The past few months have been pretty exciting for fans of The Expanse, the sweeping science fiction saga by James S.A. Corey, aka authors Daniel Abraham and Ty
I dread to think how many books GRRM's former assistants have smashed out in the time it's taken him not to write one.
Anyway:
James S.A. Corey's hit sci-fi series The Expanse was set in our own solar system, and leaned heavily into the politics of various human factions vying for dominance while an alien threat looms at the edges of awareness. Yes, the protomolecule was dangerous and mysterious and shook up the status quo, but at the end of the day it was always the humans and their decisions which drove the story forward. By contrast, The Captive's War feels more like Mass Effect, the sort of space opera which features a wide array of aliens where you never know what you'll see on the next page.
As a big fan of Mass Effect, this book sounds something I'd like to read.
The first book kinda leaves you blue-balled because it ends just as you start getting some answers. It does have encounters with several kinds of aliens, tho.
And the problem is kind of inevitable if you're creating a series and want to have narratives that span from one book to the next, and across the series.
That said, while the first book certainly has a couple self-contained arcs, it did end up feeling like setup the whole way through.
That's literally my only complaint though, and it amounts to "I can't wait for more".
Definitely blue balls you haha. The 1st novella is really interesting too in a whole different way. I love that they kept up that tradition of a expanded universe between books haha.
It's not. It's really super not like mass effect at all.
I just finished it. It's more like a story following the interpersonal dramas of a community of jews during the holocaust, with aliens in place of nazis.
It also feels like an extended set up for the real story to begin later.