The explosive fourth novel in James S.A. Corey’s New York Times bestselling Expanse series. Now a major television series! ENTER A NEW FRONTIER. “An empty apartment, a missing family, that’s creepy. But this is like finding a military base with no one on it. Fighters and tanks idling on the runway with no drivers. This is bad juju. Something wrong happened here. What you should do is tell … drivers. This is bad juju. Something wrong happened here. What you should do is tell everyone to leave.”
The gates have opened the way to a thousand new worlds and the rush to colonize has begun. Settlers looking for a new life stream out from humanity’s home planets. Ilus, the first human colony on this vast new frontier, is being born in blood and fire.
Independent settlers stand against the overwhelming power of a corporate colony ship with only their determination, courage, and the skills learned in the long wars of home. Innocent scientists are slaughtered as they try to survey a new and alien world. The struggle on Ilus threatens to spread all the way back to Earth.
James Holden and the crew of his one small ship are sent to make peace in the midst of war and sense in the midst of chaos. But the more he looks at it, the more Holden thinks the mission was meant to fail.
And the whispers of a dead man remind him that the great galactic civilization that once stood on this land is gone. And that something killed it.
The Expanse
Leviathan Wakes
Caliban’s War
Abaddon’s Gate
Cibola Burn
Nemesis Games
Babylon’s Ashes
The Expanse Short Fiction
The Butcher of Anderson Station
Gods of Risk
The Churn
The Vital Abyss
more
One of the best science fiction series I have ever read in the last decade. Original, exciting, with wonderful characters.
I thought this might have been the best of the Expanse books yet. Like the rest, it takes a while to get going, but the combination of the characters working with (and against) each other while getting to explore the new world and the strange protomolecule constructs made this very enjoyable.
Interesting but not up to the standards of the previous books in this series.
All of these books knock your socks off and leave them floating in the void never to be seen again.
CIBOLA BURN is the fourth novel of the Expanse series which I’ve very much enjoyed even if I’ve stated my preference for the TV adaptation. The Expanse’s premise is it’s about two hundred years in the future and humanity has not changed a bit. The rich abuse the poor, there’s racial caste systems, and governments are either greedy or oppressive (or both). The first few novels were very hard science fiction but have shifted a bit with the introduction of ancient alien technology.
Cibola Burn picks up after the apocalyptic events of the last book which have opened a massive alien portal network to 1500 inhabitable new worlds. Immediately, illegal colonists from all across the system have flooded these worlds followed by more legitimate upscale scientists to research it. One of these planets is Ilus (called “New Terra” by the UN). OPA terrorists kill fifty colonists and chaos reigns with James Holden sent with his crew to make peace. Except, there’s more on the planet than either side could imagine.
This is probably my second favorite novel of the series after the original because it returns to the human politics of the setting over the more cosmic elements. There’s a strong mixture of Wild West with sci-fi elements that reminds me a bit of Mass Effect: Andromeda’s better parts. The colonists are protected by a corrupt but effective small town Sheriff named Murtry while the Belter colonists are much more wild as well as savage.
Holden has matured a good deal from his previous escapaes and become a more cautious leader. Even so, he remains idealistic to the point of stupidity at times. Virtually all of his problems would have been solved by shooting Murtry but he refuses to do so. In the end, he’s willing to compromise himself much more while keeping his eye on the prize.
My favorite character in the book is Murtry because I love the tireless loyalty he has for Royal Chater Energy Company. A lot of people in the Expanse are flexible about their loyalties while Murtry is willing to die for the purposes of fulfilling his contract. It makes him an admirable character even when he’s willing to see the colony destroyed.
The kind of crap the colonists go through is tremendous and reminds me of the horrors faced by colonists in the early New World days only exaggerated. There’s blindness plagues, toxic slugs, earthquakes, alien technology malfunctions, and conflicts between them. That’s in addition to more mundane issues like famine, lack of medicine, and lack of contact with their patrons.
In conclusion, Cibola Burn is a great novel that I enjoyed from beginning to end. I liked the actions, politics, and the characters. The precursor technology isn’t really great and takes over too much of the plot but that’s just how it goes.
9/10
slow, plodding. A let down after every other book in this series
Book 4: Continuation of the Expanse Series; focus again on greed vs. trying to start a new life. Even when trying to start a new life, there are difficulties & personalities that get in the way.
Another series I became a big fan of, The Expanse builds a realistic enough picture of a colonized solar system, how the politics would play out, and what could happen if genuine alien technology suddenly fell into everyone’s lap.
Picking up after the end of Abaddon’s Gate, with thousands of worlds now open to humanity we see a resurgence of the old wild frontier days. The sheer distance between the solar system and these colonies make it so that the only law is effectively the one the people make themselves. Tensions run high, mistrust abounds and while all this is going on ancient technology humans just don’t understand begins to stir on the planet.
I love how this series has always managed to keep the mysterious alien influence in the story but the focus is still on the actual people; the opposing sides of the colony. One group are settlers who just rushed through the gates, looking for a completely fresh start away from Earth, Mars and the Belt. The other group is the officially sanctioned colonizing effort who are also looking to study the alien environment. It’s written quite well as you can see how both sides can and do distrust each other, and how easily the more violent ends of both groups come to dominate their interactions.
It’s a tense journey that Holden and the Rocinante crew are thrown into as they try to make sure everyone at least comes out alive. I also love how Holden has changed a bit in this book, I’ll admit his idealism and telling EVERYONE EVERYTHING all the time was beginning to grate on me.
Fast moving and great characters. This book was a much quicker read than the size would suggest because of how well it moved.