Babylon's Ashes

This was the most political of all the books. It was also the most battle-heavy. Unlike most fans of the genre, I'm generally not a big fan of sci-fi space battles. The nuts and bolts bore me. Love the stories, not fond of the pew-pew. However, I dutifully read the scenes, looking forward to the outcomes.

The end game of the war was a bit contrived, but I was okay with that. This is the sixth book into the series, and it has been excellent to this point, so I'm willing to say, “Seriously?” and move on. I should have known. Tropes and more tropes. At least the authors showed their work, and according to the Internet, they did a good job. I have no idea, as I am fully disabled when it comes to (breaking?) the laws of physics in space, show more even when it's explained to me like I'm five.

The politics of the book and the relationships between the three major human settled systems remain a highlight of the series. “All politics is personal.” popped into my head more than once. It's pulled into view many times during the upheavals of the book. Tribalism, long simmering hatreds, generational trauma, physical deprivation, financial tyranny, and, of course, the threat of annihilation. War is personal. It's never limited to soldiers, no matter how many times those in charge want to talk about precision attacks. It will always destroy a civilian population in addition to the warriors.

The warriors are beloved by someone who wants them to come home and will mourn them when they are gone. Children, spouses, mothers, and fathers are often forgotten in stories of fighting and war. Honoring them later is a poor substitute for loving them alive. The idea of “They chose this. They knew the risk.” is cruel and flimsy. But, that is obvious. Holden sees it too clearly so many times. He does not make a good politician.

Ashes seemed (to me, anyway) to be a natural ending point for the whole series, even with some bigger questions still floating in zero-gravity. But, I know it isn't. My curiosity is peaked, and I look forward to continuing. show less

One thing I like about The Expanse is the way it structures each individual novel, and the way it plays with those structures. Book one had two alternating narrators; books two through five had four, though it didn't move through them in a strict rotation, instead bouncing back and forth as needed. (Plus each book has additional narrators for the prologue and epilogue.) Book six initially seems like it's going to have six: we're introduced to four narrators in turn, then we cycle back to the first, then to the second. But then a fifth is added, then a sixth. All in all, Babylon's Ashes features sixteen narrators, though some just for a chapter or two.

I wasn't sure what I thought about this. It definitely gives a wider perspective on show more events; some of the earlier novels, I think, struggled to place the events in the broader political and cultural context of the solar system. It's also nice to check in with characters such as Prax, who I suspect we will have no reason to hear from again. But it also prevents the book from obtaining a thematic unity because the character arcs that I think are supposed to be important don't have enough room. I feel like there was something about Holden's increasing awareness that doing the right thing is complicated that was too subdued to be clear; similarly, I think Michio Pa's arc was meant to resonate with that, but she often seemed to vanish from the narrative, and we would only hear about things she did, instead of see them. I think I would sacrifice hearing from Prax again to make that work better. I wanted to hear more from Filip, too, though I liked how his story arc ended.

I'm curious about where this series is going. The first trilogy was very directly about the protomolecule; the middle one was more about the consequences the protomolecule has had on the wider politics of humanity. I like that idea in theory, but I also found that the all three books of the middle trilogy were weaker than all three weeks of the first trilogy. I wonder if the protomolecule will come into increased prominence again in the final trilogy, and if the series will recover the energy and depth it had in the original trilogy. Babylon's Ashes was fine, at times very good, but I feel like there's a better version of it that could have existed. show less

I, deeply truly unabashedly, love this series. Every single book in it and every single place it takes me. I love live in this world, reading books, stories, novella's, even background political essays, forever if I could.

This next piece continues to take us deeper into the big climatic event that happened at the end of Book Five and slammed us into a new shifting world/universe/political dilemma. I love that this book was a step back from the gates (except in one small, but important part) and focused on what would happen with the civilians changed, shifting, being upended.

I loved the return of the characters we saw return. I loved how much more Peaches and Bobbie were around, and getting to see Anna, Chrisjen, everyone. I screamed show more at the loss of a certain character. I loved seeing all the steps from all the sides, the choices people made and their beliefs, both unwavering and slowly changing due to circumstances or choice and no-choice.

I deeply appreciated the gorgeous shows of plurality and am in love with 'the magic word.' show less

Book 6 of The Expanse series finds humanity grappling with what comes next after the attacks of the Free Navy on Earth. Earth and Mars find themselves strange bedfellows along with fragments of the OPA who have distanced themselves from the extremists that initiated the attacks. And as always, James Holden and his crew end up pulled into the centre of it all.

This entry in the series feels a little bleak as the ramifications of the attack on Earth continue to ripple out. Everything is just so dark and there's a lot of making the best of a terrible situation and battles. That said, it's still highly compelling reading and I'm so invested in these characters that I'll ride with them to the end. I did enjoy that this novel is told from a show more lot of different character perspectives but all of whom are people we've met earlier in the series. Reconnecting with them in the new realities of this universe adds a really enjoyable element to the read. show less

I’m definitely hooked by the Expanse series. I thought book number 5, Nemesis Games, was the last in the series, but it didn’t have the kind of ending that wrapped things up. Not sure why I thought it was the end. Now we have not only Babylon’s Ashes but Persepolis Rising (at least).

