A review by caryndi
Persepolis Rising by James S.A. Corey

adventurous sad tense fast-paced
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

This book started out rough for me given the 30-year time skip. The previous books hadn't really discussed how aging worked, and we know from the last book that
Fred died in his 70s
so it seemed odd to have our characters around that age. I was also not convinced by the fact that Alex's "past 30 years" story involved
him getting married again, because I felt his journey in book 5 was understanding that he was not good at being a husband and should not try it again. So it was really weird to have that be a plot point.
One thing I'm sort of disappointed they didn't touch on is Filip ever finding Naomi again. I'm hoping they leave that for a last-book surprise, since she thinks he's dead, but it could just be that he never comes back.

I was also surprised by
Holden being willing to leave the Rocinante, because the ship was so much part of his identity. Though Naomi mentioned having thought of arguments for him to retire, she never did have to pull them out, and I expected her to.


Once I got past the weirdness of the time skip, though, I did really enjoy the book. I didn't love Drummer as a narrator—her character fell a little flat for me—and it was weird to suddenly get other <I>Rocinante</I> crewmembers as narrators in the last 1/3rd of the book. I especially enjoyed Amos' storyline; <spoilers>having an emotional arc for him was touching and it made Clarissa's death that much harder.

Recommend? Yes; it takes a bit of adjustment in the first few chapters with the time skip, but it's an excellent story and I enjoyed the central conflict here a lot.
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