I’ve read the first two books and enjoyed them both. I enjoyed the TV series. But I see there are nine novels and eight novellas in the series, and I know the book series goes on longer than the TV series. I’m curious: is the quality fairly consistent or, like a lot of longer book series, does it degrade over time?
Edit: Thanks everyone! Sounds like the vast majority of folks enjoyed all of the books - enough that I’ll probably read them all. I have other books on my reading list, so I might take breaks and read some of those in between.
I really appreciate all the responses. Thank you all. Upvotes all around!
This seems like an unpopular opinion, but I quit after 3 books. The first book was great, the second not as good, the third confirmed some consistent discouraging writing patterns from the second.
My biggest complaint is that I started the series for the sci-fi concepts and plotlines, but it quickly became a standard political procedural, with action and drip-reveal mystery elements, and the actual sci-fi elements felt unnecessary and incidental. Or to put it a different way, with rare exceptions, there just weren’t reliable sci-fi “big ideas” introduced after the first book, just a lot of human drama and plot that felt like it didn’t require the sci-fi setting.
I also felt like some pacing was off and there was a ton of filler. What confirmed that for me was when I noticed the chapter dividers in my reading app and saw nearly every chapter was almost identical length. My guess is the authors worked backwards from a chapter outline with a planned word count for publisher deliverables. If that type of planning sounds more like a business then it does art, I’d say that’s actually my experience reading it too.
Finally, one of my pet peeves for any type of believable drama is when conflict is created by people acting stupidly. Kind of the opposite of deus ex machina resolution, it’s a transparently artificial conflict that is just meant to give the characters something to do, but lazy writing. I felt that many many times by the second and third books.
Again, I’m in a minority I guess, but I felt it just wasn’t worth the time. Not as bad as Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson (my all time worst offender for filler and lazy plot), but lots of squeeze for little juice.
Yeah I’d say that’s unpopular, no one can keep the same amount of “new Sci fi” concepts continously. And for me it’s still worth a read, because they created a universe with a set of rules (keep protomolecule aside for now) that apply to all humans everywhere. And they never forgot that, not in any books, no stupid gravity generators, no ships appearing magically from somewhere, and they were consistent with that to the end.
That in my mind will always have a special place. And I’ll always keep recommending expanse for anyone that cares about a bit sensible physics in their fantasy.