This was without a doubt the weakest of all The Expanse novels so far and also with quite a bit of a difference.

First of all I was not a big fan of any of the new POVs but let’s quickly go through them together:

Anna: Usually not a big fan of religious themes within stories and that being a huge part of her character was a definite miss for me. I also found her motivations to be questionable at best since she constantly thinks of home and kind of just doesn’t wanna be there.

Melba: She is very just unsympathetic in the beginning. I get that we are kind of supposed to hate her at the start and that is certainly accomplished but it still annoys me. However this in turn gives a lot of room for character development and from watching the show I am excited to see what will happen to her in the future and for now her POV was mainly ‘meh’.

Bull: Out of the three I liked him the most although in the beginning he didn’t really stand out but as things progressed his sheer determination really grew on me and I always liked when the POV switched back to him later in the novel.

However the main issue with the three new POVs is that it just took so much time away from the already beloved crew of the Rocinante. Yes, all the storylines converged later and that was also the point where I started liking this book but that was already over halfway through and so we didn’t spend that much time overall with the characters we already loved. That being said though from this turning point onwards I thought the book was overall quite enjoyable and it carried its momentum right on through till the end.

In terms of plot I also thought that this was the weakest book so far. This might sound a little weird because I already watched the show and I know where the plot is going but everything still felt so predictable and telegraphed like you could see how problems get solved miles ahead and that kind of took away from the fun and Mystery. The cinematic and engaging writing makes up for some of that though. 

I also felt like the humor, which was a strength of the previous books, took a step back in this one. 

Another frustration for me that comes from having watched the TV show first: Where is Drummer? She was a beloved character in the show and in this book you meet many different characters which kind of got merged into her character for the TV show and it just doesn’t feel right if you constantly go “but it should be Drummer doing XYZ!” Obviously that works the other way as well (probably even more so if you watch the adaptation later and see that certain characters just aren’t in it, would be really frustrating) but it still bothered me a lot.

So in conclusion: First half was like 2 stars, the second half about a 4 star. So 3 seems like a good middle ground. I hope that this is overall a temporary setback and we get back to the good stuff soon!