05 April 2021

Review: The Expanse: Auberon by James S.A. Corey

Published: 2019
Acquired: December 2020
Read: January 2021

Auberon: An Expanse Novella
by James S.A. Corey

The most recent Expanse novella was published after Tiamat's Wrath, but takes place before it, so that's where I read it. (Once the series is over, I'll do a post about my Expanse reading order.) This is one of the weaker ones, I'm afraid, though perhaps it will set up something in Tiamat's Wrath that will make me appreciate it more in retrospect. It's about a Laconian governor coming to grips with the difficulty of maintaining power outside of Laconia; too many of its beats seemed duplicated from the Governor Singh plotline in Persepolis Rising. They both struggle to apply their ideals in practice, they both have a situation spiral out of control, they both are devoted to wives in ways that make them impossible to live up to, they both are ultimately compromised. I liked the Singh subplot in Persepolis Rising a lot, but not so much that I had any interest in seeing it play out again in the very next book.

I read an Expanse story every eighty-ish days. Next up in sequence: Tiamat's Wrath

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