Persepolis Rising an Old Beginning

Photo by Max Ostrozhinskiy on Unsplash

Few other titles that I thought of after reading book 7 of The Expanse book series: going to the past, a new pre-sequel. That’s how I felt at the end of the book. A start of an old beginning. I will explain why in this blog.

Persepolis Rising

I guess the history of The Expanse university is going in circles. A new power emerged and thought they were the one. They created a new order of things, tried to fit everything in that one system, and learned that humans are bad at following systems. Few other powers branch off. Followed by a war and death. Then a peace merges only screwed over by a new power. Time and technologies change, but people don’t. If only people learned how to document and read.

The story is 30 years after the book 6 -- Babylon's Ashes. During the 30 years span, Earth is slowly getting back to its feet. People had enjoyed peace between Earth, Mars and the Belt. Colonies had emerged in the other systems accessible by the stargate (not SG1). The rogue faction of the Martian Navy that left in the last book decided to come back and “force” a new world order.

 The writing is much better in this book than the last. I wasn’t a fan of the scattered and pointless points of views in the last book. This book is more focused. It seems the writers had figured out how to write both protagonist and antagonist points of views. And it made the book more focused and flurent.

The pace of the book is very slow. It may because the last few books are about inter plant wars and fast paced spaceship battles. This book went back to its more political style of story. I think people need to be told before they start reading this book.

The characters are back but older. Not too old as you may think. The reason behind it was glossed over. I don’t know why they didn’t choose 20 years just so they don’t have to “sci-fi” their way out of it.

In conclusion, this is a solid book starting a new story arch. I felt the story was almost like a prequel that was written in the future. The power dynamic reminds me of the beginning of the solar system wars. A super power attempted to assert its influence to the others. The history repeats.