Cibola Burn

Okay, to start, I love the Expanse series. I love the writing styles (because there are two authors). I love the Rocinante crew.

I did not like this book.

Here's the blurb:

"An empty apartment, a missing family, that's creepy. But this is like finding a military base with no one on it. Fighters and tanks idling on the runway with no drivers. This is bad juju. Something wrong happened here. What you should do is tell everyone to leave."

The gates have opened the way to a thousand new worlds and the rush to colonize has begun. Settlers looking for a new life stream out from humanity's home planets. Ilus, the first human colony on this vast new frontier, is being born in blood and fire.

Independent settlers stand against the overwhelming power of a corporate colony ship with only their determination, courage, and the skills learned in the long wars of home. Innocent scientists are slaughtered as they try to survey a new and alien world. The struggle on Ilus threatens to spread all the way back to Earth.

James Holden and the crew of his one small ship are sent to make peace in the midst of war and sense in the midst of chaos. But the more he looks at it, the more Holden thinks the mission was meant to fail.

And the whispers of a dead man remind him that the great galactic civilization that once stood on this land is gone. And that something killed it.

Great. But you know what this book is really about?

That "corporate ship" and the "independent settlers" and just how much assholes people can be to each other when property, life, and liberty are in question.

Seriously, I could not stand this book because it was how much people follow large personalities blindly and how much people are asses to each other.

A group of settlers settle a planet. The UN says, nope, it "belongs" to this corporation that has received a charter to explore it. Even as every person on both sides is about to f'ing die, some people are determined to be assholes.

And it is too much like reality.

I could not stand much of this book, because it completely and totally pushes my "I hate assholes" and "Everyone is an asshole" buttons.

Yeargh.

Not sure how long before I can read the next book in the series, this one has me spasming in annoyance.

During the book notes

Okay, so, one of the reasons I read books is to escape reality. Which is one of the reasons I am not enjoying this book. Despite being completely in another solar system, it is full of people and people issues and people politics and people power issues and I can't stand it.

Which is to say, I'm reading this book at 10x speed, appreciating the Holden parts, hating the Murtrey parts.