James S. A. Corey

The first book in "The Expanse" series, covering, in space, the destruction of the Scopuli, Holden's broadcast blaming the martians, escape from the Martian ship in the gunship, and docking at Tycho Station. At Ceres station, Miller enforces the rules and is asked to search for Julie Mao, who was held on the Scopuli and infected with the protomolecule. The story goes on to the infestation of the Eros asteroid, the transformation of it to a ship heading to earth, then the drama of Miller convincing Julie Mao's protomolecule body to aim Eros at Venus instead.… (más)

And so we reach the final volume of The Expanse. Winston Duarte has undergone a transformation, and is now seeking to fight off the entities that destroyed the gate-builders - but at a terrible cost to humanity. The options are to either be destroyed, or subsumed into a hive-mind of Duarte's making, the perfection of the order imposed by the Laconian Empire across all the human-settled worlds - now back-footed following the events of the previous book, Tiamat's Wrath, but still possessing powerful assets. Against this is pitched the crew of the Rocinante and Dr. Elvi Okoye, who following her experience of the protomolecule on Ilus (as depicted in book four, Cibola Burn), has been put in charge of research for the Empire. But as always with the Laconian Empire, failure is not an option, no matter how high your rank.

The fates of all the characters we have met so far, including Teresa Duarte and a Laconian Marine officer we meet for the first time in this book, are wrapped up, some more neatly than others. By the end, we have said goodbye to everyone, some more finally than others. It is hard to see how this could have ended in any other way.

I'd like to take a moment to reflect on the tv series, in particular the fact that the series ended with the dramatisation of book six, Babylon's Ashes. Many people are holding out hope that the final three novels might be dramatised at some point; and given that there are thirty years between books six and seven, this would not be impossible, if the same cast could be re-assembled some years down the line. The main issue would be accommodating Cas Anvar's absence, as his character - Alex Kamal - was written out of the show in season 5. But as Alex's son and his new family play a fairly direct role in this book, some plot gymnastics would be necessary. It's also interesting to see how some of the short stories - collected in the volume Memory's Legion - are shown in the tv show, to the extent that anyone coming to this book without having either seen the show or read the collected stories will find two quite important characters suddenly appearing and playing a central role apparently out of nowhere. So - on to the short stories!… (más)