Select language, opens an overlay

Comment

Dec 18, 2017isaachar rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
I wasn't much of a fan of the previous entry in The Expanse series. The villain was too petty, the reactions from veteran characters didn't fit their previously established personalities, and the denouement didn't feel very satisfying. Most of all it lacked humanistic elements of previous books. It wasn't bad, but previous books were better. Persepolis Rising offers an answer to those criticisms. PR takes place decades after Babylon's Ashes, and a common theme is newer characters taking the reigns of the old. The Rocinante crew undergoes personnel changes, as do the dynamics between the main characters. We see how some have evolved and some have simply gotten older. The solar system and its colonies, on the other hand, finally reach a functioning catharsis until the next big badguy arrives. Where the authors created a vain, petty, easily dis-likeable villain in Marco Inaros, Winston Duarte comes across as the penultimate villain. Intelligent, driven and calculating, Duarte's goals are to unite humanity under his oppressive regime, masked as a benevolent dictatorship. He is the utter opposite to James Holden, who believes cooperation and diversity are better for civilization than singular authoritarianism. I was glad to see that the proto-molecule aliens and the beings which wiped them out play a bigger role in this story. In typical Expanse style, the action is fast paced and the story moves from one big crisis to another. It was difficult putting this book down once I started. I would recommend reading the Expanse short stories "Vital Abyss" and "Strange Dogs" before reading PR. You don't need them to fill the story, but they explain why and how the Laconia colony is so technologically advanced. My only lingering questions were "what happened to Naomi Nagata's son" from the previous book, and how did Earth bounce back from environment killing asteroid impacts in less than 30 years? Still, Persepolis Rising was a great read, and I can't wait for the next chapter.