And Now into the Future of the Future

One thing I can credit The Expanse for (I mean, along with solid stories, good character, and a very well developed world) is that no two books are exactly the same. These are long adventures, yes, but it’s clear that the authors (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck writing together as James S. A. Corey) spent a lot of time plotting out their series and developing each book to have its own feel, its own kind of adventure. As the books have gone on, the stories have diverged differently, each having the crew of the Rocinante as the focal points while also taking them to very different places each and every novel.

Book six, Babylon's Ashes, was the conclusion of a major arc for the series. It set the end of one major villain, Marco Inaros, as well as the end of hostilities between the main superpowers of the Solar System. Earth and Mars were still in control of their own planets but, due to the actions of Marco Inaros, the Belt, the faction of the Solar System that rose up against the oppressive “inners” and took a hand in their own destinies, became the dominant faction. The Transport Union was run by the Belt, its leaders were Belters, it was the Belt in control of the Solar System, with Earth and Mars reliant upon the union. In a way, Marco got what he said he wanted (just without him as the leader of the Solar System).

With three books to go, though, there was no way this era of peace and prosperity could last. Some new threat had to rise up eventually. We have to put emphasis on eventually, too, but a time jump of twenty-eight years takes place between books six and seven. Now, with the crew of the Rocinante getting older, and Holden and Naomi thinking of retiring from the ship, a very different era could have been set for the crew. They could have continued on, under the captaincy of Bobbie Draper, former gunnery sergeant for the MCRN. That was the path forward… at least until the forces of Laconia can back through the ring into the Slow Zone and upended the peace that the Solar System had known for close to three decades.

Laconia was founded by Admiral Winston Duarte, a former MCRN leader who took a faction from within the Mars Navy, a full third of her ships and people, and went off through one of the rings to a planet of their choosing. They settled there, building their own society with the aid of the last remaining sample of protomolecule, and using the vast technology of the former alien species to make advances that no other planet could dream of. With a fleet of new warships, and a charge led into the territory of the Slow Zone, the Laconian Navy could overpower anyone. And they do, quickly taking over Medina Station and controlling the Slow Zone. It’s up to the remaining allies of the Union, including the crew of the Rocinante, and those with warship back in the Solar System, to fight back in possibly the last major war that could define the future of human civilization.

Book seven, Persepolis Rising, is a bold book. It’s clear that the authors knew that simply having the crew of the Rocinante continue to put out small fires, have the ship be in the middle of tensions between Earth and Mars and the Belt, would only fuel so many stories. The Laconia situation was set up in advance, teed up in book five, Nemesis Games, but then left to simmer in the background (and in short stories and novellas that I’ll eventually get to) while other adventures were tackled. It creates a new foe to focus on, a new threat to everything, and a new permutation of the protomolecule problem to solve.

The novels before this were about trying to maintain some level of the status quo. Humanity wasn’t ready for what the protomolecule promised, using it for war, for conquest, for annihilation. The protomolecule wasn’t meant for a civilization that was already thriving; it was meant to find a planet full of barely animate pondscum that it could use and adapt into a planet for the protomolecule engineers to use. It would take over the world, turn its barely sentient inhabitants into a vessel for the production of a ring, and it would then send that ring out into space to connect to the ring network. It did that for the solar system, but in the process it upended everything that humanity knew and understood.

Each novel has been about fighting that technology, fighting what came next, fighting to make humanity safe. What Duarte and his people bring is the next level of threat, one that won’t just bring danger to human lives but could conquer and remake the very civilization that, for so long, was centered on the Solar System. With Loconia, a dominant superpower that could more than rival Earth (which, after Inaros’s attacks, was only just to the point of recovery), humanity was about the change, for better and worse, and (for this book at least) it seems like there’s no escape from it.

Persepolis Rising is the first book of the last trilogy of The Expanse and, spoilers, it doesn’t have a definitive ending. This is the first part of the last major chapter of the saga, and as such it’s focused on setting and developing the new status quo. We get our. Characters in another dire situation, trapped on Medina Station and looking for a way to cause enough chaos and discontent that they can escape and be part of a revolution. We get the politics of the Solar System, they’re struggles to ward off a threat unlike any they’ve seen before. We get everything we need to view Laconia as the new threat for a new age… we just don’t see their defeat. Hell, if anything, the book makes it clear that defeat may not even mean what we think it means. We may have to recalibrate because, in the end, the protomolecule did remake our society… just not in the way its engineers originally intended.

It’s an interesting book, thrilling at times as we see new versions of characters we know (older versions, if not wiser versions) taking on a threat no one could have foreseen. Humanity, in a way, got complacent after years of constant war and horror, and then along comes this new threat and it changes everything. After six books, with each novel essentially showing the crew of the Rocinante overcoming every threat, it’s interesting to see them up against something that they can’t defeat, a threat too big and too powerful to maybe overcome. This is new for the series, and it’s impressive the authors were willing to take The Expanse in this direction.

Of course, this is also the first book that hasn’t been adapted for television. The previous six books comprised the six seasons of the Syfy-to-Amazon PrimeWhile Netflix might be the largest streaming seervice right now, other major contenders have come into the game. One of the biggest, and best funded, is Amazon Prime, the streaming-service add-on packing with free delivery and all kinds of other perks Amazon gives its members. And, with the backing of its corporate parent, this streaming service very well could become the market leader. series, The Expanse, but that show ended with the defeat of Marco Inaros. Instead of aging up the characters via recasting or makeup or CGI, the show ended. That means this book is the only way, for many of us, that we can live this adventure. If we do see an adaptation of it, we’d likely have to wait twenty years. I do hope we could get that because I’d like to see how this book would fit with that version of the series and those actors in the roles.

This book is a solid start to the final adventures of the Rocinante and her crew, and I am solidly in for the last two novels. This series keeps going and has yet to produce a bad novel. This one was different, featuring a new threat and a problem that might be beyond our faithful crew… but that just means that the next phase of the adventure will be that much more thrilling and tense. It’ll be quite the ride.