Game Of Thrones In Space

Hola Readers, how are you all doing today?  I got a couple fabulous days off that were much needed and were used to my literary advantage...but more on that later.  One of the things I got finished was Caliban's War by James S.A. Corey, the second book in the Expanse series.  I loved the first one and was leery and excited to read the second one as more then once a series has disappointed in it's follow up.  Lucky for me I loved this book as much as the first one.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

At the end of the last book we left the crew of the Rocinante putting themselves back together after helping Detective Miller plunge the protomolecule ridden space station Eros into Venus.  If this doesn't make any sense...go read the book lol.  Anyways Holden and his crew are running around doing errands for Fred Johnson, the de facto leader of the OPA when they stumble across the aftermath of Ganymede.  Ganymede is a moon that has become the main food growing space for the Belt and it was attacked by an unknown monster like entity.  The attack wiped out all of the Earth and Mars marines stationed on the base except for one, our girl Bobbie.  The attack led to the very tense Earth and Mars factions shooting at each other and chaos reigns.  The ensuing violence pretty much decimates that Ganymede station and we meet Prax, a botanist who lives with his young daughter on the base.  Prax discovers his daughter is missing and kind of goes on a bit of a bender in his search for her.  Meanwhile back on Earth Chrisjen Avasarala, the under-secretary representing Earth in the UN is desperately trying to stay in the loop and maintain what peace she can between Earth, Mars and the OPA.  This is further complicated by people both above and below her pushing their own agendas.  Avasarala is particularly interested in keeping an eye on Venus and the energy spikes that seem to correlate with the monster attack.  Bobbie the Martian Marine is brought to the UN as the only survivor to show the video of the monster. Avasarala feels that there is more going on then meets the eye and hires Bobbie to work with her to find out what it is.  Back on Ganymede Holden and crew run into Prax and agree to help him find his daughter.  Their search leads to a hidden lab where Holden...who has had a much closer encounter with the protomolecule then anybody ever needs, realizes what it is they are seeing.  He get's everybody back to the ship and the heck out of dodge.  They fly back to Fred Johnson, where after a tiff, Holden and crew are once again free to take on any contract they want.  They set up a fund to find Mei, Prax's daughter and off they go.  Avasarala after some stuff realizes that one of the Generals is behind the whole "protomolecule as a weapon" thing and that he is trying to instigate a war.  She continues to play the political game, ending up with Bobbie out in space on a slow ship to Ganymede.  She contacts Holden and makes him an offer he can't refuse.  After they all get together on the Rocinante, Holden and his crew (Naomi, Alex and Amos...who are now equal owners of the ship and its profits), Avasarala, Bobbie and Prax pool their information and come to a horrifying realization.  Prax's daughter, along with many other children who have also gone missing, all had a very specific immuno disorder.  This disorder made it possible for them to infect the children with the protomolecule in an attempt to make a controllable weapon.  The problem with this is that they were never really controllable and one got loose and caused all the events from Ganymede and forward to occur.  We also get more info on Jules Mao...the father of Julie Mao from the last book.  We discover that his wealth and company are a huge part of what has made this atrocity possible.  Of course the biggest concern is if one of these monsters makes it anywhere where there is human in habitation...cause you know...it turns everybody into vomit zombies (still one of my favorite phrases).  Our people discover that lab base and fly there post haste.  After some political manuvering and a bit of threatening the crew make it.  They split up to accomplish various tasks and finally make it back to the Rocinante alive and with Mei and some of the other children.  Everybody goes to Luna to celebrate and reconnect with what family they have left.  Unfortunately the celebration is cut short when the news comes that Venus has spun off a comet size blast of protomolecule headed who knows where...and thus ends this second book.  Obviously there is a ton more as usual to this complex yet highly readable book, but as usual this is about the gist of it.

World Building - The series continues to build upon the last book.  This time however we get to visit some new places, namely Earth, Ganymede and plenty of various ships.  All of the careful world building and science of the last book were carried on in this book, making it a world that was easy to jump right back into.  I especially appreciate the little daily details that the authors pop in to remind us of the various environments our characters find themselves in, especially the different gravity types.  I really felt like I was hopping right back into a complete world.  Great job guys.

Story - I felt that this story really built on the completeness and simplicity (yet in a complete contradiction the complexness) of the first book.  I felt like the first story set us up to read through this story with complete understanding.  This story, with it's personal bits with Prax and his daughter, the larger political landscape and the even larger ancient alien threat to humanity all tied together in a whole that left me feeling satisfied while still wanting to hurry up and read the next story.  This is the kind of serial reading I like, where the story is not repetitive with the same formula over and over.  They are original stories that when all read together make an even longer overall story...very saga like.

