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A review by ethancf
Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey
5.0
Far and away my favorite in the series so far. A bit funny, seeing that this seems to be considered a bit of a low point in the series, but hear me out.
This is the first time in the series where I felt like Holden was the right protagonist for the story being told. He's always felt extremely bland to me, a bit like dollar store Jon Snow, but here his ideology makes him the perfect guy for the job at hand. The conflict set up at the start of this book is also the first time there seemed to be nuance to the situation: we'd had some political maneuvering behind the scenes in previous books, but here it's all literalized in a pretty great way. It does pretty quickly abandon this for what essentially becomes "Murphy's Law: The Novel", but to me that felt like part of the point (which is backed up by the epilogue): humanity is *not* ready for the untold number of problems that await them out in the stars.
I also love how this book manages to make settling on another planet feel as major as it is. You'd think, "eh, this is already scifi, they've got a moon colony, Mars is independent, there's folks living in the Jovian system, whatever", but the weight of what's happening is still there.
It's also nice to see some returning faces get fleshed out a bit more, even if it does contribute to a bit of a "small world" feeling. On the other hand, we get some great new characters. Murtry veered pretty quickly into cartoon villain territory but, at a lot of points, he was still right and had interesting moments. Basia I also quite liked. I get people's issues with Elvi and...don't disagree. But after that initial hurdle I think she really comes into her own as a character.
Bottom line - this is the payoff I was waiting for, and it's only book 1 of the second trilogy. I love what this series is exploring: too often, space opera is all about the after, what civilization looks like once it has become divergent and galaxy-spanning. This is an exploration of how we get to that point. In a way it serves as a prequel to any number of series, and with book 9's release on the horizon, I'll be curious to see if Abraham and Franck expand it a la Sanderson.
This is the first time in the series where I felt like Holden was the right protagonist for the story being told. He's always felt extremely bland to me, a bit like dollar store Jon Snow, but here his ideology makes him the perfect guy for the job at hand. The conflict set up at the start of this book is also the first time there seemed to be nuance to the situation: we'd had some political maneuvering behind the scenes in previous books, but here it's all literalized in a pretty great way. It does pretty quickly abandon this for what essentially becomes "Murphy's Law: The Novel", but to me that felt like part of the point (which is backed up by the epilogue): humanity is *not* ready for the untold number of problems that await them out in the stars.
I also love how this book manages to make settling on another planet feel as major as it is. You'd think, "eh, this is already scifi, they've got a moon colony, Mars is independent, there's folks living in the Jovian system, whatever", but the weight of what's happening is still there.
It's also nice to see some returning faces get fleshed out a bit more, even if it does contribute to a bit of a "small world" feeling. On the other hand, we get some great new characters. Murtry veered pretty quickly into cartoon villain territory but, at a lot of points, he was still right and had interesting moments. Basia I also quite liked. I get people's issues with Elvi and...don't disagree. But after that initial hurdle I think she really comes into her own as a character.
Bottom line - this is the payoff I was waiting for, and it's only book 1 of the second trilogy. I love what this series is exploring: too often, space opera is all about the after, what civilization looks like once it has become divergent and galaxy-spanning. This is an exploration of how we get to that point. In a way it serves as a prequel to any number of series, and with book 9's release on the horizon, I'll be curious to see if Abraham and Franck expand it a la Sanderson.