Abaddon's Gate - James S.A. Corey (Review)

 Abaddon's Gate - James S.A. Corey

Contains spoilers for The Expanse books 1 and 2

By - Karl Vu

Abaddon's Gate is book 3 in James S.A. Corey's The Expanse series. The Expanse is a sci-fi space opera takes place in the future where humanity has colonized almost every single planet and some asteroids and dwarf planets in the solar system.

To explain Abaddon's Gate, I need to give a short summary of what happened in books 1 and 2. In book 1, Leviathan Wakes, our main character Jim Holden and his crew help a rogue detective throw the once populated asteroid Eros, now infected with an alien molecule, into Venus. In book 2, Caliban's War, Holden and his crew, a Martian soldier, and scientist find a group of people on the moon Ganymede using the alien molecule to infect children and change them into super soldiers. Holden and the martian soldier break a bunch of the kids out and nuke Ganymede into oblivion.

In Abaddon's Gate, we find out that the alien molecule that was launched into Venus was building something while book 2 was happening. A big ring gets launched out of Venus at high speeds and stops near the orbit of Uranus. All 3 major factions in the solar system, the United Nations, the Martian Congressional Republic, and the Outer Planets Alliance, send an expeditionary fleet to the Ring. Holden also decides to go there. Melba Koh, formerly Clarissa Mao, hitches a ride on one of the UN fleet's ships. Her personal goal is to humiliate and kill Holden for imprisoning her father, Jules Mao, who was discovered to be one of the people behind infecting Eros with the alien molecule. Melba remotely detonates bombs on one of the UN fleet's escorts, destroying it, hacks into Holden's ship, the Rocinante, and broadcasts a message basically saying that Holden did it and anyone who gets close to the Ring will be fired upon. Trying to stop the message, Holden escapes into the Ring. The other fleets outside of the Ring decide to follow him in and arrest him. Inside the Ring is a large spherical glowing "station" with other rings like the one Holden came through orbiting it. The station decides that the big collection of high energy things that just came through are threats and pulls all the ships into orbit around it. The ships cannot escape from the orbit no matter how hard they try, so everyone is trapped and has to figure out how to get out. 

I give Abaddon's Gate an 8/10. It can be pretty slow in the beginning while introducing new characters and the setting, but the climax of the story is amazing and the action scenes are pretty epic. One thing that's a bit annoying in this book is that each chapter is dedicated to a different character. Sometimes the book will leave 1 character's chapter on a cliffhanger and switch to a character who's doing something less exciting. This doesn't happen too often and the story is still great, so I recommend this to anyone who likes sci-fi.