Character -  We add a couple of new characters in this installment and I love each and every one of them.  In some ways, each character is a bit of an extreme version of a certain personality...on the other hand, each character also has various layers and motivations, making the more outlandish components of their persona's make sense.  I love the naturalness of the characters interactions with each other and how each one seemed authentic and genuine.  I also appreciated how the characters we already knew developed in a believable way considering the insane events of the first book.  Awesome characters.

Editing - The editing of this series is becoming on of my favorite aspects of these books.  These complex ideas, twisted politics, various characters and multiple places could very quickly become confusing, but between the authors and editors it is insanely readable.  Part of the ease of reading is that they use a trick that helps the Game of Thrones Series (hence the title...along with it is pretty much a similar feel...just in space...)which is each chapter belongs to a specific character and is labeled as such.  This takes the big crazy and funnels it through a single viewpoint...but more on that later.

Viewpoints - The first book in this series worked because we saw all the complexity funneled through two very distinct and two very different view points.  This book builds on what we learned in the first book and kicks it up a notch with FOUR viewpoints.  I like the characters they choose as they come from different places (Mars, Earth, Belt and Holden representing a kind of every man).  They are different personalities, different professions, different socio-economic classes...essentially every issue is shown to us from a sampling of who might be affected.  This expanded version of what we started with further enriches the world and story, yet still makes me feel like the book is readable without being overly bogged down.  I also feel like I am getting a mostly diverse view of events, not all one sided, no one planet or area is right, no one view is entirely correct...it's pretty open ended without being ambiguous...if that makes sense.

Micro to Macro - When a series is set in such an epic setting, I like it when they can focus on multiple layers, and this book does it beautifully.  I mentioned it before, but I like how we have the personal story of Prax and his daughter Mei, it puts an individual face on the impact of these vast and broad happenings.  I think even in real life we get so used to hearing these epic horror stories that we forget that individual suffer horribly because of these events.  We then expand to the politicol/soci-economic problems of Earth, Mars and the OPA.  This is a bigger issue, affecting more people and requiring a bigger and more complex solution, while still depending on the whims of individuals and their own prides and prejudices (see what I did their Austen fans?).  Then we expand into a universal concern as the protomolecule threatens EVERYBODY, doesn't matter where you were born, or where you work, or even how much money you have...this requires people to put aside individual concerns, patriotic alliances and work together in an unprecedented way to save humanity.  The various levels give the reader both somebody to root for and an epic horror to root against.

Names - Something I have noticed and loved as a bibliophile is the abundance of literary and historical references scattered through out the books.  In this book even the title has a Shakespearean origin.  Caliban is the twisted son of a witch who is a slave to the main character Prospero of the Tempest, until he throws off his shackles to disastrous effect.  This is paralleled in our book by the protomolecule/human hybrid monsters breaking the human constraints.  The names of the ships are especially fun to look up.  The Rocinante is named after the horse in Don Quixote.  The Barbapiccola is named after a philosopher and poet.  The Somnambulist is a pretty awesome word for sleepwalking and the Guanshiyin is a Hindu Goddess.  Pretty much anything with a name has some sort of cool story attached to it...jut another layer of awesome.

Overall - I am so excited that this second installment lived up to my love of the first book.  This is not always the case and I now have super high hopes for the next book.  I have been putting these books on my phone 'cause they are super easy to read a couple of pages inbetween calls and dealing with the monsters so they have been my go to books lately.  I give this book 8 out of 10 bulbs of coffee and am totally stoked to catch up on the tv show AND read the next book.  I recommend it to anybody who wants a solid scifi story, misses game of thrones and doesn't mind vomit zombies instead of white walkers or who read the first book and loved it.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Forty Two

