Caliban's War

The second Expanse novel is where the series finds its stride: with the groundwork laid, the story can simply run, fast and full of action. The real gain is the wider cast of narrators, as Avasarala, Bobbie and Prax each bring a distinct voice, and some readers end up more attached than they were in book one. The ending leaves you hanging, and the place to start is “Leviathan Wakes”.

Worth knowing Caliban’s War, from 2012, is the second Expanse novel and the one where the series finds its shape: a thing that should not exist tears through a squad of Martian marines on Ganymede, and the book follows four people towards each other, the one marine who survived, Bobbie Draper, a botanist named Prax whose daughter vanished from the station the same day, Chrisjen Avasarala, a UN politician who swears more than anyone else in the series and runs it from the back, and Holden with the crew of the Rocinante, a year after Leviathan Wakes of 2011. The protomolecule from the first book is now on Venus, doing something nobody understands. Nine novels in all; this is where most readers decide to stay.

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