James Nicoll Reviews

2024’s The Mercy of Gods is the first volume of James S. A. Corey’s science fiction series, Captives’ War.

The novel biome of which humans are part first appeared on Anjiin three and a half millennia ago. Utterly unlike the lifeforms that existed for billions of years before, the new biome has been slowly spreading across Anjiin ever since. Too unlike each other to interact save indirectly, old and new biome exist alongside each other.

Tonner Freis and his team have worked out how to bridge the gap, to translate from one genetic system to another. This breakthrough makes them a target in a relentless academic struggle.

Another, equally relentless, far vaster, struggle is bearing down on Anjiin. 

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2017’s Persepolis Rising is the seventh in James S. A. Corey’s Expanse series (which is now up to nine books and finished). 

Thirty years after the events of Babylon’s Ashes, the thousands of colony worlds reachable through the alien ring network are dominated by the Transport Union, which controls the slow zone, the pocket universe linking all the stargates. Vexed by planet Freehold’s repeated violations of safety regulations, President Drummer dispatches James Holden’s gunship Rocinante to inform Freehold that they are cut off from interstellar trade for three years. Since Freehold is not self-sufficient, this is a death sentence.

The Rocinante is a heavily-armed gunship. Freehold’s colonists are a collection of heavily-armed, government-hating libertarians. Can even Holden overcome such formidable opponents?

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2016’s Babylon’s Ashes is the sixth book in James S. A. Corey’s Expanse series. 

Earth is in ruins; half the population is dead thanks to the Welter Free Navy’s asteroid attack. Neither the UN or Martian space navies are powerful enough to crush the Free Navy, which is supported by close to half of the population in the Outer Planets Alliance. The Free Navy controls the gates to humanity’s extra-solar colonies. 

Marco Inaros is the mastermind behind the Free Navy. Everything is going Marco’s way. Just ask Marco. 

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2015’s Nemesis Games is the fifth volume in James S. A. Corey’s Expanse series. 

Back in the Solar System after dealing with an extrasolar diplomatic crisis, James Holden bows to the inevitable. His much battered ship Rocinante is in desperate need of repairs. With Rocinante in dry dock, what better time to give his loyal crew shore leave? 

Holden is ignoring the first rule of adventuring: never split the party¹.

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2014’s Cibola Burn is the fourth volume in James S. A. Corey’s Expanse series¹.

The Ring Builder’s protomolecule creates death and damage — just ask the unfortunates on Eros — but it also grants opportunities. Humanity has lost one major asteroid city; it has been forced to share the solar system with a vast, powerful alien artifact that regards humans as potentially useful raw materials. On the plus side, thanks to the protomolecule humanity now has access to the Ring Builder wormhole network and a thousand life-bearing worlds. 

With potential living space expanded a thousandfold, one might expect it would take centuries before groups began squabbling over territory. Ha ha. It takes about a year. 

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2013’s Abaddon’s Gate is the third volume in James S. A. Corey’s Expanse series¹.

Perennial pain-in-the-ass James Holden, the man whose steadfast embrace of principle helped kick off an interplanetary war, is confronted with the consequences of his actions in the form of a lawsuit. While Holden claims ownership of the spacecraft Rocinante, the means by which he obtained it were somewhat irregular. Now the space navy from whom he commandeered the vessel would like their spacecraft back.

When opportunity offers Holden a convenient escape from the lawsuit in the form of an assignment in the outer solar system, where the vast, enigmatic alien Ring orbits, he accepts it. The timing is not as coincidental as it appears and Holden should have been far more cautious.

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2012’s Caliban’s War is the second book in James S. A. Corey’s ongoing Expanse series.

Fresh off playing a central role in the intensification of the ongoing Earth-Mars rivalry (from cold war to the brink of the real thing), James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante now work for the Outer Planets Alliance. Their job: tracking down and dealing with pirates eager to take advantage of the current chaos. It’s a grim job but at least Holden and his people can be sure the alien protomolecule — a super-powerful nanotech able to reshape living things according to inscrutable and ancient protocols — is safely confined on Venus and will never bother humanity again.

It bothers humanity again.

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I remember 2011’s Leviathan Wakes, the first book in the currently ongoing Expanse series by pseudonymous author James S. A. Corey, as a welcome breath of fresh air and a refreshingly upbeat novel. (I will return to the ​“upbeat” thing later.)

While Jim Holden’s job is suitably SFnal, the XO of the interplanetary ice transport vessel Canterbury, Detective Miller languishes in a far more mundane position, as a cop on the beat in Ceres. He’s that detective on the force with whom nobody wants to partner. This is not because he’s the kinda can-do guy who doesn’t let the rules get in way of justice, but because he’s long past his best days. He’s on the fast-track to career oblivion and obscurity.

Then Miller is handed the seemingly low-priority job of finding the vanished heiress and political idealist, Julie Mao. It is a case that will ensure that everyone in the Solar System knows Detective Miller.

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