This series is filling the Battlestar Galactica shaped hole in my fanish heart

I have fallen deep down the well of fanish obsession with this series. Caliban’s War picks up a few month’s after the end of Leviathan Wakes and it’s just Space Opera, Military Sci-Fi awesomeness. However, if the next book also starts with a daughter in peril, I am going to have words with Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, WORDS I say. I saw some complaints on Goodreads that this was too similar to Leviathan Wakes, and while I can see that, I’m perfectly happy with this particular formula and there was just enough difference to make me feel like it wasn’t a complete re-tread.

This next bit is probably going to be spoilery for the first book. Because that’s the problem with reviewing books in a series, it’s hard to summarize the second, third, fourth, etc books without spoiling the previous novels.

Caliban’s War follows four different view points. We have Jim Holden from book one who is just as noble and self-righteous as in the first. Oh god do I love him. He has a tiny bit of a crisis of conscience, except most of it plays off between the last book and this one, so we’re only seeing the end of it as he finally comes to his senses (read Naomi knocked some sense into him). I suppose I could be annoyed at that, but I just love his noble ass too much. We also get three new POV characters. Roberta Draper, though she DEFINITELY prefers Bobbie, a Martian marine who experiences the death of her team mates at the hands of a protogen monster in the event that kicks off the plot for this novel. I love her, and I’m sad that it looks like she isn’t in book 3 because I would definitely have liked to spend more time with her. Then we have Chrisjen Avasarala, who is the character Scyfy added to their show, and she the UN Assistant Undersecretary of something, which is some kind of powerful political position. She’s an old lady who plays the political game extremely well, and it’s her strongest desire to keep the peace in the solar system. And lastly we have Praxidike Meng, a father searching for his kidnapped daughter.

We start the book with the kidnapping of Mei Meng and then the attack of the protogen monster on Ganymede, which has become the bread basket of the solar system. Basically bad people are using the protogen to try and engineer weapons, and they thought they could use immune-compromised children to do so. And as that’s going on the protogen mass on Venus is doing something mysterious. And it’s the mystery of Venus that has parts of humanity so scared they feel the need to make war.  Which means the book becomes a fascinating look at humanity’s desire to rule, and how our fears can bring out the worst in us. But for all that the book deals with some really terrible things; kidnapping, refugee crises, and humanity’s warmongering it really is a hopeful book. And that is why I think I love it so.

And now I’m off to start the next one.