The highest stakes of almost any given scene are usually along the lines of “will this one specific character die?” or “will this one group of characters die?” Despite the mounting white walker threat, at no point in the first five books of ASoIaF is the fate of the entire world at stake.Īnd yet, this happens a lot in The Expanse novels so far, and it tends to backfire. Because there are so many different POV characters in different locations, we know that any one of them could die at any moment and the plot would still go on. One of the things I think make “A Song of Ice and Fire” so successful is that the stakes are often surprisingly small. (It’s why I wish the non-Holden POV characters could also continue having a presence in the sequels, but I’ll take what I can get.)
#The expanse books reddit series#
That’s the big benefit of long-form series like this: even if the characters don’t feel 3-dimensional straight away, the author would have to be deeply incompetent to not make them grow on you after spending 1000+ pages with them. There was a much stronger sense that anything could happen in these later books.Īlso, I think Holden’s crew gets more likeable by virtue of simply spending more time with them. However, both Caliban’s War and Abaddon’s Gate had 4 POV characters, which made it much harder to predict where and how each of these characters would end up converging with each other. Because there were only two POV characters – and because I knew exactly which POV character I’d be returning to at the end of each chapter – it did make the first book feel a little predictable. So, I’ll admit I was a tad disappointed to open up the first book and find that there were only two POV characters. One of my favorite things about Game of Thrones is the fact that it’s such a sprawling, epic tale, with lots of POVs. Good thing #1: Each book is better than the last There’s a little bit of a disconnect with Melba, (logically I understand why she wants revenge on Holden, but emotionally I don’t think the hatred was sold well), but’s that a smaller issue compared to the first two for me. This might be why I consider book 3 to be the best so far, as none of the new characters start the book out with a tragic loss of a character we don’t know about. (Note: can you tell I’m not a parent yet? I bet this storyline works a lot better for parents.) It’s hard to feel invested in Prax’s storyline in particular because I feel like I can so clearly see the writers’ pulling the strings, relying almost solely on the reader’s inherent desire to protect young children to keep Prax’s arc compelling. Bobbie’s justifiably upset because all her army buddies (who we don’t know or care about) were murdered, and Prax is driven by his goal of finding his plot device toddler daughter. This was an even bigger problem in the second book, because both Bobbie and Prax had arcs that significantly centered around people that the reader is never emotionally connected to. for Shed,” and I was just like, “Who? Oh, yeah, that guy from the beginning.” There’s a moment that’s supposed to be emotional near the end of book 1 where someone in the crew’s like, “We gotta do this. It’s not that big of a deal (and it’s also kind of unavoidable, honestly?), but it led to so many of the scenes dedicated to exploring the characters’ grief feeling hollow. I’m not mourning their loss along with the crew. However, because all these people died very early on (amidst a ton of other exposition) I simply do not care about any of them. So for instance: book 1 opens up with Holden’s crew suffering the devastating losses of pretty much everyone on The Canterbury, which leaves me in this weird place where I know, logically, that these people have every reason to be emotional wrecks. One issue I had, especially with the first two books, is the disconnect between what the characters were going through and how I felt about it.
Anyway, I have ~thoughts~ about the first three novels, and this sub seems like the best place for it. Although these are definitely two very different series, I don’t think it’s the worst comparison in the world. When I asked for this, The Expanse was the first thing people pointed to. By that I mean that I wanted a large-scale, multi-book story told from the perspectives of a bunch of different characters. I started getting into this series because I was looking for a sci-fi version of what “A Song of Ice and Fire” was to me.
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