Reviews with content warning for Trafficking - Caliban's War

I read this book after not being much of a fan of the first book and then watching the show and falling in love with many of the characters. The three added perspectives are the best thing to happen to this series so far. You get a very vulgar talented politician old lady, a Martian marine buff woman, and a botanist dad searching for his daughter. And as usual… Holden. Ugh.

I enjoyed this, especially seeing where it differs from the show. I think the show did an amazing job of taking this material and making it 5x better. The added bonus of not having to read the words the authors, who suffer deeply from being white men writing sci-fi and fantasy, descriptions.

Seriously they’re awful and REPETITIVE. Prax is constantly referred to as small and tiny in nearly every scene he is in (multiple times). The same goes for Amos and Bobbie being large. Cant forget that ever, okay? Just need to make sure you know at all times multiple times a scene that they are LARGE. and if you forget that Alex is balding, you will be reminded so don’t worry. It also loves to describe skin colors with food words such as chocolate, coffee with cream, and egg brown. Yes. Egg brown. It continues to be weirdly gross about how exotic Naomi is for being multiracial, you just can’t forget that too. The most nauseating comes in chapter 42 where Holden sees Bobbie, a very tall muscular Polynesian woman, and just mentally propels himself into a horny obsession complete with talking about going to the beach just for chances to glimpse a Polynesian like…? Excuse me? Absolutely not. Someone get a hose and spray him with ice cold water. Holden continues to be absolutely a chore to read and even with trying to imagine the show actor in in place I still hate him. It is because of him, where the writing could’ve packed more smack (just based on seeing how the show took it and knowing how much better it could be), and these weird descriptions that I give this a 3 instead of the 4.5 it could’ve been.

Oh and if you want to read that gross scene mentioned before here it is:

During that time, he'd learned he had no desire to be a naval intelligence wonk, really disliked poi, and really liked Polynesian women. He'd been far too busy at the time to actively
chase one, but he'd thoroughly enjoyed spending his few spare moments down at the beach looking at them. He'd had a thing for curvy women with long black hair ever since.
The Martian Marine was like one of those cute little beach bunnies that someone had used editing soft-
ware on and blown up to 150 percent normal size. The proportions, the black hair, the dark eyes, everything
was the same. Only, giant. It short-circuited his neural wiring. The lizard living at the back of his brain kept
jumping back and forth between Mate with it! and Flee from it! What was worse, she knew it. She seemed to
have sized him up and decided he was only worth a tired smirk within moments of their meeting.

So yeah.

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featherbrain's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced

2.0

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caryndi's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

We're back for book 2 of The Expanse, this time with a new woman whose main characteristic seems to be the fact that she is Tall and men are Into It! We also have a woman who is not hit on my nearly every man in the book, but never fear: She is a grandmother, so who would do that. It amazes me that despite realizing it was good to have women in roles that do not depend on their relationship with the leading men, we somehow didn't get to the 'not sexualizing every woman' bit. Ah well.

Story-wise, Caliban's War was decent. To be honest, Praxidike was not one of my favorite characters though his storyline was pretty integral to the plot. Bobbie and Avasarala were both great. I felt like we got a tiny bit of insight into Amos' character but pulled the camera back a bit too early.

I was also disappointed by Holden's arc, which was that he apparently had become more like Miller and less like himself, and he didn't want to do this. I feel like we spent a lot of time getting told this and relatively little time actually seeing it play out. There were a couple of good moments based on his fear of the protomolecule and if the book had gone into that more perhaps I would have found it more convincing and fulfilling. Come to think of it, I wasn't super satisfied with Bobbie's emotional arc either, because for someone in denial about having PTSD she sure healed from it awful quick when the story needed her to. So, character development: perhaps not our strong suit here.

On the plus side, this book definitely came through on the promise of weird sci-fi and had some enjoyable political maneuvering. I don't think I could have foreseen the ending (because who could have) but of course it paved the way for the next book in the series nicely.

Recommend? You won't find me raving over this book, but it is a fun read.

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