Book series recommendation: The Expanse, by James S.A. Corey
i talked a bit about The Expanse series in my previous reblog and started going on and on in the tags before remembering i can just make my own post lol. and then this post became like four times as long xD
Okay, so, The Expanse is a space opera by James S.A. Corey (which is really the pen name of two co-authors, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck). It is set several hundred years in the future, where humanity has spread out across the solar system, but has not expanded outside it, owing to the prohibitive expense and length of such a journey. At the start of the first book, Leviathan Wakes, Earth is prosperous but crowded; citizens receive basic income but face fierce competition for jobs and upward mobility.
Mars is a former colony of Earth that rebelled and established their own government, eventually becoming Earth's chief economic, political, and military rival. Mars as a society is primarily focused around the twin causes of the terraforming effort and maintaining a strong military in case of conflict with Earth.
Both Earth and Mars are dominated by corporations, and many of these corporations own stations in the asteroid belt and the Outer Planets. The people who actually live and work on these stations are known as Belters, and they have a long history of worker uprisings and strikes being met with corporate and/or military smackdowns by Earth and Mars. They have altered physiology and cultural/societal norms due to generations of living in zero or low gravity, on space stations and ships where lax safety standards mean death. They also have their own creole language and sign language, as a result of being descended from immigrant workers from a variety of nations.
In the midst of this political and social turmoil, a corporation discovers a several-million-year-old alien technology and seeks to secretly exploit it for economic gain and political/military ascendancy. Our heroes are the last survivors of an ice mining ship that stumbled into the secret, and have to work together to investigate what the corporation's up to and sound the alarm without getting killed. But ever since the destruction of their ship, every clash is stirring more political turmoil, setting the solar system on the brink of war...
My one caveat with recommending these books is that Holden, our main protagonist and one of our primary POV characters throughout the series, is sometimes weirdly misogynistic in his internal narration. which is annoying. (Miller, one of the other POV characters, also is weird about women, but with him it feels like an intentionally written character flaw, whereas with Holden it just feels random.)
But there are a lot of other POV characters who are so fucking kickass; Naomi and Bobbie and Avasarala are some of my all time favorite female characters and their POV chapters are amazing. Naomi is an incredibly competent Belter engineer; Bobbie is a Martian marine soldier and six and a half feet of awesome; and Avasarala is a career politician highly ranked in Earth's planetary government. She's a shrewd, cunning political player, and she's also a doting grandmother, and she will also verbally eviscerate you if you piss her off.
Like don't get me wrong, I do like Holden when the narration isn't occasionally being a twat. (Happens more in the first half of the series, I think. Either he gains maturity over the course of the series or the writers did.) But his sometimes-misogyny is my only caveat with recommending The Expanse series; everything else is incredible.
It's got worldbuilding. It's got political tension and intrigue. It's got great individual ship-to-ship combat with realistic physics that make the stakes feel extra juicy. When I read Expanse's ship combat, I feel like I understand the ship maneuvers being described and the ramifications that it has both tactically and on the ship itself. It's got exciting and suspenseful fleet tactical action.
It's about ordinary intelligent people from a variety of nations and cultures and professions and ideologies banding together to resist the forces of capitalism and fascism that seek to exploit and subjugate them. A few important allies do hold positions of governmental power and work to use it to hold off the tide of fascism and war, but they are not without their own political ideologies and agendas.
It is one of my favorite series and I highly recommend it for fans of sci-fi worldbuilding and/or political intrigue. It also has a TV adaptation covering the first six books, which is also quite good and has an excellent cast, but is beyond the scope of this post. Except I will include a gif of Avasarala, because she's my favorite. She's played by Shohreh Aghdashloo, who portrays her wonderfully.
In conclusion, if this interested you, check out Leviathan Wakes, by James S.A. Corey! The series is nine books long (plus a tenth volume of short stories/novellas) and is complete.
