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jdrhodes 's review for:
Cibola Burn
by James S.A. Corey
I don't know if Cibola Burn is the weakest of the Expanse stories -- that distinction definitely lies with Babylon's Ashes -- but it's definitely one of the weaker novels. There will be unmarked spoilers in this review.
This isn't all the fault of the Corey team. Part of the issues with Cibola Burn stem from it being the fourth novel to a trilogy -- that is to say, an extended epilogue -- which was turned into the fourth book of a nine-book series. Some weirdness is to be expected.
However, Cibola Burn is an awkward novel at best.
It doesn't sound like that initially. The novel sounds fantastic in summary: Jim Holden, the crew of the Rocinante and the ghost of Detective Miller must solve a dispute between two groups of colonists on a desolate alien world. While the colony begins to tear itself apart and the alien world turns out to be not so desolate, Holden realizes that the civilization that previously held claim to the world didn't just vanish -- it was murdered.
Unfortunately, what fault we can place on the Coreys comes next: they simply botched this premise on almost every possible level. As an epilogue novel, Cibola Burn would've functioned well enough as a neat twist on the traditional Expanse formula, turning the genre from 'hard' space opera to sci-fi western. Suddenly, the strongest person isn't someone with a political position or a battleship, but just a man with a gun and the willingness to use it. But as it is, it just doesn't work.
Primarily, this is because the central premise -- the conflict that Holden is sent to resolve peacefully, or is he? -- is driven by cardboard villains and protagonist-brand morality. The colonists of Ilus are opposed to the corporate thugs (and scientists, and planetary governor) of the RCE corporation. The story attempts to frame this as being similar to natives resisting imperialism, hence the title, only this is nonsensical, and a repeating idea is that the colonists have the right to strip mine the alien ruins of a civilization that almost sterilized the entire Sol system to sell the lithium for personal profit simply because they got there first.
While the story begins with a terrorist attack and then many of the survivors being murdered for the crime of working for a company, ending with some two dozen people dead, the story quickly decides that the true villain is not the people responsible, but the head of corporate security, Adolphus Murtry. When Murtry executes a single person -- Coop, the terrorist ringleader -- in broad daylight, the whole plot short circuits and the story grinds to a halt as the Coreys try to jump the rails from solving a terrorist plot to surviving crazy Sheriff Murtry.
Murtry is actually a decent antagonist, even if it feels like the Coreys were borrowing from Babylon 5's Alfred Bester. He even functions as something of a dark mirror to Holden as both are motivated to protect the lives of their crew and, as the book notes, Holden would absolutely kill to protect his. This is precisely what Murtry does, but the Coreys don't seem to realize it. If they do, Holden's actions are moral because the crew is his 'found family' but Murtry's actions are immoral because they're his subordinates -- yes, really. Even so, he might be the best antagonist they've written -- at least, for the first part of the novel.
By the end of the novel, however, Murtry is turned into a raving lunatic who happily gets his own people killed so he can maybe sell things back to Earth in the future. The final confrontation between Holden and Murtry has all the energy of a sarcastic Twitter argument. Despite the story repeatedly mentioning that Murtry is a ruthless, bloodthirsty psycho, Holden effortlessly outdraws him.
The other characters aren't much better. Inexplicably, Basia Merton (last seen in Caliban's War) returns and has a rather half-hearted story about being an inadvertent terrorist and his daughter going off to college. Elvi Okoye is a vehicle for expository notes taken from Expanse_Worldbuilding.doc, seemingly added to the story to make the climax work. In a strange twist, a character named Dmitri Havelock shows up and while the story tells us he's the same Havelock we last saw in Leviathan Wakes, he's a radically different person with virtually no connection to the young man we met in the first novel. How did Havelock escape Protogen? Good question -- the story provides no answers.
The only interesting aspect of the plot is on the ground, and a lot of it is held up by a story that can be best described as the Coreys rolling on a random disaster table every few chapters and the following things happen as a result: the colonists complain, Holden sides with them, Murtry compromises, Holden calls Murtry a prick. Unfortunately, a lot of the novel decides to spend time up in orbit where Merton sort of observes things Alex and Naomi do, and Not Havelock just kind of exists.
