Book review - Tiamat’s wrath - book nine of the expanse series.

This book review is really only for people who have been reading all of the expanse book series. If you have not then there are some spoilers in here.

I finished this over my summer holiday, and it was a ton of fun.

I noted that In the first few books of the series when the action was contained within the solar system a lot of book time was taken up describing the time it took to travel around the solar system, and the intricacies if the orbital mechanics that went into that. As the physical size of this universe has expansed the author have compressed the time it takes to describe travel around the constituent systems.

There is another skilful pivot that happens. The laconian empire starts in a position of unassailable strength, but only by virtue of being able to hold a key pivot point inside the universe. By having their power reliant on one key strategic resource the authors are able to reap idly and plausibly reside their power, almost overnight, by destroying that pivot.

Each book of this series has been self contained as a story, with consistent and coherent plot and character development within each book. At the same time there has been a giant mguffin hiding in the in the between spaces of the story and the stories universe and this book starts to bring that into focus, while at the same time keeping us almost totally in the dark about what the nature of this hidden threat is.

This set up is preparing us for the last book of the series where the promise of the entire book series is that all will be revealed.

I am a bit worried that the writing might not be able to deliver on such a large promise, and there are any number of interesting questions that could be resolved in the next book.

Will Avarasala’s relatives have any role to play?

Will our heroic crew find any peace?

will mankind organise on intergalactic scales without the need for authoritarianism?

The next book is due out sometime in 2020. I’m really looking forward to it.