Persepolis Rising

Bobbie leaned back, a lump forming in her gut. Adding Holden in was not a better solution.
"This'll be great," Holden said.

The seventh volume of The Expanse series, Persepolis Rising, jumps 20, or was it even 30 years forward from the events of the previous book. I wondered if that would affect Holden and his crew who weren't exactly young before. They are indeed pretty old now but in practice it doesn't seem to slow them down much. Clarissa is the only exception due to her trouble causing implants.

The now quite familiar Medina station again acts as the main stage for happenings. I found the novel much more suspenseful than the previous one. I couldn't tell where things were going. Persepolis Rising reminded me a lot of Abaddon's Gate.

I thought Babylon's Ashes might as well have been the ending to The Expanse. But evidently my opinion was such because I had disregarded and/or forgotten how in Nemesis Games it had been suspected there was someone behind Marco Inaros, how a part of the Martian fleet had zoomed through the ring gate to another system, and the fact the protomolecule sample had been stolen.

The former Martian navy admiral who led the defectors, now President Duarte of Laconia starts his campaign to unite humanity under one rule. His attempt naturally doesn't go unopposed but direct resistance proves to be futile due to the advanced Laconian technology.

The book ends with the story half finished. I'm really interested to see how the authors decide to go with it. Will they allow Duarte's rule to solidify and become the norm. Or will Holden & Co. lead a cliché resistance of freedom ideology to return everything back to normal.

Laconia tapped so much into the technology used by the gate builders that it seems to have gotten the attention of whatever killed the builders. How that develops should be exciting to see as well.

The next book, ominously called Tiamat's Wrath is set to come out in December. An unnamed novel will follow it next year and who knows if the series will continue even longer than that.