Another big issue is that Cibola Burn itself contradicts the worldbuilding of the earlier instalments and, arguably, the later ones. The colonists of Ilus are all Belters -- humans whose physiology aids them in zero-gee but renders them unable to live on planets. Given that the Coreys needed the Belters to have an oppressed group looking for a home, it's suddenly easy enough to live on a planet if you have the right amount of drugs and physical exercises. And the refugee ship that brought them to Ilus has enough drugs for everyone -- well, how convenient!
Not only has the physiological issue been brought up in virtually every Expanse book until this point, it's also been mentioned as being an issue in the relationship between Holden and Naomi -- Naomi simply cannot go down to Earth to meet his parents. It's a very major part of the worldbuilding, perhaps the most notable part of the world of these novels. I'm really not sure why the Coreys decided on this, beyond that idea that the core premise of Cibola Burn -- oppressed natives versus corporate conquistadors -- is remarkably half-assed.
Basically, everything interesting in the novel happens in the last few chapters, where Holden discovers the ominous 'bullet' and, honestly, the writing there is pretty good. But was it worth everything to get there? I'm not so sure. Everything else is awkwardly paced, borderline plot-needs-this-to-happen decision-making, or just kind of boring. When I imagine a novel that consists of Holden and Head Miller exploring a desolate alien world to crack the case of what happened to the people who lived there, I imagine something much better.
I'd recommend skipping Cibola Burn and going straight on to Nemesis Games, which is not only a much better book but feels more like a sequel to Abaddon's Gate. But if you're that curious about what goes down on Ilus, then the TV adaptation fixes virtually every issue the novel has and turns it into something that is actually quite gripping. But the ease and simplicity of those rather elementary fixes only demonstrates how bizarre Cibola Burn is.
This isn't all the fault of the Corey team. Part of the issues with Cibola Burn stem from it being the fourth novel to a trilogy -- that is to say, an extended epilogue -- which was turned into the fourth book of a nine-book series. Some weirdness is to be expected.
However, Cibola Burn is an awkward novel at best.
It doesn't sound like that initially. The novel sounds fantastic in summary: Jim Holden, the crew of the Rocinante and the ghost of Detective Miller must solve a dispute between two groups of colonists on a desolate alien world. While the colony begins to tear itself apart and the alien world turns out to be not so desolate, Holden realizes that the civilization that previously held claim to the world didn't just vanish -- it was murdered.
Unfortunately, what fault we can place on the Coreys comes next: they simply botched this premise on almost every possible level. As an epilogue novel, Cibola Burn would've functioned well enough as a neat twist on the traditional Expanse formula, turning the genre from 'hard' space opera to sci-fi western. Suddenly, the strongest person isn't someone with a political position or a battleship, but just a man with a gun and the willingness to use it. But as it is, it just doesn't work.
Primarily, this is because the central premise -- the conflict that Holden is sent to resolve peacefully, or is he? -- is driven by cardboard villains and protagonist-brand morality. The colonists of Ilus are opposed to the corporate thugs (and scientists, and planetary governor) of the RCE corporation. The story attempts to frame this as being similar to natives resisting imperialism, hence the title, only this is nonsensical, and a repeating idea is that the colonists have the right to strip mine the alien ruins of a civilization that almost sterilized the entire Sol system to sell the lithium for personal profit simply because they got there first.
While the story begins with a terrorist attack and then many of the survivors being murdered for the crime of working for a company, ending with some two dozen people dead, the story quickly decides that the true villain is not the people responsible, but the head of corporate security, Adolphus Murtry. When Murtry executes a single person -- Coop, the terrorist ringleader -- in broad daylight, the whole plot short circuits and the story grinds to a halt as the Coreys try to jump the rails from solving a terrorist plot to surviving crazy Sheriff Murtry.
