Cibola Burn, James S.A. Corey

[This review never got posted back when I read the book, and has been waiting in buffer since then! Don’t worry, I didn’t read the later books before this one…]

This one’s complicated. I read this enormously fast, and only once bogged down and got stuck on not quite wanting to pick it up again. Getting bogged down and getting stuck might sound bad, but it mostly happens when I get anxious for the characters, which was happening in spades, and getting unstuck depends on the pace — if it lingers too long, I might never get through it.

But… I found aspects of the ending very similar to the first book (with elements of the third), and it felt like for all the high drama and death and flashing lights, it didn’t get us anywhere. Other people have mentioned that it is important later, but it doesn’t feel like it at the end of the book: it feels like we get right back to the status quo in many ways, especially for the crew of the Rocinante.

A lot of the characters are sucky people, as well. Murtry, for instance, just doesn’t feel real because he is a complete cartoon corporate villain, and I wouldn’t have been terribly surprised for him to do some insane maniacal laughter. It makes no sense that nobody seemed to see him for what he was before Ilus.

Also, not enough of Naomi doing stuff. And Amos didn’t get to shoot enough people.

So yeah, a bit frustrating and not my favourite, despite being a very grippy read.

Rating: 3/5

Babylon’s Ashes, James S.A. Corey

I don’t know if it’s in part the way I read it (quite spread out, not all at once), or just the sprawling nature of the series by this point, but this one did not come together well for me. It feels dark and uncompromising: people are awful to each other, and I have to be in the head of characters who do and think violent, dreadful things. Everything is bad, and there’s not much hope. That made this a very difficult read for me.

Part of the problem is the sprawling cast. There are ways it could be made tighter and still have the scope, like dropping some of the more-or-less unnecessary POV characters (whose names I barely remembered between appearances). On the one hand, putting Holden in the centre gives him too much credit and the book pushes against making him the Main Character for all of humanity… but this is a book, and sometimes that kind of thing can tighten things up and make it feel easier to get into.

I also have a question about something weird where I’m not sure if I missed something, or whether something actually weird happened, that I should really look back and find out…

The book brings us to an interesting place, it’s just also a pretty wretched place. Everyone is suffering, and even the Rocinante isn’t a safe home to return to where no harm will touch. And that makes sense, it’s realistic, but for me it was all maybe a little too grim.

Rating: 3/5