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bitprophet posted:Put me down in the "sure, it was the weakest book, but that's kinda relative and it was still a lot of fun to read & fleshed out the universe in interesting ways" camp. For example, I wouldn't recommend any new readers skip it, it's absolutely not that bad. As long as someone goes in knowing that it's a bit of a tonal departure, I don't see why they'd be crazy disappointed. I’ll echo that. I like this series for all the space stuff, so having the action confined to a planet wasn’t my favorite thing but it’s not a skip-worthy book or anything.
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Jan 24, 2018 20:16
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I think the thing about book four is that everyone was expecting a very different story given where the third book left off, so it feels very out of place. That said, it's absolutely worth reading, especially given that book six pulls on quite a few of the threads from it. While it's a bit slow to start, there's a lot of important world-building and plot in the back half, and while the climax isn't as system shaking as the other books, it's a good ride. I also enjoyed Havelock's B-plot.
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Jan 24, 2018 21:50
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Agreed to the last few posters. It's relatively self-contained but still enjoyable enough. It's just not the same grand scale conflicts presented in the rest of the series (mostly 1, 2, 5, and 6). It does have the worst of all POV characters in the series, though.
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Jan 24, 2018 22:26
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Skim it at most, skip it if willing. It somehow makes a safari on a mysterious alien planet into a joyless slog.
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Jan 25, 2018 00:42
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CB feels like AG in places. What I mean is, I think when writing AG they got extended into four books. Then, writing CB, they got extended to six and then nine. It felt like stories that were heading towards an end but then they twist into a continuation. For example, I thought Amos (CB spoilers) was absolutely going to die in that shootout towards the end. Then he doesn't. There were a few other moments like that. I feel Books 5 and onwards have benefited from knowing they have four books in total to tell the rest of the story.
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Jan 25, 2018 00:47
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Edit: Ignore this.
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Jan 25, 2018 06:53
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Pander posted:Agreed to the last few posters. It's relatively self-contained but still enjoyable enough. It's just not the same grand scale conflicts presented in the rest of the series (mostly 1, 2, 5, and 6). Havelock right? Because the lady scientist was a little dull but Havelock made me want to slam my head off the loving desk as I was reading. He's so dense and boring. He basically takes the entire book to realise he's working for a loving caricature.
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Jan 25, 2018 23:16
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PriorMarcus posted:Havelock right? Because the lady scientist was a little dull but Havelock made me want to slam my head off the loving desk as I was reading. Nah, scientist lady. "Oh I'm normally so smart but gosh I get so discombobulated and tingly thinking about James Holden" for 3/4 of a book before the curative powers of a man's penis fix her. It'd be fine comic relief if it weren't so incredibly bad. Havelock at least feels like a normal dude trying to do his poo poo and not have weird poo poo happen to him. Laughs at scientists who suck at being soldiers. I mean I get his stuff is a little boring, but it fits in with the book way better than she did.
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Jan 26, 2018 00:21
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I’m almost done with Caliban’s War and I’m wondering whether it’s worth continuing the series. There’s a lack of character conflict and it’s draining my enthusiasm. LW has Holden and Miller as interesting opposites, but everything is so jovial in CW. It was going in a good direction when Holden was “becoming” Miller and lost his poo poo in the lab, but that seems to have wrapped up with no consequences beyond him falling out with Fred. There’s no other drama beyond the overarching political battle. Is this book a bump in the road or is the series not for me?
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Feb 22, 2018 07:41
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snoremac posted:I’m almost done with Caliban’s War and I’m wondering whether it’s worth continuing the series. There’s a lack of character conflict and it’s draining my enthusiasm. LW has Holden and Miller as interesting opposites, but everything is so jovial in CW. It was going in a good direction when Holden was “becoming” Miller and lost his poo poo in the lab, but that seems to have wrapped up with no consequences beyond him falling out with Fred. There’s no other drama beyond the overarching political battle. Is this book a bump in the road or is the series not for me? It's a page-turning space opera action-thriller with a few twists here and there and a reasonably fun stable of characters. The first two books in the series are generally considered the best, with good pacing throughout and a coherent, building story. The following novels share a similar through line, though with different motifs and pacing. If you don't like the second book it's not a good sign that you'd enjoy the rest any more, since the first was kinda unique as an action-noire. But that's not a guarantee since the story does expand (hurt hur hur) a bit and the varying tastes in the thread past book two make it more of a crapshoot. If you like the characters, the setting, and the style of writing, and it's really only the plot that bummed you out, I'd say stick with it.
