#H1 Miller's Reviews Presents the Book: Persepolis Rising by James S.A. Corey
For those not in the know, Persepolis Rising is Book 7 of The Expanse series. If you haven't gotten around to reading this series yet, I whole heartily recommend it. The series has been getting a lot of attention lately mainly because the SciFi (I refuse to call it SyFy) Channel in the US has picked it up not too long ago and so far has put out two very successful seasons, with a third expected sometime in 2018. This show has been heralded as both "Game of Thrones in Space1 2" and as "The Best Show on TV that Nobody is Watching.3 4" So if this is news to you and you're late to the party, no worries, as of this writing you can catch up on Amazon Prime. Go ahead, I'll wait. You can thank me later.
For those that are in the know, Book 7 released December of 2017. I quickly picked it up on Audible and listened to it over about a week. I'll break down my thoughts on it below, but the Too Long Didn't Read (TLDR) version is that this one is a 5/5 star, so I recommend it.
#H2 Warning: May Contain Spoilers
Format
I got the Audiobook version, the narrator was Jefferson Mays, who narrated the entire series so far. I find Jefferson Mays does a great job with the different inflections of the main characters so you never have any issues distinguishing between them. Overall he's a pretty solid narrator, and very easy to listen to.Story
As previously mentioned this is the seventh book in the series, but due to the time jump of 30 years, you could almost be forgiven for picking up the series starting here. The story picks up 30 years from the events of Book 6, with The Martian defectors (now the Laconians) being the big baddies this time. During the 30 year hiatus, they've been building up their society, military, and proto-molecule knowledge and are ready to make their presence known again to the rest of the worlds. Our stalwart band of heroes and misfits on the aging Rocinante are still alive and kicking around, and as usual, they get drawn into the wider conflict against a much more powerful, calculating, and prepared enemy.Critiques
Overall I don't have too much bad to say, I have seen others complain about the big time jump. I understand that they needed to explain away how the Laconians got so powerful, so the writers (James S.A. Corey is actually 2 guys if y'all didn't know) choose to speed things up by a large amount. Honestly, though I can't say that was a bad decision. The long gap in time really doesn't slow down the characters or plots really (with some notable exceptions I'll leave out for being too spoilery) and due to James S.A. Corey's penchant for interim novella's like the Churn, Vital Abyss, Gods of Risk, etc., I think we might be able to recover some of the lost time. The only other critique to mention is that after an entire year off between novels this one felt strongly of more of a setup piece for Book 8. Again, I think this was intentional so I can't really fault the author's decisions on this one, but despite how good it is, you do feel that there is no big payoff at the end as with previous books in the series.Final Thoughts
Overall, I enjoyed the book. The narration was spot on as always, and I like that we're getting a big baddie again. I really enjoyed hating the Free Navy, so I'm glad to see the Rocinante are back to being the underdog again. Some of the character choices and motivations after such a long time seemed right, and I'm really excited to see where the next book will take us after the cliffhanger the book leaves us on.I find the Laconian society fascinating since the MCRN has always been near and dear to me, so I could really buy into their worldview, even if their High Consul is a bit nutty.
1. [https://www.cnet.com/news/the-expanse-on-syfy-is-like-game-of-thrones-in-space/]↩
2. [https://www.inverse.com/article/27250-the-expanse-syfy-game-of-thrones-in-space/]↩
3. [https://www.polygon.com/2017/1/30/14438446/the-expanse-season-2]↩
4. [http://www.prescientscifi.com/expanse-best-show-no-one-watching/]↩