It’s space opera, and it’s among the top 5 or so on my list.

There are two good things about the series. The thing I like most is the very idea of the “protomolecule” — an alien technology that no one really understands and whose origin no one knows. The protomolecule is reminiscent of 2001’s monolith — true alien mystery. That sense of utter mystery is, I think, something overlooked in science fiction — things we just don’t show more understand. That’s why they are “alien.”

In a way, the protomolecule also has a little bit of the role of the “Mule” in Asimov’s Foundation — it throws a wrench into the politics and the way forward for the solar system set up at the beginning of the Expanse. It’s a reminder for us that what we expect is unlikely to be what we get. History and politics are not closed systems, and what’s most interesting about them may be their susceptibility to massive, unanticipated course changes.

The protomolecule actually take a background role in this book. This is about the second good thing in the series, the big politics. The intrinsic differences among the Belters, the Martians, and Earth were never going to lead to stability. And the Belters always, since the first book of the series, were the odd faction out. Now, with the protomolecule’s generation of a gateway to colonizable planets, the need for the Belter’s mining function is greatly diminished. And the colony worlds, being worlds of relatively earthlike mass, offer little for the Belters, who have evolved physiologies ill-suited to planetary gravity.

The Belters are prime for a kind of last stand. If they can control the gateway, they can gain some control over their fate. A faction of the Belter world, a renegade faction called the Free Navy, led by Marco Inaros, fills the role.

Crises like the Belters’ crisis are opportunities for the ambitious. But the ambitious are not always the ones we want or really need. That’s what plays out here.

The big political scale also gets personal. The protagonists and central continuous characters of the series, the crew of the Rocinante, are of course going to get drawn into the conflict between Marco’s Free Navy and Earth, Mars, and the non-Free Navy part of the Outer Planets Alliance. The Rocinante’s engineer, Naomi Nagata, and Marco have a past, and a son together. Naomi and the Rocinante’s captain, James Holden, have become a couple over the previous books, so that’s going to be a big part of the story. Marco’s ego isn’t easy on anybody involved.

Over the course of the series, the authors have used an alternating perspective style, with each chapter shifting from the one character’s perspective to another’s. By now, with as many characters as the story has developed, there are a lot of perspectives. It’s not just Holden and Miller anymore. But it doesn’t get overwhelming, and I’ve warmed to the device over the course of the series. They do it well. show less

I'm not sure if I was just starting to get Expanse burnout when I got to Book #6, but I restarted it a couple times and had a really hard time getting through it on each attempt. The writing is expectedly polished, as always, but the plotlines seem to languish until brief moments of punctuation, and I would get through whole chapters not understanding why we were spending time on certain characters and their stories. In the end, BA was worth it. The ongoing story comes to a climactic conclusion and sets up a new stage of the greater Expanse narrative. I finished just a week or two after the release of book #7, Persepolis Rising, which has already jump-started my imagination in the first few chapters.

Babylon’s Ashes by James S. A. Corey is book six in a nine-book series, but it feels a lot like Empire Strikes Back to me. In this, I mean that things are bad for our hapless Rocinante crew and don’t look like they are going to get better any time soon. The unthinkable already happened in the previous book, but the crew and their allies find their options limited and shrinking ever smaller as this new force takes the stage. This means that the action is hot and heavy, and the stakes are as desperate as ever.

All this action and desperation is a good thing. Much like in book five, Babylon’s Ashes is intense. In fact, one might say it is the most intense book to date, as the brewing conflict between the Outer Belt, Mars, and Earth show more comes to fruition. Let’s face it, it is a conflict we have been waiting to see since the first book. The thing is that the fight isn’t as satisfying as I expected. With the cast of characters different than expected, it seems a completely different fight. Mr. Corey helps this feeling along by making sure there is no such thing as a safe character.

Babylon’s Ashes is an excellent novel. That is, it is until the ending, which is so anticlimactic as to be a major disappointment. In truth, the ending is the very definition of a copout. It is also the result of lazy writing. In my opinion, it appears as if the duo behind Mr. Corey chose to take the easy way with an ending that works but is anything but satisfying rather than to take the time to finish what they started. Think the ending to Breaking Dawn but even less satisfying.

If it weren’t for that ending, Babylon’s Ashes would be another stellar story in a series of stellar stories. Until that ending, it ranked up there among my top favorites within the series itself. Still, until that point, it was pretty amazing, with battles and political maneuverings and the reintroduction of characters we first saw three books prior. The sheer number of narrators, which is pretty much every character ever introduced, adds even more because we get a wide view of the entire spectacle as it unfolds. If only the ending were not so spectacularly anti-climactic and lazy. show less