Caliban's War by James S.A. Corey (4 stars)

Expanse book 2, following on from Leviathan Wakes.  Corey puts a little effort into filling out some of the accumulated characters at the start of this novel, which is well overdue.  Alex finally gets some colour and then Avasarala drops in with a storm of profanity.  This foul-mouthed incredibly intelligent diplomat quickly becomes one of my favourite characters, and if you can appreciate or put up with the swearing, she definitely has some of the best dialogue.  Here's some of my favourites:

It's not healthy having God sleeping right there where we can all watch him dream.  It scares the shit out of us.

My doctors said I probably had a good thirty years left in me.  Time to watch my grandkids grow up, maybe even see a great-grandchild or two.  But instead, I'm going to be killed by a limp-dick, whiny sonofabitch like Admiral Nguyen.

My last act in this universe isn't going to be fucking up everything I did right up to now.

There's some great space battles, that are really well thought out and described, including tactics for minimizing the times ships spend in range of each other's weapons.  Bobby, Avasarala, and Prax are all interesting characters that bring much needed depth with their fresh POVs.  The other members of Holden's crew still feel underdeveloped and verging on a collection of Mary Sue's to me: the solar system's best engineer/pilot/soldier are all represented.

While I've been able to overlook most of the tropes used so far, the stowaway scene as a carbon copy from the first alien movie made me cringe.  The book did give me at least one laugh though: at the ridiculous opulence of the space hotel where Avasarala and Holden are trapped:

The air recycling system pumped in subtle scents hand-crafted by the hotel's in-house perfumer.  That night's selection was called Windblown Grass.

Most importantly the plot arc continues in a fascinating direction, and there are more books.

4 stars