He’s also one of the fathers that we met near the beginning of CALIBAN’S WAR ( EBR Review) that had lost their child to those playing with the protomolecule. Basia Merton is a settler on Ilus (the new planet, on the other side of one of the other gates in the Dandelion Sky we found at the end of ABADDON’S GATE). Although, they’re not completely new, which is something I thought was really cool. However, the numerous levels of character interaction, story complexity, and raising of the stakes, makes this book so much better than any other story of this kind I’ve read before.Īs with ABADDON’S GATE ( EBR Review), a majority of the PoV characters in this story are new ones. This book takes a major change of pace, a major change of focus, and those changes were perfectly fine with me, as I love to see an occasional intense focus on character and viewing a microcosm of the greater-galaxy at large.ĬIBOLA BURN, at its basic level, is a story that we’ve seen countless times in the Science Fiction genre: humans travel to a far-off planet and try to build a civilization there. From the advent of the protomolecule and its digestive and reconstructive prowess, to the large-scale politics driving the populations of Earth, Mars, and that of the Belters, to the awesome power of the protomolucule-built portal and the opening of the hundreds of worlds behind it. In the first three books of the series, we’ve seen some fairly major science fiction ideas that have driven each of the books in different directions. But who am I kidding, the story is really the part that matters anyhow and it was freaking awesome.ĬIBOLA BURN ( Amazon) is a very different book from it predecessors, but it’s a very strong one for all of that. A good sign for the authors and publishers, agreed just not such a great deal for those of us that like to look at the complete series on our bookshelves and see continuity. Although I was just the teensiest bit perturbed at the fact that the initial release for new books in this series have been switched to hardbacks. In addition, the series is under contract through book 9. Looks like it’s going to be absolutely fabulous too.

Not only is the series really good, the SyFy channel picked it up for a TV series and they’re spending oodles of money on it (more than they’ve spent on any other series before).

Abraham and Franck really have a good thing going for them with this series. Couldn’t wait to get back to Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante. I was really excited when I got this book in the mail (which was forever ago, granted.

Cibola burn