epub, 655 pages
English language
Published by Heyne.
Cibola Burn is a 2014 science fiction novel by James S. A. Corey (pen name of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) and the fourth book in The Expanse series. It follows the crew of the Rocinante as they join the flood of humanity out into the galaxy, using the gates built by the ancient civilization that also produced the protomolecule. At the release of Cibola Burn, Orbit Books announced that James S. A. Corey would write three additional books in the series (adding to two that were already planned) to bring the series to nine novels and various short stories. Cibola Burn serves as the basis for the fourth season of the television series The Expanse, which was released by Amazon Video December 13, 2019.
As with every book from The Expanse that I have read before this one, the authors do a great job of imagining a possible future for humanity and to take those premises to places that feel extremely plausible.
Also, murder mystery on a galactic scale, which is always nice. Looking forward to the next one!
To tell the truth, I was saddened to see the Expanse universe expanded beyond our minuscule solar system. I really loved the limited scope of the first books, where you had people trying to fight a vast incomprehensible menace when they could hardly manage their own system.
But this book has pacified me a bit. The colonists in this story are limited as well; in fact, this one's even more limited than the first books were. I like that. It gives me hope that this series won't end up with humanity being a huge advanced civilization akin to the very one they're trying to find/investigate.
(spoiler for 2001: a Space Odyssey) That's possibly the only thing I didn't like about the 2001 book (the movie was terrible in regards to explaining things to the viewer, so I'll pretend it didn't exist): the transcendence of humanity. I get that the whole …
To tell the truth, I was saddened to see the Expanse universe expanded beyond our minuscule solar system. I really loved the limited scope of the first books, where you had people trying to fight a vast incomprehensible menace when they could hardly manage their own system.
But this book has pacified me a bit. The colonists in this story are limited as well; in fact, this one's even more limited than the first books were. I like that. It gives me hope that this series won't end up with humanity being a huge advanced civilization akin to the very one they're trying to find/investigate.
(spoiler for 2001: a Space Odyssey) That's possibly the only thing I didn't like about the 2001 book (the movie was terrible in regards to explaining things to the viewer, so I'll pretend it didn't exist): the transcendence of humanity. I get that the whole point was showing the development of humans from apes into extremely wise seemingly omniscient beings, but it didn't work for me. I would much rather have had humanity see these other beings and decide that they could handle things on their own. I always doubt it when an entire civilization, or even a tiny subset, can somehow put aside everything that's wrong with them.
The only reason I'm giving this book 4 stars is because, likely through no fault of the author, I found the narration of the audio book to be distracting and annoying. This led to frequent breaks from listening to the book. Overall, a good story, but I chose the wrong format.
