Nemesis Games - James S.A. Corey (Review)

Nemesis Games - James S.A. Corey

Contains minor spoilers for The Expanse series

By - Karl Vu

Nemesis Games is book 5 in The Expanse series. After the crew of the Rocinante (our main characters throughout the series) return to the Sol system after the events of book 4, the ship has to be docked for maintenance and repairs. The repairs are expected to take a long time, so each member of the crew except for the captain, James Holden, takes a temporary leave to revisit their past and tie up loose ends. Amos Burton, the ship's mechanic, heads to Earth to pay respects to a loved one that passed away and make sure nothing bad happened to them while he was away. Alex Kamal, the ship's pilot, heads to Mars to talk with his ex-wife and try to make things end on a good note. Naomi Nagata, the ship's engineer, goes to Ceres station after she receives a message from her ex-lover that her son is in trouble. Holden stays behind with the Rocinante to investigate colony ships disappearing after entering the ring gates. The crew is brought back together after terrorist attacks of unimaginable scale are carried out against Earth by a splinter insurgent group of the Outer Planets Alliance called the Free Navy.

I didn't expect for the crew to split up in this book, but it was a welcome change to see what individual members of the crew did when they didn't have the others around them. I also didn't expect to see some of the character's past, as I thought that was relegated to the short novellas written about The Expanse's universe. I thought this book was going to dive deeper into all the new worlds the ring gate opened up and how humanity adapted to it, but I don't remember the book mentioning the ring gates much except for trying to figure out why some colony ships are disappearing after completely entering them. I didn't have any major gripes with the book like I did with book 4.

I give this book an 8/10. Not too good, but not bad either. Nothing too notable in my opinon.

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