This is the front cover art for the book Persepolis Rising written by James S. A. Corey. The book cover art copyright is believed to belong to the publisher or the cover artist.
Breaking the 4-star trend, I give Persepolis Rising 5 stars. I honestly liked it better than the previous books in the Expanse series (you can read my Expanse reviews here - I never got around to reviewing Babylon’s Ashes, but know that I gave it 4 stars). Minor spoilers ahead.
It’s been 32ish years since the Ilus incident (Cibola Burn). I had to look the timeline up on the wiki - the incident happened around 14 or 15 XTE (depending on which page of the wiki one looks at), and Persepolis Rising takes place in approximately 47 XTE (about 38 or 39 years since the series started). Time certainly is moving on for everybody, and it shows. James S. A. Corey is able to express the effects of aging on the cast and crew, even with the anti-aging medications provided by the technology of the future. But even anti-aging medicine can only go so far, and all good things must come to an end. “It’s the reward of old age. You live long enough, and you can watch everything you worked for become irrelevant.”
This certainly reads like it is To Be Continued - which it is. Tiamat’s Wrath is next in the series, after all. Which is good, because a small part of me felt like this could have been taken as a Libertarian's wet dream about how best to show the "evils of centralized government". But considering that the Governor of Freehold was the ultimate Libertarian who fetishized “radical personal autonomy” to such a degree that he was willing to kill himself and others to protect his “right” to endanger the lives of himself and others, I’m fairly certain that that wasn’t the message either. The message seemed to be more about, to quote a friend of mine, “the evils of shitty human leaders.” I’ve gotta agree with that. Holden actually made good points throughout the book - he may have poor wisdom, but he does have a high intelligence. James fucking Holden.
On a related note, Bobbie Draper is a better captain than James Holden. All Holden has going for him is luck and name recognition. Bobbie actually plans ahead for her people, knows to file paperwork for incidents and end-of-life situations, and will stand up to the problematic elements of her crew to make certain that her crew functions. Like, if Amos is going to partake in an assisted suicide, then you need that on file so that he doesn’t get arrested for murder. Seriously. Holden is just holding it together (pun intended) like patchwork, and Draper is planning and ready.
Also, Libertarians are hypocrites, and that was made very clear at the beginning of the book. A note to people who are not from the United States: American Libertarianism is not libertarianism - that is, American Libertarianism is about being against state control, is pro-corporation, and is a form of ultra-rightism; while libertarianism is a collection of political philosophies that upholds liberty and anti-state socialism.
Every so often, I found myself in agreement with the Laconians for only a second before they fucked it up again. Treat the other planets as equals, stop fetishizing Earth and Mars. I can dig it. But then they fuck it up again, between the fanaticism that the Laconians have and their tendency to mess with forces that they don’t understand and can’t possibly control in the end. Also, the final scene between Governor Singh and Major Overstreet? I should have seen that coming. All the clues were there, and it still caught me off-guard. Well played.
Was “Charles Boyle Gas Transport” a Brooklyn Nine-Nine reference?
Anyway. Best book of the series so far. 5/5.
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