Murtry is actually a decent antagonist, even if it feels like the Coreys were borrowing from Babylon 5's Alfred Bester. He even functions as something of a dark mirror to Holden as both are motivated to protect the lives of their crew and, as the book notes, Holden would absolutely kill to protect his. This is precisely what Murtry does, but the Coreys don't seem to realize it. If they do, Holden's actions are moral because the crew is his 'found family' but Murtry's actions are immoral because they're his subordinates -- yes, really. Even so, he might be the best antagonist they've written -- at least, for the first part of the novel.
By the end of the novel, however, Murtry is turned into a raving lunatic who happily gets his own people killed so he can maybe sell things back to Earth in the future. The final confrontation between Holden and Murtry has all the energy of a sarcastic Twitter argument. Despite the story repeatedly mentioning that Murtry is a ruthless, bloodthirsty psycho, Holden effortlessly outdraws him.
The other characters aren't much better. Inexplicably, Basia Merton (last seen in Caliban's War) returns and has a rather half-hearted story about being an inadvertent terrorist and his daughter going off to college. Elvi Okoye is a vehicle for expository notes taken from Expanse_Worldbuilding.doc, seemingly added to the story to make the climax work. In a strange twist, a character named Dmitri Havelock shows up and while the story tells us he's the same Havelock we last saw in Leviathan Wakes, he's a radically different person with virtually no connection to the young man we met in the first novel. How did Havelock escape Protogen? Good question -- the story provides no answers.
The only interesting aspect of the plot is on the ground, and a lot of it is held up by a story that can be best described as the Coreys rolling on a random disaster table every few chapters and the following things happen as a result: the colonists complain, Holden sides with them, Murtry compromises, Holden calls Murtry a prick. Unfortunately, a lot of the novel decides to spend time up in orbit where Merton sort of observes things Alex and Naomi do, and Not Havelock just kind of exists.
Another big issue is that Cibola Burn itself contradicts the worldbuilding of the earlier instalments and, arguably, the later ones. The colonists of Ilus are all Belters -- humans whose physiology aids them in zero-gee but renders them unable to live on planets. Given that the Coreys needed the Belters to have an oppressed group looking for a home, it's suddenly easy enough to live on a planet if you have the right amount of drugs and physical exercises. And the refugee ship that brought them to Ilus has enough drugs for everyone -- well, how convenient!
Not only has the physiological issue been brought up in virtually every Expanse book until this point, it's also been mentioned as being an issue in the relationship between Holden and Naomi -- Naomi simply cannot go down to Earth to meet his parents. It's a very major part of the worldbuilding, perhaps the most notable part of the world of these novels. I'm really not sure why the Coreys decided on this, beyond that idea that the core premise of Cibola Burn -- oppressed natives versus corporate conquistadors -- is remarkably half-assed.
Spoiler
(Let's be honest, the Coreys haven't been good with South American stuff before. Remember when during Leviathan Wakes, the Rocinante crew recounts the bizarre myth that the Aztecs couldn't see Cortez's ships -- like, they were just invisible to them? And this idea of not comprehending advanced technology is, like, the whole basis of the series? And when questioned on it, the Coreys got into a Twitter argument and said that, actually, the Rocinante crew are dumbasses who didn't know it wasn't real? What?)Basically, everything interesting in the novel happens in the last few chapters, where Holden discovers the ominous 'bullet' and, honestly, the writing there is pretty good. But was it worth everything to get there? I'm not so sure. Everything else is awkwardly paced, borderline plot-needs-this-to-happen decision-making, or just kind of boring. When I imagine a novel that consists of Holden and Head Miller exploring a desolate alien world to crack the case of what happened to the people who lived there, I imagine something much better.
I'd recommend skipping Cibola Burn and going straight on to Nemesis Games, which is not only a much better book but feels more like a sequel to Abaddon's Gate. But if you're that curious about what goes down on Ilus, then the TV adaptation fixes virtually every issue the novel has and turns it into something that is actually quite gripping. But the ease and simplicity of those rather elementary fixes only demonstrates how bizarre Cibola Burn is.