Ha I am totally amassing a new TBR pile, except I'm gonna have to call this one my To Be Rambled pile.  I have finally caught up with my reading and am now ready for some rambling.  Um...hmmm...let's start with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.  This book is beloved by many people around the world, and especially by weirdo's like me.  I had not read it in a while and wanted to see how it stood up to the test of time.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Arthur Dent is having a really bad day.  His house has been zoned for demolition to make way for a highway bypass and he is not happy about it.  Arthur does what any reasonable homeowner would do and lays down in front of the bulldozer.  Meanwhile his friend Ford Prefect comes along and convinces Arthur to have a quick mid day drink with him.  What Arthur is soon to find out is that Ford is actually a very human looking alien who has been chilling on Earth to work on the new edition of the titular Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  Arthur finds all of this out when Ford informs him that the planet Earth is slated for destruction to make way for an intergalactic bypass.  The two hitch a ride on an unsuspecting Vogon ship...which is not really a pleasant place to be.  Ford pops a translation fish into Arthur's ear and the language of the galaxy is now accessible to him...just in time for him and Ford to be blown out of an airlock by a very shout happy Vogon.   Against all odds (two to the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand, seven hundred and nine to one against to be exact.) the duo are picked up by an impossibly amazing ship called The Heart of Gold, which had been conveniently stolen by the galactic president Zaphod Beeblebrox of the two heads and three arms and his current girlfriend, the Earth girl Trillian.  Arthur and Ford are escorted by the depressed robot Marvin to the bridge and the four embark on a mission to find the lost planet of Magrathea, where an advanced race used to make custom planets for the insanely rich.  Upon arrival to the mysterious planet all kinds of craziness ensues...as it does in these types of books and Arthur is separated from the group.  Eventually he finds out that his planet and people were actually custom made to be the ultimate computer in which trans-dimensional beings would use to find the question to the answer 42.  Unfortunately the planet Earth was blown up right before the computing was to be completed, bummer.  The beings (who appear to humans in the shape of mice) try to convince Arthur to donate his brain so that they don't have to start all over again.  Arthur understandably refuses and the four make their escape with the help of the eternally depressed Marvin.  The four hop back on their ship and head off into the universe for more adventures.

World Building - The book is set in various ships, planets and places through out the galaxy.  It is a bit sci fi, a bit humor, and a bit tongue-in-cheek.  Each environment is unique and painted clearly enough to give us some flavor without boring us with unending detail.  The little bits and pieces of the Guide interspersed through out the book also add to the world building of this book in a consistently humorous way.  The way the book is written, a completed world building is not needed as the humor is the over arching structure for the book.  It is just the right amount for the story.

Story - This book is less about the story and more about idea's and humor.  There is an overarching story line that gives the book a sort of beginning middle and end, but I think it is the overall flavor of the book that really shines.  It is silly, irreverent, meandering and just plain fun.  It is the type of story you want when you just want to relax and enjoy what you are reading with out too much effort.  It is a story of inside jokes and anybody who reads it and enjoys it is instantly admitted to a club where the members can have whole conversations just from various quotes from this book.

Characters - The characters in this book are super fun, and really pretty much every person, alien, ship, robot, computer and animal have some sort of distinct personality.  The various interactions, asides and outrageousness of them all are really what make this book so special.  I also really appreciate that as light hearted and chaotic as this book is, all of the main characters are remarkably consistent in their portrayal.

Editing - This book is all over the place...in a good way.  The main story itself is pretty straight forward and simple, but it is the asides and sidetracks and interruptions that give this book it's humor and charm.  The chaos is intentional and well thought out.  I have read books that try and use this style and fail because they get to muddled, this book however worked well in that even with the craziness it still flowed pretty well.

The Guide - My favorite part of this book is the excerpts from the Guide through out the book.  It is fun to see the various descriptions, opinions and just plain weirdness that these little snippets provide.  Many times they relate directly to the story, giving us an extra bit of world building and info, but sometimes it's just random stuff for fun.

The Movie - There is a movie based on this book and I have to say I don't hate it.  It's not perfect, as a book to movie rarely is, but I thought they did a decent job.  What I liked best was the casting, I felt that each character was more or less cast fittingly.  I especially like Alan Rickman as the voice of Marvin and now every time I read the book I here his voice...I miss that guy.

The Camaraderie - This is one of those books that instantly makes you part of something.  It is a book that people read and love and quote and pretty much once you have read it you become a part of it.  I love that a book, especially a weird little book like this, can bring the most random of people together.  This just continues to prove the power of the written word and how people from all walks of life can read it and instantly bond over it, makes this little bookworm happy.

Overall Impression - This book is just fun.  That pretty much sums it up for me, it is a book I read when my brain needs a break and I just want to turn pages of a good book.  Oddly enough for as easy a read as it is, there are definitely some thought provoking ideas within the pages if that's what your in the mood for, so pretty much this book works all ways.  I would recommend this book to anybody with a sense of humor, likes writing with a twist, or just wants to be part of the club.  I give it 8 out of 10 Improbability Drives.

Happy Reading Everybody!