Review: Tiamat's Wrath by James S. A. Corey

Blurb:

Thirteen hundred gates have opened to solar systems around the galaxy. But as humanity builds its interstellar empire in the alien ruins, the mysteries and threats grow deeper.

In the dead systems where gates lead to stranger things than alien planets, Elvi Okoye begins a desperate search to discover the nature of a genocide that happened before the first human beings existed, and to find weapons to fight a war against forces at the edge of the imaginable. But the price of that knowledge may be higher than she can pay.

At the heart of the empire, Teresa Duarte prepares to take on the burden of her father's godlike ambition. The sociopathic scientist Paolo Cordozar and the Mephistophelian prisoner James Holden are only two of the dangers in a palace thick with intrigue, but Teresa has a mind of her own and secrets even her father the emperor doesn't guess.

And throughout the wide human empire, the scattered crew of the Rocinante fights a brave rear-guard action against Duarte's authoritarian regime. Memory of the old order falls away, and a future under Laconia's eternal rule -- and with it, a battle that humanity can only lose -- seems more and more certain. Because against the terrors that lie between worlds, courage and ambition will not be enough. . .

Review:

For me, The Expanse has been a wild and fluctuating ride in terms of quality. Earlier entries in the series such as Leviathan Falls and Nemesis Games stand as some of the best science fiction books I’ve ever read, while other entries like Abaddon’s Gate and Cibola Burn were so lackluster for me that I nearly quit the series. I put the series down for a year after being burnt out upon reading Persepolis Rising.

But boy am I glad I came back and read Tiamat’s Wrath. With this penultimate entry in the epic space opera series, the writing duo of James S. A. Corey has crafted a wild thrill ride that returns the series to its page-turning peaks and has me eager to rush to the final book in the series.

Several years after the close of the previous book, Persepolis Rising, Captain James Holden remains a prisoner to the Laconian Empire and its brutal dictator Winston Duarte. The empire has charged scientist Elvi Okoye with researching the protomolecule—and the previous civilizations which its creators destroyed. Duarte’s teenage daughter, Teresa, is raised to assume and maintain her father’s ambitions, but secrets and double agents are leading her astray from those duties. And meanwhile, the remaining crew of the Rocinante, scattered across the galaxy, begin their fight against Duarte’s iron-fisted regime. What ensues is a battle for the fate of over thirteen hundred solar systems…and not only for their liberty, but also for their lives.

Corey sets the tone immediately in Tiamat’s Wrath with killing off a major character (and one of my favorites in the series) in the very first sentence of the book. There’s a tension permeating through this book that was absent in the previous volume that had me eager to learn what was next to come. This series has always shined when the spotlight has been placed on the crew of the Rocinante, and thankfully, that is where it stays for much of the book. My breath would often catch whenever danger lurked around our mainstays Holden, Naomi, Alex, and Amos—and series highlight Bobbie Draper—that I would hope and hope and hope for their safety. It’s a testament to the character work Corey has done over the first eight books of this series that the found family they are together feels just the same for the reader, and there are no punches pulled with any of our favorite galactic revolutionaries. Several moments left me with my jaw dropped, unable to move on, rereading passages to ensure what I thought I read was correct.

And the non-Roci POVs are just as compelling this time around, as well. Where Persepolis had one of the weaker supporting casts in the series, Tiamat has one of the best. Okoye has a satisfying, bloody, and shocking character arc that shines a much brighter light than was given to her back in Cibola Burn, and Teresa’s chapters surprised me as some of the best in the book with some of its biggest twists. Even with as minimal of Jim Holden as there is—a big downfall of Persepolis but done wonderfully here—the entire cast rises and shines with some of the best moments the series has to offer.

It's hard to get too deep into the weeds with what worked for the plot for the eighth book in a series without venturing into spoiler territory, so I’ll avoid that. What I will say is, Tiamat’s Wrath gripped and refused to let go right from the start. In a series with plot lines that range from frustrating to incredible, this manages to reach that upper echelon and returns the series to the strong form with which it began.

At the end of the day, Tiamat’s Wrath has worked its way into my top three books in The Expanse, and I couldn’t be happier about that. The adventures of the Rocinante crew have been incredibly memorable, and I’m almost reluctant to put an end to their story by reading the series’ final volume. But just the same, Tiamat’s Wrath has me chomping at the bit to dive right into the end. This is how you build up to a strong finale.