Nemesis Games by James S. A. Corey – An Audiobook Review

Blurb:

A thousand worlds have opened, and the greatest land rush in human history has begun. As wave after wave of colonists leave, the power structures of the old solar system begin to buckle.

Ships are disappearing without a trace. Private armies are being secretly formed. The sole remaining protomolecule sample is stolen. Terrorist attacks previously considered impossible bring the inner planets to their knees.

The sins of the past are returning to exact a terrible price. And as a new human order is struggling to be born in blood and fire, James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante must struggle to survive and get back to the only home they have left.

 

Author: James S. A. Corey

Narrator: Jefferson Mays

Publisher: Hachette Audio

Series: The Expanse #5

Run Time: 16 hrs 44 mins

Audio Release Date: 02/06/2015

My Rating of ‘Nemesis Games’: 5 out of 5

Purchase: Audible UK, Audible US, Amazon UK, Amazon US

 

Review:

You can find my previous Expanse reviews: Leviathan Wakes, Caliban’s War, Abaddon’s Gate, Cibola Burn.

I think the best way to start off with this review is to just say that, without a shadow of a doubt, it was absolutely fantastic and gave me everything I wanted from the series so far in one book.

A lot of readers have been a bit on the fence in reviews I have come across due to the main party being split up in this one and, yes, the sudden splitting does seem a bit shoe-horned, but it works so very well for the overall story.

Until now we had been treated to the adventures of James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante. And, in all fairness we still are. It’s just the inflection on the word ‘and’ needs to change. In Nemesis Games every member of the crew has their own story that they are looking into. Curious about the pasts of Amos, Naomi and Alex? Dive into these pages and find out exactly what you have wanted to know all a long but, until this point has only been touched upon.

My one bit of a negative would be that James Holden doesn’t seem overly important, despite the fact he’s part of an important part of this novel. It feels like the secondary character/s he is with overshadow him. In all fairness, that could just be because, until now, he has been the face of the Expanse. So perhaps it’s just a welcome reprieve of a character that might have started to get a bit stale in the limelight? I’m not saying Jim Holden’s fifteen minutes of fame are up (far from it) just that it was nice to see him take a step back and give others a chance to get some impressive page time.

My favourite character, Amos, has an incredibly enjoyable (to me anyway) backstory and, in Nemesis Games, we get to see him deal not only with it, but with the fall out of it in the present day. The same could be said for Alex and Naomi, both of whom come out of this as different people to whom they went in.

Characters that I have loved but, sadly to this point, have been woefully absent in most of the series, make a come back in this one and take more of a starring role. Perhaps I enjoyed it more because characters like Bobbie and Avasarala were back? Who knows?

As you can probably tell from the review so far, I didn’t encounter a whole lot of negatives about Nemesis Games. To me, this was a breath of fresh air into a series that, until this book, had been using pretty much a repetitive plot formula (not that it was a bad one as this has and still is one of my favourite series).

As ever, I look forward to jumping into the next instalment. The only negative to that being that, with every book I finish, I get one step closer to there being no more Expanse.