Cibola Burn

Bloggers note: I am deferring my other graphic novel post for a little while but I promise I will come back to it.  I liked Lucifer too much to not write about it.

Warning: While this post contains only minor spoilers for Cibola Burn, it does have more major spoilers for Leviathan Wakes, Caliban's War, and Abaddon's Gate,  the previous books in the series, simply by virtue of discussing the plot at all.

Right before I started reading The Expanse series they announced that instead of being a three book series, they are making it six books.  In between book three (Abbadon's Gate which I reviewed earlier) and this one, they announced that they are making a tv show on Syfy.  The show has no release date yet beyond "2015" but news is gradually coming out.  Regardless of how well the show does, shortly before this book came out the writers announced that their contract had been extended to 9 books.  I think it is safe to say that the series is taking off.

Cibola Burn starts off a little while after the third book leaves off and has some general sci-fi settling an alien planet cliches along with some space western cliches but it blends them well and still has some originality and pushes the overarching plot of the series in an exciting direction.  As with the other books in the series, the authors manage to weave another genre in with sci-fi.  This time it is clear from early on that the genre is Western and there a lot of plot points that could come directly from a spaghetti western but infused with scifi trappings.

I was privileged enough to get the chance to hear them talk when they were on their book tour (Side note: in case you were confused by my use of plural pronoun, James S. A. Corey is a pseudonym for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) and they said that the book was inspired by a game a role playing game that they were playing that was a fusion of Traveller and d20 modern (I was hoped it was inspired by Diaspora, my space RPG of choice) and overall they were very charming and interesting (but then again, I have yet to meet an author whose books I like that I don't like as a person as well).

I think this might be better than the series the other books in the series.  It manages to have political intrigue, space combat, and classic western frontier style plottings all blended together.  It also repeatedly shows the authors careful tracking of how the events in their story affect their setting as a whole and the political balances within it.

Overall, I would give this book a 96%.