Caliban’s War is the second book in The Expanse series, following on from Leviathan Wakes, so there will be spoilers for that book. Caliban’s War picks up the story from the end of the previous book. The various factions are trying to figure out what is going on on Venus while also trying to adjust to the new balance of power in the system. But on Ganymede a young girl is abducted and monsters similar to the ones seen on Eros attack. This leads to Earth’s UN getting involved, and of course Jim Holden and his crew are swept up in events.
I really enjoyed Leviathan Wakes so I was looking forward to see how the story developed from here, but Caliban’s War was a big disappointment. It ends up being just shy of 600 pages, but it doesn’t feel like I read a 600 page book at all. It feels padded, and although it has the same fast-paced action it doesn’t have the same character work so as a result it feels shallow as well. I was looking forward to going deeper into the story and characters but instead I came away not having felt engaged with the story at all.
I loved the fact that Leviathan Wakes had two viewpoints, and the contrasts that came between them. This also meant it was a big deal when the two characters eventually met. Caliban’s War increases this to four. Holder returns, and he’s joined by Bobbie – a Martian Marine, Avasarala – a foul-mouthed diplomat, and Prax – the father of the abducted girl. Sadly, none of these were particularly compelling and even Holden didn’t seem to have the same edge to him as in the first book. Bobbie is probably the one with the most development but all the characters are pretty static, and we don’t really learn anything more about Holden’s crew than we did in the previous book.
The noir setting has also been replaced for political intrigue, but it’s never developed that well and it’s all pretty standard stuff. I found the first one a real page-turned, and while this is easy to read it doesn’t have that same sense of urgency, and I think there were only a couple of times where I really regretted putting the book down. I think this is a huge step down from the first book and I’m almost regretting buying both the second and third books together, but I guess i’ll see how the series concludes soon. The biggest failing of Caliban’s War is that it doesn’t feel like much work was done to develop the characters.
The other big failing is the climax. For about the last hundred pages I suddenly thought they weren’t going to have enough room to wrap things up. Well, I was almost right. They did wrap everything up (and to be fair, the very end of the book does end on a good hook) but the double-climax happens so quickly that I was shocked it was so simple. I was reading it, and then suddenly they’d done what they needed to do and the book was over! For such a thick book I wanted more meat, but a lot of it is filler.
I’ll be back with my review for Abaddon’s Gate soon, but Caliban’s War is a big step down from the standards set by Leviathan Wakes.