Nemesis Games (Expanse, #5)

by James S. A. Corey

[empressbrooke]

This was the highest point in the series since the debut, due in large part to all four members of the Rocinante finally getting to be the POV characters that the narration switches between. On top of that, there's a return of a large number of others - Bobbie Draper, Avasarala, Clarissa Mao, Fred Johnson - that really made this book feel like a culmination of everything that came before it.

Each previous book had events in it that shifted and changed the world that the series is set in, which has kept the series fresh and continually provided justification for yet another book. However, Nemesis Games went somewhere I REALLY hadn't expected. As huge of a plot turn as it was, it didn't feel gratuitous. The way that the Belters vs Inner Planets (and to a lesser degree, Earthers vs Martians) has always been set up as a racial divide made the turn of events internally consistent. The sudden availability of countless planets to colonize didn't just eradicate the need for the location of the Belters' homes, but also their very identity. It was a genocide that was accidental, but no less real. So the reaction of the most militant among them was understandable in the context of the series' universe. The authors very skillfully built this world and then just as skillfully tore it apart.

At the end of the book, the authors don't push everything back to a comforting normal. Instead, they've set up the path for the next book and I'm dying to know where it's going to go. While Nemesis Games was the first book in the series where the protomolecule was all but absent, the final chapters show that we're not through with its shenanigans.