Abaddon’s Gate
An alien artifact working through its program under the clouds of Venus has emerged to build a massive structure outside the orbit of Uranus: a gate that leads into a starless dark. Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante are part of a vast flotilla of scientific and military ships going out to examine the artefact. But behind the scenes, a complex plot is unfolding, with the destruction of Holden at its core.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
8mentions
8people
2013–2025years
25% recommend63% neutral13% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Here is a partial list of the books I read this year. These are all books that stood out to me which I enjoyed:
Fiction Books:
* Leviathan Wakes, Caliban's War, Abaddon's Gate, Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey
* Homeworld, Out of the Black (books 3 & 4 in the Odyssey One series) by Evan Currie
* Furies of Calderon, Academ’s Fury (1 & 2 of the Codex Alera series) by Jim Butcher
* The Aeronaut’s Windlass also by Jim Butcher
* The Queen of Zamba by L. Sprague de Camp
* Giant of World's End by Lin Carter
* Batgirl of Burnside (graphic novel)
Non-fiction Books:
* Here is Your War by Ernie Pyle - the 1st of his books chronicling American soldiers in World War 2
* Vagrant Viking by Peter Freuchen - auto-biography of the Danish explorer/Nazi resistance fighter/writer/film-maker
* Voices of 1776 by Richard Wheeler - the Revolutionary war in the words of people who were there.
The non-fiction books surprised me because I really enjoyed all of them and I usually only read fiction or technical books. The Odyssey One books by Evan Currie also stood out to me because I found the first one for a low price on Kindle and I was blown away by the story.
- Abaddon's Gate (Expanse, #3) - James S.A. Corey - Its a pretty amazing series.
- I just finished the latest in the We Are Bob series, so freaking good :)
Anyone read the new James S.A. Corey book? (Abaddon's Gate)
Thinking about reading it next...
- I have to admit, I got the idea from the beginning of the book Abaddon’s Gate. Solar sails might not be required but I think there’s a future in people plotting slingshot trajectories and sending packages around the solar system as fast and as cheap as possible. One day it will be manned missions, the space equivalent of people that fly hot air balloons around the world.
- This comment and thread in general make me feel a little odd. I love sci-fi, hard soft and everything in between. I read all of The Expanse books so far, and they’ve been entertaining, but I don’t find them to be very memorable. The other thinf that gets me is it very quickly becomes anything, but hard sci-fi! I’m not going to spoil anything, but any real pretense of hardness goes by Abaddon’s Gate.
The show, I couldn’t get through the first season for the action and dialogue. The story was very compressed, and even in the books wasn’t deep enough to withstand compression.
But... I seem to be just about the only person to feel that way here! I feel like I read different books and watched a different show. I realize that taste has a huge variability, and I accept that, but I usually have a better grasp on why others love something I didn’t. I wonder if it’s because I didn’t love or hate it, I just think of it as bathroom/beach/airplane reading?
- I can't get into details without spoiling both seasons of the show and some pretty considerable plot turns in Caliban's War and possibly Abaddon's Gate as well - but I will say that I've been really disappointed with the way the latter half of the second season, in particular, has turned some major characters into absurd caricatures of themselves. I don't know whether I'd feel the same way if I hadn't read the novels, but considering that I've long since lost patience with writers who waste my time or insult my intelligence or both, I suspect strongly that I would.
In any case, if you're uncertain over whether to read the novels or watch the series, and intend to invest time in only one of the two - go with the novels. The show has impressive space visuals, I give it that unreservedly - but in every other respect, the novels outdo the show to a frankly embarrassing degree.