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Feb 22, 2018 07:58
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Honestly, I barely remember CW. People are mixed on the third book (it was poorly received at the time, although I've heard quite a few people saying they loved it on the re-read); if nothing else, it's very different to 2. I'd give it a shot if I were you.
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Feb 22, 2018 09:24
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snoremac posted:I’m almost done with Caliban’s War and I’m wondering whether it’s worth continuing the series. There’s a lack of character conflict and it’s draining my enthusiasm. LW has Holden and Miller as interesting opposites, but everything is so jovial in CW. It was going in a good direction when Holden was “becoming” Miller and lost his poo poo in the lab, but that seems to have wrapped up with no consequences beyond him falling out with Fred. There’s no other drama beyond the overarching political battle. Is this book a bump in the road or is the series not for me? The characters finally get personalities and conflicts in book five. Three is bad, four you can just read a summary because it’s worse than bad and nothing important happens that won’t fit into a sentence of recap. Five is legitimately decent. e: five not give General Battuta fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Feb 24, 2018 |
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Feb 22, 2018 15:39
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General Battuta posted:four you can just read a summary because it’s worse than bad Obligatory deployment of anti-goon-hyperbole countermeasures: book four is worth reading if you enjoy the alien side of the setting's worldbuilding and can handle some less than stellar viewpoint characters. It's still written by the Corey duo, even if it is not their best work.
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Feb 22, 2018 22:37
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Book 4 was not nearly as bad as people made it out to be. More memorable than book 2 tbh
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Feb 24, 2018 16:34
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It's particularly bad because it highlights how deadly dull the Expanse's vision of alien worlds turned out to be. How do you make a planet riddled with dead alien technology so boring? Peter Watts or CJ Cherryh they are not.
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Feb 24, 2018 16:52
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It's not the best in the series, but it's still better than most sci-fi (if you include all of it, including the very bad; it's certainly worse than very good sci fi). If you start reading it and you get bored, then sure, put it down and read a summary and move on to the next one but don't skip it wholesale just because internet strangers said it was bad, it's worth forming your own opinion on.
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Feb 25, 2018 00:13
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SyFy website says The Expanse returns 4/11. Just finished PR last night. I spend all day in front of screens and actually enjoy that books gets me away from them. gently caress these guys with their E-only novellas making me have to read a screen.
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Mar 1, 2018 22:17
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Eiba posted:I can understand someone feeling the bullshit death battleship defeating the combined fleet of all humanity is something outside the frame of what they're interested in. I'm almost there myself. Like, maybe that's not what you signed up for when you started the Expanse and that's a fine thing to be disappointed by. Yes and no. I expect all sci-fi to come with some hand waving deus ex machina; however, I expect that hand waving to result in something where I can say, “hey, if alien death rays work like they are explained, then yes it will rip that guy apart molecule by molecule.” Instead I feel like we are getting, “the alien death ray kills by ripping things apart molecule by molecule. Bod was hit by the death ray, which resulted in the instantaneous death of him as he was ripped apart molecule by molecule, and then of course his parents, sister, and best friend too back on earth... BECAUSE.”
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Mar 3, 2018 21:18
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ZombieLenin posted:Yes and no. I expect all sci-fi to come with some hand waving deus ex machina; however, I expect that hand waving to result in something where I can say, “hey, if alien death rays work like they are explained, then yes it will rip that guy apart molecule by molecule.” I'll re-emphasize though: if you want to call it a dumb development, I've got no issue and can see where you're coming from. That four month old post was inspired by a pedantic need to clarify the difference between "dumb" and "implausible".
