Abaddon’s Gate

 

If you haven’t read my first two blog posts, Leviathan Wakes and Caliban’s War, you should check them out. They have helpful background for terms like

I chose to review this book because it was the next one in my favorite series, The Expanse. It is a fast-paced science fiction series about space adventure. There are lots of high speed chases, epic battles, and awesome, technologically advanced spaceships. Abbadon’s Gate is the third book of six, soon to be seven. It continues the story a few months after Caliban’s War left off; the protomolecule has created a gate from their solar system to another dimension, with thousands of gates to other solar systems in many different galaxies. The only problem is that all the other gates are deactivated, preventing them from colonizing thousands of new worlds.

The UN, MCR, and OPA all send ships to discover what is on the other side of the gate in their solar system. Once they get there, they start bickering over territory and want to fight, but figure out that they can’t fire their weapons because there is some sort of force that captures anything moving too fast. The three factions send soldiers to fight out in space since their torpedoes and guns don’t work. Someone fires a grenade that activates the alien dimension’s defense system, and all the ships that were moving get caught by the force and instantly decelerate. The deceleration causes many casualties and many more injuries. I won’t tell you any more because I don’t want to spoil all of the book.

One of the characters in this book is Clarissa Mao, the daughter and self-appointed avenger of Jules-Pierre Mao, the founder of Protogen and funder of the protomolecule research. She feels strongly that her father was wrongly imprisoned by James Holden, so she wants to murder him. She buys a fake ID from one of her father’s underworld friends, then ends up killing him because he demands a lot more money than they agreed on. I would like to meet her because she seems like a kind, compassionate person and a good engineer, after she works out her anger by almost killing Holden’s crew.

This book reminds me of another book, called Star Trek: Deep Space 9: Technical Manual, because they both talk about wormholes and futuristic spaceship designs. Though, if I’m being honest, The Expanse is better written than Deep Space 9 because it uses correct scientific terms and adheres to correct laws of physics. There’s no swooping around on spaceships with wings. In order to swoop, you need wings to work, in order for wings to work, you need atmosphere. So no swooping in space. Instead, you accelerate in one direction, spin around 180 degrees, slow down, turn where you want to go, and accelerate in that direction. Science… No swooping.

I think that one of the things that the authors are pointing out is that even when a stupendous event–such as an alien wormhole opening to another dimension–happens, humans still hold their petty grudges and fight over little things. What I take from this book is that humans shouldn’t fight over their petty grudges, cataclysmic event or not.

This is an absolutely amazing series, and this book is one of the best. It is the craziest one so far, with stable wormholes and physics-defying alien space stations. I would rate it 5/5 stars. I absolutely recommend Abaddon’s Gate to anyone who is a fan of sci-fi.

If this blog post hurts your brain, just read the book. It is way better at explaining this stuff. Also it’s an amazing book.