Abaddon's Gate by James S.A. Corey (3.5 stars)

Third in the Expanse series.  There's plenty of action and the plot progresses in this novel, but it isn't as strong as the first two.  There is a fairly unconvincing villian (mini Mao), and we see less of some of the best characters (Bobby, Avasarala, Miller).  Even the protomolecule doesn't do a whole lot compared with the previous two books.

This characterises the feel of the novel quite well:

Holden was starting to feel like they were all monkeys playing with a microwave. Push a button, a light comes on inside, so it’s a light. Push a different button and stick your hand inside, it burns you, so it’s a weapon. Learn to open and close the door, it’s a place to hide things. Never grasping what it actually did, and maybe not even having the framework necessary to figure it out. No monkey ever reheated a frozen burrito.

Humanity is bumbling about, old religions are struggling to hold onto power and stay relevant in a much larger context, and everyone is confused and fighting each other for stupid reasons.  All of that sounds completely realistic, but it's fairly depressing to read, when what I really want to know is more about the protomolecule and what killed everything.

The highlight for me was Holden's time with Miller inside the center part of the ring.  Some great very dry humour from Miller:

“So, yeah. The most complex simulation in the history of your solar system is running right now so that we can pretend I’m here in the same room with you. The correct response is being flattered. Also, doing what the fuck I need you to do.” 

While the mutiny storyline wasn't the direction I was hoping the story would head, and especially not for so long, I was still fairly impressed with the whole epic battle sequence.  It was desperate, messy, and real characters die, which is something that is rare for this type of novel.

Anna also wasn't my favourite character, but she did have one of the best lines in the whole novel:

She felt that politics was the second most evil thing humanity had ever invented, just after lutefisk.

3.5 stars

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

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey (4.5 stars)

An epic space opera meets detective story written by a pair of authors under the pen name "James S.A. Corey".  It's a bit like Firefly meets Takeshi Kovacs, but without the beautiful grit and lyrical writing of Richard K. Morgan.  In fact the writing itself isn't really remarkable at all, but the world building is great, the plot is interesting, and the main characters are fairly well defined and far from perfect.

It also has a special quality that makes it stand out from many other space operas that start strong: it doesn't dissolve into tedium or get trapped on a single planet after one book.  I've read the four books (not counting side stories) published so far, and Corey has maintained an impressive tempo, continued to expand the world scale, and solidly kept my interest across all of the books.  This is actually more impressive than just considering the merits of each individual novel, so I gave it an extra half star.

In this book the two main characters are well developed and face a great and meaningful moral conflict about the merits of releasing potentially destructive information, with Holden and Miller taking opposing views.  The other characters were fairly underdeveloped, but this improves as the series moves on.

The protomolecule is badass and takes some genuinely surprising turns, and generates at least a couple of "woah" moments for me.  The scenes on Eros and on the ship seen through Julie's eyes reminded me of Event Horizon a little, stepping into the horror genre.  I think this section would have been vastly improved without the "vomit zombies" which dropped me out of a feeling of suspense into farce.

The science in the sci-fi mostly takes a back seat.  He's fairly vague about the "Epstein drive" which made travel in the solar system practical, but there's one thing Corey is very particular about: gravity.
We're constantly reminded about the effects of acceleration and deceleration on humans inside ships, how spin influenced space station (or planetery colony) design, how hard it is to move around in low G, how much "belters" struggle in Earth-like gravity, how magnetic boots work during EVAs, and many many more things gravity-related besides.  I actually liked all this: it adds a hard science element back into a world that would otherwise need very little explanation because most technology is fairly near future (sans Epstein drive).

Strong start to a strong series.

4.5 stars.