So that's fun. Oh and Holden is still around by the way, doing his Holdeny thing: leading his crew through space, taking jobs from whoever offers the most spacebucks, and generally holding stuff together. His new ghost friend, whose origins and motive remain mysterious, has told Holden to stay away from the space circle formerly known as Venus. Holden agrees with his ghost friend wholeheartedly, and resolves to give the space circle formerly known as Venus a wide birth. I sure hope that works out for him.
Meanwhile, Annushka Volovodov, a humble space pastor, is having a nice time past-ing space (or whatever it is space pastors do). She gets offered the opportunity of a lifetime: travel with the United Nations (the government of Earth) along with other religious folks and such to witness for herself the glory of the space circle formerly known as Venus. She accepts the offer (which is technically a spoiler but I mean come on) and finds herself well on her way to what is about to be the biggest mess in human history.
Also on his way to this mess is Carlos c de Baca, known as "bull" to his friends, who is in charge of the largest ship in the solar system, which has been creatively named the Behemoth. Just once I want an ultimate mega-warship which is called something innocuous like the Lilac or the Flying Festoon. Anyways, Bull has been personally asked by the leader of the Outer Planets Alliance to keep the Behemoth in shape. After McPlotPoint does his crazy stunt, Bull is ordered to meet with the Earth and Mars forces at the space circle formerly known as Venus, to show them that the OPA are team players.
Rounding off the cast of four we have Petunia Adams-Rogers, a farm girl from Oklahoma who has never stepped out of the Earth's atmosphere, but dreams of traveling the stars. After a surprise visit from an esteemed scientist to her college, she is offered the chance to join Anna in the UN ship set for the space circle formerly known as Venus. She of course agrees, and– yeah okay I think that's enough of this gag.
No, Petunia does not exist. She was probably murdered by Clarissa Mao, so that Clarissa Mao could take her place and pretend to be a protagonist. Clarissa is the sister of Julie Mao (the subject of Miller's search in the first book) and the daughter of Jules-Pierre Mao (one of the richest people in future history), who was taken down by Holden and company in the previous book. Oh, um, I guess that was a spoiler for the second book. Oops. Now, Clarissa has only one goal in her mind: discredit Holden, make everyone think he's garbage, and then kill him. Because he's a paragon, and paragons are immune to ordinary store-bought revenge.
Abaddon's Gate is fun, and I think captures more of the action-drama of the first book. There's still a lot of political drama going on, what with everyone having a look at the space circle formerly known as Venus and all, but there's also plenty of explosions and guns and whatever it is Clarissa Mao does. Speaking of Clarissa, it was very interesting to have an honest-to-god antagonist as a POV character. She's not an antihero, and we're not meant to empathize with her, and she doesn't even have any delusions of righteousness or whatever. She's just an insane murderer, and the fact that we know what she's doing and planning makes us all the more worried for the protagonists, which turns the suspense up to eleven.
As for the rest of the characters, I don't feel like they were really as strong as those from the first and second books. Bull and Anna in particular seemed to get the short end of the characterization stick. I get the sense that, out of the four characters in Abaddon's Gate, Anna is followed the least, but I'm not sure if that's reflective of the actual number of chapters she's in.
Despite these flaws, Abaddon's Gate is still a fast-paced and well-written action drama that keeps you hooked until the very end. I think it is my second favorite of the Expanse books so far, after Leviathan Wakes (the first one). My conclusion is of course that if you liked the second one then you'll like this one, which shouldn't really surprise anyone. I'm not even sure if these count as reviews anymore, because I'm just summarizing the setup and making a few comments. Ah, well, I'll keep doing these regardless. They're fun.
Anyways, yeah. Series are series. Give Abbadon's Gate a shot if and only if you wanna. Peace.
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