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Mar 4, 2018 05:13
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I dug the latest book quite a lot, and the time skip didn't bother me and seemed essential to the story they wanted to tell. If the TV show makes it this far, and I do hope that it somehow does, then it's not too hard to fiddle with the exact amount of time that has passed somewhat, or to just use makeup to add years to the characters. If you play up the anti-aging drug aspect then you barely even need to sprinkle in makeup at all, and with the tech seen in the show that's a perfectly fine handwave to me. I liked the Laconian perspective more than I probably should have. You certainly see their immoral and harsh practices and cult of personality at work, but you also got the sense that it actually wouldn't be all that bad to be under their rule if you were just willing to play ball, which seems like a tricky balancing act that I thought the writers handled well. Kind of a nice take on the colonizer viewpoint of "I'm trying to bring my glorious vision and technology to these primitives, why do they keep trying to kill me?" that you rarely see in science fiction, especially when only humans are involved. Laconia is still the bad guy and when push comes to shove they drop their high morals and line up people against the proverbial wall to be shot, but with how idyllic their planet was (PM sacrifices aside) made out to be and Duarte's characterization I got some real Roman empire vibes.
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Mar 26, 2018 14:17
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NowonSA posted:
I’m almost with you, but I think the grey area kind of turns straight up dark once you factor in the part where if you step out of line, you get sent to the pens for horrific protomolecule mutation, that’s just straight up villainous.
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Mar 26, 2018 15:34
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I am pretty lukewarm on the latest book. I think a smaller, more personal story about the crew as a send-off would have been better. I think the Laconian stuff is different enough that it deserves a new arc with new characters taking the lead. I think a longer, maybe 50 or 60 year time jump with the Laconians coming through the gates fully hybridised would have been better, with only one or two characters from previous books returning in a supporting role. Having Holden and the gang facing down another universal catastrophe just gives me apocalypse fatigue.
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Mar 26, 2018 16:40
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Holden and Duarte are going to 7,000 year old sandworms in the next book.
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Mar 26, 2018 17:03
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I hope soGeneral Battuta posted:Next book is 4000 years later and Duarte keeps cloning Holden.
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Mar 26, 2018 17:09
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NowonSA posted:I dug the latest book quite a lot, and the time skip didn't bother me and seemed essential to the story they wanted to tell. If the TV show makes it this far, and I do hope that it somehow does ... I've seen this a couple times in the thread and I'm having a hard time understanding how we get there. Given the show's current pacing of roughly 3/4th a book/season that's the start of season 9. I suppose they could change the pacing, but it's hard to see things lasting that long. TV audiences are fickle. I think we make it to AG, which will be interesting on TV since so much of that is a real meat grinder on a Behemoth scale. But then we go planet-side for a season +. Remember how BSG went to poo poo when they went down to that planet...
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Mar 26, 2018 18:44
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I liked the 3rd book  The 4th I think I mostly disliked because of the narrator of the audio book.
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Mar 26, 2018 20:08
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Marijuana posted:Holden and Duarte are going to 7,000 year old sandworms in the next book. Walk without coffee.
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Mar 26, 2018 20:16
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drewhead posted:I've seen this a couple times in the thread and I'm having a hard time understanding how we get there. Given the show's current pacing of roughly 3/4th a book/season that's the start of season 9. I suppose they could change the pacing, but it's hard to see things lasting that long. TV audiences are fickle. The plot in Nemesis Games/Babylon's Ashes is a pretty easy out to end the series on if it has begun to fade in popularity and they could condense the contents of Cibola Burn or omit them entirely if they need to. After that if there's a sudden resurgence in popularity, netflix buyout, or "remake"/refunding of the series they could go and film the final trilogy. The authors have stated they didn't write the books with the tv series in mind but it really appears otherwise.
