(This
is the May 2013 edition of Barrie Summy's Book Review Club. For the
complete list, click on the icon following this review.)
Well,
it’s been a month and I’ve devoured another giant book of space opera.
In last month’s review, I wrote about James S. A. Corey’s Leviathan
Wakes. I loved it so much that I moved on to the sequel, Caliban’s War.
If I have to sum up my thoughts on this second book in the series, it’s
this: Corey suffered no sophomore slump.
Caliban’s War picks up a year after the events of Leviathan Wakes. Jim Holden, captain of the four-person ship, the Rocinante,
and one of the two main characters from the first book, has been
working for the leader of The Belt (as in the asteroid belt between Mars
and Jupiter). He’s basically a cop keeping the pirates in check. As
good as the work is--what with all his repairs being paid for by Fred
Johnson, the Belter Leader--Holden is missing something. Part of it is a
purpose. The other part is that special thing that used to be his
trademark, that part of him that made him different than the pure thug
he’s kind of turned into. He’ll find that purpose on Ganymede, one of
the moons of Saturn and the primary food outlet for the outer planets.
What
sequels are all but required to do is introduce new characters and amp
up the action. With Leviathan Wakes being a lengthy book, you get a good
chance to get under Holden’s skin and into his mind, so much so that
you basically know what he’s going to do in any given situation. That’s a
tall order to top with Caliban’s War as Corey introduces three new
characters that, as the novel unfolds hold themselves up very well.
Bobbie
Draper, female Marine from Mars, is on Ganymede as the military force
for Mars when a shooting war starts. The Saturnian moon is basically a
little like Berlin in the Cold War, divided up between Earth, Mars, and
the Belt. When the shooting starts, Bobbie and her platoon rush to aid
her fellow Martians against the Earthers...until she sees what is truly
happening: the Earthers are fleeing from some thing. That thing is
walking, no, running on Ganemede’s surface without a suit, and ripping
through her entire platoon. We readers are familiar with the creature:
it’s a black-skinned human/alien hybrid made from the proto-molecule
from the first book. She is the only survivor, and she is sent to Earth
to give her report to the politicians who think more of their own
careers than they do about human lives.
One
of those politicans is Chrisjen Avasarala, a high-ranking official in
the United Nations who swears like she’s a sailor. She has to deal not
only with the same politicians Bobbie goes up against (but Avasarala has
a much better political acumen than does the Marine) but she’s also up
to her eyeballs with the UN military brass and their desire to keep the
truth of what happened on Ganymede a secret. Why? That’s one of the
questions Avasarala must grapple with as everything starts to go south.
Then
there is Prax Meng, a biologist on Ganymede who is trying to find his
missing daughter. A divorcee, he learns his daughter, May, was kidnapped
right before all the stuff hit the fan. All he wants to do is find her.
In the prologue, we readers are privy to her abduction, so we pretty
much know that she and the other children taken are likely to be used as
human experiments with the proto-molecule. He is out of money and out
of resources and out of options until he recognizes one man who has come
to Ganymede to find out what’s going on: Captain Jim Holden.
Just
like the first novel, Corey mixes the points of view for each chapter.
Knowing the template, even though all the characters start the story
strewn across the solar system, you know that they are going to end up
together. That they do, and the action is just as good the second time
around.
But
what makes these two books special for me is the quiet moments. There’s
a good amount of them as they face challenges and meet them with the
resources on hand. It’s the best of the Star Trek spirit, if I can make a
comparison. You really get into the skins of these characters. You feel
with them. You cheer with them, and then you get your blood pumping
with them.
There’s
an elephant in this story: Venus. The culmination at the end of
Leviathan Wake involved Venus and, all through Caliban’s War, what’s
happening on Venus is in the back of everyone’s mind. I have a
prediction, one that I’m not going to share here in case you have a
hankering to read these novels. I have really enjoyed them, and eagerly
await the release of book 3, Abaddon’s Gate, in June. Highly
recommended.
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