Caliban's War is the sequel to Leviathan Wakes. It's also the second book in James S.A. Corey's Expanse series. For a review of Leviathan Wakes and more background on the authors click here.
Where Leviathan Wakes was something of a home run, Caliban's War is more of a "walk," in that it doesn't work quite as well its predecessor. The plot is a little clumsier, and doesn't find the same rhythm as the book that came before it.
This episode finds the forces of Earth, Mars and the OPA facing the continued threat posed by the alien protomolecule, a lifeform impervious to the best minds humanity has to offer. In the years after the events described in Leviathan Wakes the protomolecule has transformed the surface of Venus, and recent genetic experiments combining human DNA with this protomolecule pose a threat to human settlements in the Jovian system.
Enter our cast of ragtag space mercenaries, these being James Holden, their intrepid captain, Amos, the engineer, Naomi, the ops specialist and Alex, their pilot. In Caliban's War they are joined by Bobbie, a Martian marine, Prax, a scientist from Ganymede and Avasarala, a UN politician playing great games for big stakes.
All of which sounds riveting, but this book's big conclusion falls rather flat. It builds and builds towards Prax reuniting with his young daughter, but when this event finally occurs it's something of a letdown. This book needed more of an antagonist aside from the protomolecule, someone the reader could root against. As it is the story feels somewhat unbalanced, and not aimed toward any particular conclusion.
It might sound like I didn't like Caliban's War, but it's not that at all. I enjoyed it. It's just that Caliban's War is a very, very far cry from Leviathan Wakes, and inevitable comparisons between the two novels are going to occur.
Inferior sequels are, however, ubiquitous in science fiction, and in this regard Caliban's War is not unusual. I'm thinking that the authors probably regain their footing in the third book, and that this third book is much more cohesive than the second.
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