worth reading expanse books before.seeing.show

#Worth reading expanse books before.seeing.show series

Whatever else you can say about The Expanse, it certainly keeps you on your toes. At no point does it feel unearned or unrealistic. While the changes may initially feel like they come out of nowhere, before long you are completely swept up by them and back on board.

#Worth reading expanse books before.seeing.show series

The series jumps months in the middle of the third season, a major character dies and leaves the show… until they come back. An asteroid habitat with no propulsion system decides to go walkabout.ĭevoted crewmates betray their comrades and unlikely alliances are formed. “The Cant.” Tensions grow between all the super powers. A Belter detective investigates a missing persons case that may somehow how be related to The survivors of The Canterbury luck their way into a Martian warship and set out to find what was behind the ships destruction. Just like GoT (sorry), every time it feels like you’ve acclimatised to a new status quo, The Expanse goes and changes everything again! I was right, right up until one of those main locations was completely destroyed! Corey (good twitter follow, that), my initial expectations were that I’d get some space drama, spread across a few locations. Having not read the books that the show is based on by James S. With a thoroughly realized world, engaging characters, and some great space battles, the next ace up The Expanse’s voluminous sleeve is the series penchant for regularly pulling the rug out from under the characters, and the audience.

“Massive Space battles” featuring Star Trek/ Star Wars style flotillas of ships may be few and far between, but that’s only because of the immensity of space and the ludicrousness of grouping all your weapon assets together. Taking a leaf out of Battlestar Galactica‘s school of combat camerawork, space battles in The Expanse are famed using a similar hand-held feel but zoom around to cover the incredible distances between ships. Turning any object not nailed down into a lethal projectile. The stakes of any battle are raised exponentially when you realize that the maneuvers the ships need to take to avoid incoming fire generally apply an unholy amount of G-force on their crews. While relatively few and far between, space battles in The Expanse are never less than thrilling with spacecraft maneuvering around each other on thrusters, presenting the narrowest possible target to their enemies, while hurling missiles/torpedoes at each other and taking them out their ordinance with their own point defense cannons. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.” While the series kicks off with the destruction of The Canterbury, it’s far from the last space battle in the series, none of which discount the “mind-bogglingly bigness” of it. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. “Massive” Space BattlesĪs Douglas Adams once said “Space is big. The planets are competing for resources from The Belt and The Belters are crying out for equality. Space is vast, dark, and dangerous, but characters motivations remain “grounded” and relatable. This might seem like just more technobabble but it’s an approach that extends to the storytelling. Unless your ship needs to maneuver quickly, in which case you’d better strap in, before the G-forces throw you around the ship and reduce you to pink mush. Spacecraft don’t have anti-gravity, with gravity provided aboard by the ship’s acceleration or deceleration, otherwise you need magnetic boots to get around. Hard G’sĪpart from the Epstein Drive, which enables ships to travel relatively quickly and efficiently around the Solar system, the world of The Expanse feels incredibly lived in and not too far removed from today. It’s an approach that’s taken with almost every member of the cast. He’ll still shoot with no hesitation if they threaten his crew mates (although he’s not against shooting them either), and yet you’ll still root for him.

Lovable and frightening, and in lesser skilled hands, Amos could be reduced to dim-witted muscle, but between the writing and Wes Chatham’s performance, he’s utterly compelling.