I just finished an eARC of Tiamat’s Wrath and gave it 5 stars on Amazon and Goodreads. I never give anything 5 stars, and maybe after I detox I’ll want to drop it back to 4 stars, but really, it was great. Writing, characters, plot, sciencey stuff, galactic politics. All really well done. Thoughtful but accessible, not a combination we often get in SF.

Also, not the place to start the series or even this three-book arc.

Like Nemesis Games, this is a story where the crew of the Roci are all off doing separate things, which is how we left it at the end of the previous book, Persopolis Rising. If you read that, then you’ll remember that the black fleet that disappeared through the ring gates early on has come back with newer bigger ships and rolled Empire all over the 1300 worlds humans have access to. Naomi, Alex, Amos, and Bobbi are all back in the underground game, and Holden is a prisoner to High Consul Duart, the man who would be emperor, or as Jim puts it, his “Dancing Bear.”

Bobbi and Alex are off running another captured ship, the Gathering Storm, which they took away from the Laconian Imperial fleet at the end of the last book, and Naomi is doing deep thinking and strategizing for the new resistance while hiding out in an elaborate shell game of cargo containers and shipping vessels. Amos went off on a high-risk mission to get Jim back and has gone dark, and Jim’s wandering around chatting up the emperor, the mad scientist that’s been cooking proto-molecule since book 1, and Teresa, the girl who stands to inherit the empire if her now proto-molecule-immortal father ever falls. Meanwhile, Duarte has scientists (played by our old friends from Cibola Burn, Elvi, and Fayez) off looking for a solar system empty enough that he can do something to poke the bear on the other side of the ring, the one that makes ships disappear if too many go through too often. What could go wrong?

As Holden says, “…the problem with thousand-year Reichs. they come and go like fireflies.”

I haven’t liked all the Expanse novels equally, and the previous one made me worried that the series would end on a whimper rather than a bang, but Tiamat’s Wrath makes me think that it’s going to be something to remember.

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