Caliban’s War Book Review

The second installment to the Expanse series by James S.A. Corey was released in June of 2012 after the success of Leviathan Wakes which started the series out with a bang. This book builds off the events of the first book, while taking the feel of the story into a different direction and adding in some new characters. So is it worth your time? Let’s dive right into this review with the new characters.

The New Characters

We get a good introduction to some new characters in this book that will be in the series from this point onward.

We start with Prax, living on the moon of Ganymede which is known as the bread basket of the solar system and a place that many families that can afford it go to have well taken care of pregnancies. he has a daughter that get caught up in the very beginning of the story and leads Prax to do anything he can to get his daughter safe.

Bobbie Draper is a Mars Coalition Marine that is finds herself dealing with something never seen before, especially after the events of the previous book and finds herself running into the main cast as well as Prax. She has power armor that is strong enough to crush bones and deflect bullets.

Chrisjen Avasarala Is a UN diplomat that digs her fingers into the current situation and finds herself at odds with James “fuckin” Holden. She is not afraid to say what she feels and comes across as calculated while also a little confrontational.

Bobbie and Chrisjen are my personal favorite additions. I did find that the Pax chapters where hard to get through. His character was just kind of boring and it felt like he was a sack of potatoes being dragged through the entire book.

The Plot of Caliban’s War

After the events of Leviathan Wakes, the threat was tossed into Venus, and not much has been able to be seen on what is going on there since. But after an attack on Ganymede which happens at the start of the story, we discover that the UN (earth) and Mars were not actually fighting each other, but they were fighting something totally different.

Politics come into this book quite a lot which is different from the previous book and this is a trend that will continue, just not as heavy handed as in this one with the introduction of Chrisjen. That being said, the story moves along a a really good pace and the pay off is worth it for the book.

I won’t go into more spoilers other than saying that the events from Leviathan Wakes with the Proto molecule are very much at play here.

Because the first book took care of much of the building of the solar system and the core basis to the story, I found this book was able to work more on the characters and expand on them as well as really dig into the story in many other places that we have not been to before making the entire solar system feel much more lived in.

Fred Johnson, another character that is attempting to Unite the Belters gets some love in this to as a counter balance to Avalasara. His plot will continue to grow as the series progresses. But his more active role in the chapters lead to this being a more political book than a mystery detective book like it’s predecessor.

Is Caliban’s War Worth Reading?

Yes, Caliban’s War is worth reading. One thing I want to note is that the series is a total of 9 books with a compilations of short stories as well called Memories Legion. I found while reading the series that there are 3 arcs. This is the middle of the first arc of the series, the next book will really get things going, but it will be important to read through this as the new characters will have a much bigger role going forward.

Caliban’s War itself is a good book, It’s not my favorite in the series, but it’s still a great time. If you want to check this book out for yourself, you can use the link here for the Paperback copy, or you can get the kindle version here.

There is also a special 10th anniversary edition which is all black with red dyed edges on the pages that looks really cool if you are a collector. I will be covering more on these and my rankings of how they look as they have release what the designs look like for the first 6 books in the series. I imagine they will do all of them and release at the 10 year anniversary for each of them.

If you want to check the reading order you can see that here.

But that’s all for now. Hopefully you found this review helpful and we will see you soon for the third installment. Abbadons Gate.

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