Happy new year everyone. With the coming of 2018 everyone is looking forward to new experiences, new resolutions, and new books/series. Meanwhile, I am jumping back into a tried and true series, The Expanse, to start the year off on a high note. I take great comfort in knowing that no matter how hard my year gets, I will almost always get an Expanse novel to comfort me at some point., This time we are taking a look at Persepolis Rising, the seventh of nine in this sweeping science fiction series. This review will have some mild spoilers for the previous six books, so if you haven’t read them I would turn back now… and go read them. Why haven’t you read them yet? They are amazing.
So Persepolis Rising, or as I like to call it – new Mars rising – picks up thirty years after the events of Babylon’s Ashes, which was a bit much to process right off the bat. Everything and everyone has gotten old, from Holden and his crew to the Rocinante itself. It was a bit of a shock honestly, and was definitely something that took a large amount of getting used to. I was not ready to hear about Bobbie and Amos having joint trouble after years of kicking ass, I wanted them to remain eternally useful. The aging of the Rocinante was weirdly something that upset me a ton. I had grown complacent in book, after book, of the magical stolen ship being able to pull up and be the the biggest gun around – and I loved it. So seeing everything I love get old and obsolete sucked. Especially when Duarte and his new sovereign empire of Laconia come a knocking.
As our heroes and their tech reach the end of their lifetime, Duarte and his new people return with tech far beyond anything anyone has seen. Apparently seeing himself as some sort of Hitler/Jesus hybrid, Duarte sends his armies through the portals to both opress and force the rest of humanity into his authoritarian dictatorship… and also to “save” them. The theme of Persepolis Rising is the old, who are obsolete and broken, vs the new, who are young and fresh. The book has great commentary on the value of experience, the difficulty of fighting an enemy who are several eras ahead of you in technology, and the follies and innocence of youth.
If I am being honest, this book felt a little weird on the heels of Babylon’s Ashes thematically. Thirty years is a HUGE time gap, more than the total amount of time taken up by all six other books. Most of the book follows Holden and his Crew on Medina station, trying to sabotage the Laconian occupation through basically terrorism – to mixed results. Since one of the morals of the last two expanse books was that terrorism is bad, I felt myself very conflicted. I suspect that this inverse of ideas was intentional, but this is the first Expanse book that did not feel like a fluid and natural follow up to the previous. In addition to this, Persepolis Rising felt more like the set up for the final Expanse trio of books, than a self contained story like its predecessors. Duarte seems to be the final villain of The Expanse (though I will not be surprised if he is killed and something worse shows up for the finale), and this book is basically his introduction.
The disconnect between Babylon’s Ashes and the lack of a fully contained story place Persepolis Rising on the lower end of my Expanse book rating. It doesn’t quite have the same power or punch as its siblings. That being said, it is also an Expanse book and will definitely be in my top books of 2018. Go check it out as soon as possible and welcome our new Laconian overlords.
Rating: Persepolis Rising – 9.0/10
-Andrew
You’re right, the realization that the Rocinance is getting old and starting to fall apart hit me harder than the mention of creaking joints and various aches in the crew: people DO get old, and even though the 30 year gap took some getting used to, in the end I accepted it. But not the Roci – that ship should last forever! 🙂