Review: "Persepolis Rising" by James S.A. Corey

In the last week or so, I got the latest Brandon Sanderson novel "Oathbreaker". At an intimidating 1233 pages, I gleefully dove in, grateful for a fat distraction over the holidaze. And I found the book wasn't really grabbing me.

Then my copy of "Persepolis Rising", book 7 of "The Expanse" series by James S.A. Corey came in.

I promised myself I would only read "Persepolis Rising" on my commute and would otherwise see if "Oathbreaker" would rekindle my interest.

It wasn't long before "Persepolis Rising" had more and more of my attention. A few days later (read that as "last night"), I finished "Persepolis Rising".

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

"Persepolis Rising" takes place a time jump after book 6. A fairly long time jump. The crew of the Rocinante, now expanded to the crew it had at the end of "Babylon's Ashes", have been at it for a while and settled into a comfortable life as a crew that is also a family. James Holden and Naomi Nagata are pondering retirement and the crew is pondering their next step. A universe of some 1300 worlds is open to them and colonies are thriving as humanity spreads across the stars.

Then shit goes sideways as the colony of Laconia, home to Winston Duarte's Martian mutineer fleet, makes a reappearance.

And then all shit goes sideways.

In theme and feel, "Persepolis Rising" is akin to The Empire Strikes Back of the series. It's pretty intense and brutal. Not everyone walks away. It's also a fascinating exploration of a "benign" imperialist conquest. It's not "good guys versus bad guys" so much as it's a good five hundred or so pages of conflicting ideologies in a throwdown amidst scary alien technologies and a poorly-understood threat.

There were twists in the novel I did not see coming and I found myself engaged completely and utterly.

I cannot recommend this novel or this series highly enough. If you haven't tried out "The Expanse" yet, you now have seven novels of awesome to wade through. I recommend giving it a try.

And now I'm going to return my attention to "Oathbreaker". I'm some 300-ish pages in, so I'm kinda committed...