Book Review: Tiamat's Wrath, by James S.A. Corey

May 13, 2019 16:47

Book Eight in the Expanse series.


Read more... )

james s.a. corey, books, reviews, science fiction

Leave a comment

Comments 3

tealterror0 May 14 2019, 03:53:39 UTC
I've heard good things about the TV series and am interested in the books. How much do the characters and the political situation at large change over the course of the books? (And I don't mean just one asshole leader getting replaced by another.)

Reply

The Expanse inverarity May 14 2019, 11:02:13 UTC
The political situation changes a lot over the course of the books. In the first one, humanity is still stuck in the Sol system, and the political conflict is a three-way one between Earth, Mars, and the belters. The belters start out as an oppressed (according to them) underclass, but the Trade Union eventually becomes an existential threat to Earth. The scope of the series changes as they discover alien ring gates and the setting becomes interstellar, but that doesn't happen until several books in. So the political alliances that are dominant in book one have either disappeared or become subordinate by book eight.

Some characters have been around since book one (James Holden and his crew, mostly), but James S.A. Corey (it's two writers writing under that name) is/are literally GRRM proteges, so major characters die and there is definitely a feeling that no one (except maybe Holden) is safe from being killed off.

Reply


"Next three books"!?! ed_rex May 16 2019, 07:10:07 UTC
I'm assuming you wrote that sarcastically. For what it's worth, I've read that the next books is supposed to be the final one (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(novel_series)). If that's the case, "Corey" will either pull it off - or not.

The series has been so good so far, that I'm betting they will bring it to a satisfying conclusion.

As for the television series, in my opinion it is every bit as good as the books, at least in part because the show knows that even long-form television can't include everything. So it has compressed things, rearranged other things and changed emphases when necessary. As a fer'instances, Avasarala shows up in the first (or possibly second) episode ( ... )

Reply


Leave a comment

Up