Auberon (Expanse, #8.5)

by James S. A. Corey

[clq]

Auberon, another one of the Expanse novellas, is among the good ones, but not the best.

I appreciate these novellas, but the ones like Auberon tend to leave me wanting more. I appreciate that teasing the main series is probably the point of them, but some of them, like this one, doesn’t add anything to the overall story that couldn’t have been (and isn’t already done) in the main books. I prefer it when these novellas give us more information about the background of the characters in the books, or otherwise tell stories that would have been impossible to do in the main story. This novel essentially fleshes out the way in which the Empire operates, which isn’t really a topic that I felt needed any fleshing out.

But hey, I’m not complaining. Auberon is a good novella, but it’s slightly predictable, doesn’t quite hit the emotional note I think it was trying to hit, and feels a little unnecessary when put up against some of the other novellas. That said, I did quite enjoy it, and it re-invigorated my anxiousness to read the next book in the series.