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Persepolis Rising

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Persepolis Rising

By: James S.A. Corey
Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
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In the thousand-sun network of humanity's expansion, new colony worlds are struggling to find their way. Every new planet lives on a knife-edge between collapse and wonder, and the crew of the aging gunship Rocinante have their hands more than full keeping the fragile peace.
In the vast space between Earth and Jupiter, the inner planets and the Belt have formed a tentative and uncertain alliance still haunted by a history of wars and prejudices. On the lost colony world of Laconia, a hidden enemy has a new vision for all of humanity and the power to enforce it.
New technologies clash with old as the history of human conflict returns to its ancient pattern of war and subjugation. But human nature is not the only enemy, and the forces being unleashed have their own price. A price that will change the shape of humanity - and of the Rocinante -unexpectedly and forever…©2017 Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (P)2017 Recorded Books Inc Adventure Fantasy Fiction Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Space Opera Solar System War
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I was pondering whether to even get Persepolis Rising after the rather
disappointing Babylon's Ashes and especially after some early Luke warm
reviews. However, as usual, I don't like to ditch a series once I've read
the first few parts and liked them. It's hard for writers to always be
consistent so I like to give them the benefit of the doubt so I purchased
this title.

Persepolis Rising is set around 30 years after the events in Babylon's
Ashes which has given time for the multitude of new human colonies to
develop and one such colony world, Laconia, has plans to rule all of human
space. The first thing that surprised me was Corey's choice to base this
story so many years after the last. Given the sheer number of new worlds
open to humanity I felt there was enormous scope for material to get Holden
and crew in plenty of trouble. Of course, Corey could well decide to go back
and write a number of stories to fill in the large gap and I hope he does.

I have to say that you really need to refresh yourself on the previous
couple of books in order to get a handle on some of the events mentioned in
this story as I only vaguely recalled some prior plot points covered. In
fact, some of the things discussed by Holden relating to the situation were
plot elements from prior books I had little or no memory of. That's down to
me, I know and those that have come later to this series and thus can read
the books much closer together will have a better mental picture of the
salient events that form the foundation of this book.

As for this story? Well, I am happy to say that Persepolis Rising is a much
moor engaging read than the previous book. However, this is a slow burner
and Corey's writing style tends to slow the core narrative down by frequent
and often rather pointless character musings and introspection. On the one
hand I kind of get what he's doing here in that he wants to really paint a
detailed picture using the characters deep emotional, mental as well as
other personal thought processes but I felt that this aspect was often
overdone and served little purpose but to protract the story and often felt
like a bit contrived and overly artistic. On that basis, I feel the book
could have been about a third shorter if it weren't for this.

Apart from that, I liked this story on the whole and Jefferson Mays has done
another excellent job at narration and I am very pleased to see him used
again for this instalment. I do find it a little surprising to see the
classic principle of imperial rule/dictatorship being used here as history
tells us that such things never last even if the self appointed rulers bear
a velvet glove with an iron fist inside. Given the immense scope of
possibilities with the massive expansion into 1,300 new worlds, I felt that
such an arcane power play is a little clichéd. Having said that, the human
capacity for such acts is probably never going to go away.

All that minor griping aside, I did enjoy this story and it has left us in
an excellent position for the next instalment which I hope comes rather
sooner than this book did. Persepolis Rising is not Corey's best work in
this series but it is a much better effort than Babylon's Ashes so is a
welcome upswing in form.


Better Than The Last

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It felt great to get back to this series after a year hiatus, and all the characters are just as familiar and distinct. James SA Corey are a fantastic writing duo, who consider every decision they make and create incredibly realistic science fiction. That's mainly a strength but it's perhaps a slight weakness in this book, which jumps forwards by a really meaty chunk of time in order to arrive at another significant moment in history. I wanted to grow old with Amos Holden et al, but that privilege has been taken from me.

what to make of this..

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3 decades on and then it all breaks with the return of an old advisory. This looks to be the start of the end game in The Expanse but with the level of thought and detail it's will be something special

Is this the beginning of the end

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Just when you thought you'd heard it all. .
Something from left field you don't see coming. .
Another yarn from The Expanse Space/No space this time. .. No. . You'll just levee to find out
.
oh and 'Gimbals' is pronounced with a leading 'G' as in 'Guilt' not as in 'Giraffe'

A twist in the fate of the Holden Gang

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Apart from the overlong wordy bits, I loved it and will be looking forward to the follow-up, hopefully in the not too distant future.

Looking Good

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