Cibola Burn (Expanse, #4)

by James S. A. Corey

NOW A PRIME ORIGINAL SERIES

Cibola Burn is the fourth book in the New York Times bestselling Expanse series.

The gates have opened the way to a thousand new worlds and the rush to colonise has begun. Settlers looking for a new life stream out from humanity's home planets. Illus, the first human colony on this vast new frontier, is being born in blood and fire.

Independent settlers stand against the overwhelming power of a corporate colony ship with only their determination, courage and the skills learned in the long wars of home. Innocent scientists are slaughtered as they try to survey a new and alien world.

James Holden and the crew of his one small ship are sent to make peace in the midst of war and sense in the heart of chaos. But the more he looks at it, the more Holden thinks the mission was meant to fail.

And the whispers of a dead man remind him that the great galactic civilisation which once stood on this land is gone. And that something killed them.

The Expanse series has sold over two million copies worldwide and is now a major television series.

The Expanse series:
Leviathan Wakes
Caliban's War
Abaddon's Gate
Cibola Burn
Nemesis Games
Babylon's Ashes
Persepolis Rising

Praise for the Expanse:

'The science fictional equivalent of A Song of Ice and Fire' NPR Books

'As close as you'll get to a Hollywood blockbuster in book form' io9.com

'Great characters, excellent dialogue, memorable fights' wired.com

'High adventure equalling the best space opera has to offer, cutting-edge technology and a group of unforgettable characters . . . Perhaps one of the best tales the genre has yet to produce' Library Journal

'This is the future the way it's supposed to be' Wall Street Journal

'Tense and thrilling' SciFiNow

• ISBN10: 0316217603
• ISBN13: 9780316217606
• Publish Date: 17 June 2014 (first published 1 January 2014)
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Orbit
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 608
• Language: English

Reviews

[jojo_k]

It was slow going, and many build ups but after while it gripped me with tensions and excitements. I just enjoyed the heck out of Miller's part toward the end.

The Havelock and Basia POVs are very appreciated!!! My favorite part is the death slug action for sure

[abookishblether]

Leviathan Wakes ★★★★★
Caliban's War ★★★★☆
Abaddon's Gate ★★★★★
Cibola Burn ★★★★☆

Another solid installment in The Expanse series.

I really love the sensation of sinking into another one of these books, where I know that there is going to be 500 pages of well written, enjoyable science fiction following a main cast of characters I know and enjoy reading about. It's like putting on your favourite clothes again, or watching a favourite tv show. Obviously things change, and stakes are higher in the next book, but there are many constant qualities to the series that keep the engagement high.

In this book, a new world has been colonised by two opposing parties and Holden has been tasked with keeping the peace. As with each book, there are some guest POVs introduced that keep the story feeling fresh. The stakes in this book felt the highest, and the story the most intimate. The majority of the story was set on one planet with a cast of characters who were in much closer contact than ususal. Obviously being set across the expanse of space, in previous books a lot of our characters were interacting through video chat or sending messages. With the main conflict being on the surface of this planet, it really changed up how the characters interacted. And when stakes were raised for survival on the alien planet, it affected majority of the characters in the book. I really enjoyed reading this one, and I'm looking forward to the next one in the series.

[clq]

I've really come to enjoy the universe in which the Expanse books take place, and the main characters from the previous books have really grown on me. Then along comes this book, Cibola Burn, which takes place half a galaxy away from the universe I've come to know and love, and where the characters I've come to know and love aren't even the main characters for most of the story.

And it works. It works really well.

This book is very different from the first two books of the series, but really brings back the elements that I loved so much from the first two books, that I felt the third book lacked. The first two books are really great stories about interplanetary politics, and how extreme, unexpected events affect them. This book takes it back down to a micro-level. Not only are we on a single planet, but we're on a single city on that planet, which also happens to be the only city on the planet. Settlers have made a start at establishing themselves on a this brand new, hereto unexplored livable earth-like space, but then a UN-sanctioned science team comes along to start exploring the planet, and… well… there is some friction. And to top it off the planet itself may not be what the planet appears to be.

The story in the book takes place far from everything, and the feeling of almost absolute isolation is very effective. In stories with conflict there is usually some cavalry that can save the day, some reinforcements that can change the state of play. In this story the possibility of outside intervention is completely removed from the equation, and this adds an extra nerve to everything that happens. The board has all the pieces it's ever going to have, now there is only the question of how they'll move around. And how many of them will be left standing.

Most of this story takes place on the planet, and that's definitely when it's at its best. Once we witness the events taking place back out in space, things start feeling like an ordinary space-story. The action-in-space scenes, while they aren't by any means bad, kind of jars with the relatively slow-moving, tense and thrilling mood that drives the rest of the book along. The main antagonist of the book is also way more antagonistic than what I felt was called for, and one particular "we inevitably need to get this character from A to B"-type character-arc felt rushed. But none of these annoyances were annoying enough to have a significant impact on my enjoyment of the book as a whole.

Despite being a story which is almost entirely disconnected from the rest of the Expanse universe, the implications of how this story turns out looks like they might have a dramatic impact on the situation closer to home. That, along with some really interesting developments in the underlying plot that spans across these books, really leaves me wanting more. Fortunately there are another three books just sitting there, waiting to be read!

[adastra]

This was certainly a major improvement over the terrible book 3, but it's still by no means perfect (the slugs were a bit ridiculous). It feels like an interesting introduction of what's to come... can't wait to keep reading these books.

[remo]

Cuarta entrega de la saga principal de The Expanse, que no baja el ritmo con respecto a las demás. Tras la aparición de mil nuevos mundos, Holden y su tripulación son llamados como mediadores entre unos colonos que se colaron por el Anillo y colonizaron un mundo (Ilus o Nova Terra, según la afiliación política del que habla) por su cuenta, en plan carromato del antiguo Oeste, y la federación Terrestre, que exige que se reconozcan sus derechos de explotación.
Por supuesto, lo que comienza siendo un asunto de arbitraje civilizado se complica, y mucho, cuando el propio planeta Ilus decide tomar cartas en el asunto.
Novelón. Interesantísimo, trabajado, bien escrito. Ciencia ficción de la buena.

[empressbrooke]

At first I was rather worried because the beginning of this book is so slow. I I thought this was going to be 500 pages of James Holden trying to play peacekeeper between two opposing settlements on a new planet. I should have know better, because it isn't an Expanse novel without some protomolecule-related crisis. It wasn't my favorite in the series, I did enjoy what it added to the overall mythology of the series' universe.