Persepolis Rising is the seventh novel in The Expanse series by the pseudonymous James S.A. Covey. There is chatter about it being the first novel in the final trilogy, and if that breakdown helps readers place it more effectively than I can only encourage them to adopt it. For me the series makes sense as written, in an almost-too-straightforward way.
Observations:
- Giving up the Rocinante is as hard for Covey as is it clearly is for Holden and Naomi. ‘Nuff said…
- This series has such been such a page-turner for me that I worry that I’m missing lots of the science that’s going on. The military seems to come directly from the world of Battlestar Galactica (at least until this novel), but the descriptions of astrophysics and their effects on spaceship movement are really interesting but get in the way of my enjoyment of the plot (that’s a self-deprecating remark – they shouldn’t). Wish I had time for a re-read…
- I think what’s most interesting to me is the way that this feels like a space opera, with relatively easy-to-recognize combatants, until the protomolecule appears. The authors keep it hovering in the background, and they don’t reveal much about it until it changes everything.
- As someone who is always looking for that Gibsonian moment when-it-all-changed, I’m intrigued by the alien stuff. Again, it’s perhaps not as interesting from the perspective of identity (like BSG), but what it neatly derails I think is the narrative line in which human exploration of the galaxy continues at a steady pace, and the universe looks very much like a place that is friendly for humans.
- Star Wars, for example, cannot imagine a planet that has harsher terrain than bitter cold or desert. Star Wars, of course, is a Western set in space.
- Even Star Trek cannot imagine truly alien worlds. The alien species that humans encounter are recognizably anthropoidal, and what we think of as alien is actually very close to us.
- As someone who is always looking for that Gibsonian moment when-it-all-changed, I’m intrigued by the alien stuff. Again, it’s perhaps not as interesting from the perspective of identity (like BSG), but what it neatly derails I think is the narrative line in which human exploration of the galaxy continues at a steady pace, and the universe looks very much like a place that is friendly for humans.
- I’m especially curious to see if the very specific reading of Darwin that Covey does (survival of the fittest is the basic principle) changes as the series finishes. I wouldn’t be surprised – the authors are clearly holding a lot back about the protomolecule and what its presence says about the universe, so a change to that specific reading of Darwin might well be in the works…