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Mar 26, 2018 20:28
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acumen posted:The plot in Nemesis Games/Babylon's Ashes is a pretty easy out to end the series on if it has begun to fade in popularity and they could condense the contents of Cibola Burn or omit them entirely if they need to. After that if there's a sudden resurgence in popularity, netflix buyout, or "remake"/refunding of the series they could go and film the final trilogy. The authors have stated they didn't write the books with the tv series in mind but it really appears otherwise. They've just been really good at adapting. They built the books with the setting in mind first, and things flow naturally from there. It was meant to be an RPG setting at the beginning IIRC.
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Mar 26, 2018 20:32
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ClassH posted:I liked the 3rd book I'll admit that the lovely narrator made me feel a lot less charitable toward the writing. The good news is that they've rereleased the audiobook with the usual guy narrating, and anyone who bought the old version on Audible should have the new one now.
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Mar 26, 2018 20:33
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NowonSA posted:I dug the latest book quite a lot, and the time skip didn't bother me and seemed essential to the story they wanted to tell. If the TV show makes it this far, and I do hope that it somehow does, then it's not too hard to fiddle with the exact amount of time that has passed somewhat, or to just use makeup to add years to the characters. If you play up the anti-aging drug aspect then you barely even need to sprinkle in makeup at all, and with the tech seen in the show that's a perfectly fine handwave to me. I feel the same. Just make it a ten year time skip, wave your hands, and problem solved. quote:I liked the Laconian perspective more than I probably should have. You certainly see their immoral and harsh practices and cult of personality at work, but you also got the sense that it actually wouldn't be all that bad to be under their rule if you were just willing to play ball, which seems like a tricky balancing act that I thought the writers handled well. Kind of a nice take on the colonizer viewpoint of "I'm trying to bring my glorious vision and technology to these primitives, why do they keep trying to kill me?" that you rarely see in science fiction, especially when only humans are involved. Laconia is still the bad guy and when push comes to shove they drop their high morals and line up people against the proverbial wall to be shot, but with how idyllic their planet was (PM sacrifices aside) made out to be and Duarte's characterization I got some real Roman empire vibes. Duarte didn't seem much worse than Avasarala honestly.
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Mar 27, 2018 00:29
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But for the eternal god-king bit.
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Mar 27, 2018 17:37
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Duerte is responsible for the rocks falling on Earth in case people forgot, Marco was his distraction for his coup to become god-king off the backs of horrifying human experimentation. Avasarala has done a lot of terrible things but it's not even close to the same ballpark.
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Mar 31, 2018 04:25
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Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:But for the eternal god-king bit. Wait a minute. Hear me out. Eternal god-queen Avasarala? The technology exists.
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Mar 31, 2018 04:36
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Eiba posted:... She hasn't died yet, just sayin
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Mar 31, 2018 04:40
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I'm pretty sure that Duerte's 'immortality' is gonna have some problematic side effects beyond what we've seen so far.
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Mar 31, 2018 05:02
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ATP_Power posted:I'm pretty sure that Duerte's 'immortality' is gonna have some problematic side effects beyond what we've seen so far. Reading people's thoughts ruins a lot of the best board games/party games. You can only play things where you roll or spin and then move down a track like Candyland.
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Mar 31, 2018 07:57
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drewhead posted:SyFy website says The Expanse returns 4/11. Printed books....? Are they antiques?
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Mar 31, 2018 22:00
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A baby swipes ineffectually across a magazine before throwing it away in disgust.
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Apr 1, 2018 06:21
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So today at work I recommended this book to a mother buying SF novels for her fourteen year old son. She said he'd tried to read Dune but couldn't get into it, but I figured if the kid could hanlde reading Frank Herbert then Leviathan Wakes isn't too explicit with its sexuality or violence, right? I mean, it's there and there's the exploding vomit zombies, but it's not really gratuitous in the way someone like George R.R. Martin writes. I'm just hoping I made a decent call and I'm not going to get some moral guardian mother pouncing on me because I suggested a book to her teenager where two adults have sex.
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Apr 1, 2018 06:50
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