time picturing just what this "gate" was, despite their best efforts at it. And what all the other "gates" open up to, exactly. Perahps Cibola Burn will explain it.

Despite that, this book, and the series as a whole so far, was a great ride and I'm really looking forward to both the next book, and the SyFy series The Expanse.