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Following Leviathan Wakes, Caliban’s War, and Abaddon’s Gate, Cibola Burn makes book four of The Expanse.

First remark: I noticed within seconds that this audiobook is read by a different narrator than books 1-3. I guess it is one of those quiet tragedies that we often don’t notice or remark on the narrator at all if they do a good job; done right, their work kind of fades into invisibility behind a great story. (I do try and recognize narration, and sometime comment on it, but I’ve probably failed to credit some fine work. In this format, no news is probably good news.) The earlier narrator of this series, Jefferson Mays, has given me each of the characters’ voices and accents; he gave me a world that I invested in. And this new guy is messing it up.

According to this fan wiki, Erik Davies stepped in to read book 4 because Mays had a scheduling conflict, and a later audio edition was released with Mays reading again. I regret that I didn’t find this out earlier and go seek that one out! I’m sure Davies is a nice man, but he butchered this reading. It would seem reasonable to go back and listen to the earlier narrations (this is a series; fans are invested) to find how each character was played and try to follow that, but maybe the scheduling issue provides a clue: too rushed to research? Not only are characters played inconsistently with past portrayals (Avasarala loses her accent; Amos’s voice moves way down in pitch), they are played inconsistently within this one book. Alex’s famous accent (practically defines his character) comes and goes, sometimes entirely absent. Our villain Captain Murtry has the accent Alex should have, but it sort of comes on slow and ramps up as the story unfolds. He changes the pronunciation of Coordinator Chiwewe’s name partway through, then changes it back. This is sloppy work. Additionally, Davies has a sort of droning monotone style in general, and he is apt to deliver lines like… remember Horatio Caine from CSI? The way he would take off his sunglasses and put them back on again and sigh and emphasis. every. word. very. slowly? Davies does this too, and it drives me crazy.

I know I’m going on at length about a single element of this audiobook and have not even gotten into its contents yet, but this is important stuff, friends. It took me every bit of half the book to get my bearings in this new world. I’m sorry I never gave Mays credit for his earlier work.

And my narration complaints don’t help my overall impression, certainly, but I also think this was the weakest installment in the series (interesting, because my friends at Tor.com loved it). The plot shows promise – shall I get around to plot, now? Following the opening in book 3 of “the ring” as a station to access a bunch of new solar systems, one of the “new” planets has been colonized by Belter refugees from Ganymede. Only now, a ship from an Earth corporation has shown up ready to do a sanctioned scientific study, and the two groups (to put it very simply) don’t get along. Blood is shed immediately, and the OPA/Earth alliance headed by Fred Johnson and Crisjen Avasarala sends Holden and his Rocinante crew out to set things right. For political reasons, they share a thinly veiled hope that Holden will actually fuck things up.

So here come Holden and Amos down to the surface of a planet… not quite at war, but certainly very tensely at odds. (Alex and Naomi stay up in the Rocinante in orbit nearby, along with the two much larger ships held by the two factions who beat them there.) Besides the political/social complications, we face challenges like superstorms, “death slugs” (which crawl out of the ground and kill on contact), and a mysterious growth that threatens to blind every person on the planet except Holden, for whatever mysterious reason. (I was calling this bullshit – the way Holden is such a superman and is the only one immune to this blindness threat – but it turned out to be explained pretty neatly, so okay.)

Again, the plot shows promise. We get (as usual) a couple of engaging new characters, especially the brilliant, work-obsessed scientist Elvi Okoye, who has one misguided crush and then finds true love, and her sidekick Fayez. The clear villain, as I said (and I don’t think this is a spoiler) is one Captain Murtry; he is a sociopath, I think, and I enjoyed him not one bit, but I suppose we need him for the story. We also meet again a few characters from earlier books: Miller’s old partner Havelock, and Basia Merton, from Caliban’s War. The Tor writer, Stefan Raets, found these reappearances a little too unlikely, but I’m on board. I also cheered the return of Sergeant Bobbie Draper in the prologue, but she scarcely shows her face past that beginning.

I loved the new world being discovered here, the new planet, with its totally unique biology and scientific challenges; Elvi’s overwhelming enthusiasm and love for her work is contagious. The mimic lizards captured my imagination and reminded me of Oy the billy-bumbler from King’s Dark Tower series. I remember Oy so fondly, this gave me a good feeling. (Corey is good, but King is better, hands down.)

Plot, check, characters, check. But the weakness comes in in the actual writing. I felt that where we used to see subtlety we are now being banged over the head. The emphasis on Holden’s crew being like family used to be mentioned offhandedly or merely demonstrated; here we have repeated overt references, as in “these are my family. I’m not going to let them die” sort of things. One of the book’s clearest themes is this idea that it’s silly for us to fight when we should be working together… we’re facing so many dangers, why can’t we remember that we’re all people, and band together… and then finally, common enemy, working together against dangers… look, we did it, we pulled together! And I think this theme would have been perfectly evident, and impactful, without saying all those things all the time. It got really cheeseball; I think it’s insulting to the reader to spell things out so thoroughly; and most importantly, it ruins the effect. Dialog, as well, moved from clever and quippy (especially among the Rocinante‘s crew) to over-explainy. Somebody actually said “I said that so you’d know I know.” The writing felt so different to me here that I wonder if something changed in how the writing team (that goes by the name Corey) works together; it just really didn’t feel like the same authorial voice. Of course, I have no idea how much Davies’s sub-standard reading played into this impression. The way a line is delivered can very much change how it’s read.

Finally, the interludes. A new addition here, these short sections seem told from the aliens’ point of view (I am following Raets’s usage here), and they remind me thoroughly of Gertrude Stein and not in a good way.

I do appreciate (as Raets points out) the way this book integrates some of the material of those that have come before. I appreciated Alex getting a bit more backstory – I said in my last review that he was little more than an accent, and finally he gets more characterization, which is just as well since he just about lost his accent in this narration… And if we get Avasarala and Bobbie Draper back together again in the next book, I’ll be very pleased. I’m still in, is what I’m saying, but please let’s get back to Jefferson Mays’s narration and back on track. C’mon, team…

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: audio, sci fi, The Expanse, thriller |