Just finished rereading Nemesis Games by James SA Corey, and it remains a treat.

I think the Expanse series is my favorite series in sci-fi right now, and I’ve been slowly rereading them. Nemesis Games is awesome, and effectively kicks off the back half of the series. Some shit goes down in this book that hit me like a gut punch the first time I read it, and the worldbuilding is so smoothly done that rereading I was shocked how late in the book the major events actually were.

The story of the series as a whole is humanity’s transition from colonizing a single solar system into being a multi-planetary species. They serve up a good blend of action, political intrigue and manage to always keep a keen eye towards making the science and worldbuilding plausible.

The books start with 3 rough factions of people - Earthers, Martians, and Belters, which are lower-class asteroid miners and “rock hoppers” living in the asteroid belt. The three factions are basically in an asymmetrical cold war. As the series progresses, technological advances and discoveries allows travel to other solar systems, but this causes plenty of problems, both due to innate prejudice and plenty of other complicating factors.

On my reread, I have felt like the human villains aren’t alwys the strongest. The books do much better job with the general theme of “humans vs inevitable change/politics/business as usual”, but the specific villains are occasionally kind of paper thin. I think the terrorist in Nemesis Games and beyond is where they start to get a lot stronger.

Having also watched the TV show, I also feel like it’s a rare Book to TV conversion that follows the skeleton of the plot from hte books while still making it its own thing. Sometimes shows show too slavish a devotion to the source material, or just use it as a bare outline/character sheet. Most of the changes that end up being made for the expanse tend to make the story stronger - even something as simple as changing one character from a man in the books to a woman in the show. Season/Book 3’s Ashford, in particular, is an entirely different character in the show.

Up next: Grace of Kings by Ken Liu.