This is how The Expanse ends: not with a bang, not with a whisper, but with an appropriately depressing finale. It all wraps around back to the beginning, and it's just as bad as you'd think, and then some. How well this book will work for you depends pretty much on how much this series has hurt you in the previous books (as in: how much you love the characters). It's not the strongest book in the series, but it's a satisfying ending, and I didn't dare to hope for even that.

In many ways, Persepolis Rising was a gamble. How do we react to our heros having grown older together, all of a sudden? How do we treat non-standard story arcs? How do we react when we don't have a whole lot of movement in this huge space opera 'verse, and the characters we get to see are … very human, and not always appealing?

Excellent scifi. Cibola Burn is the fourth part of The Expanse, and the series just keeps on giving. Every book is exactly what I want to read – difficult situations, new worlds, people who are consistent and neither good nor evil (except for Naomi, of course), but just live their lives. Cibola Burn felt very much like I'd fear the exploration of thousands of suddenly appearing new worlds would go. I think if you think too hard about the technology level displayed in the series, some missing (AI, among other things) tech doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but I'm willing to forgive this for the vast, technologically and psycologically sound universe.

Whee! Good Sci-fi!

This is a short story in the Expanse universe, with a backstory on Fred Johnson. It's not bad, but I had very high hopes – I loved Fred's character and wanted to see more, look deeper. I didn't feel that the Novella reached the depth I would have liked, even though it was solid throughout, and the interactions had the Expanse-y style of solid reality that I like so much about the series.