The aftermath of war is a battlefield in its own right. Earth reels, Belters rebel, and the Free Navy tightens its grip. Holden, Avasarala, and the crew pick up the pieces—literally and metaphorically—rallying allies to retake the system, dismantle Marco’s power, and reforge a future from ruin. Four stars—gritty, sprawling, and painfully necessary

The two-thirds point of Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham's Expanse saga has a lot of work to do: the previous five books have built up a compelling universe left in a very difficult situation...and now you get the impression some ends need to be trimmed so that the story can continue. And, unfortunately for us, house-keeping does not always a compelling novel make. Case in point: the previous books all told a story from at most four points of view that wound closer and closer as the narrative progressed. In Babylon's Ashes, the 53 chapters are split between seventeen different points of view...and the inclusion of some of them -- like the three chapters featuring Prax from second book Caliban's War -- is baffling. The core story gets lost amidst far too many hands in the pot, with the enjoyment usually derived from seeing these two plot so compellingly lost as you bounce around from place to place, often to very little effect. I'm not one to accuse authors of simply boosting page-counts, but more of this than I'm comfortable with really does feel like drift rather than burn. When it's good, though, hot damn is it ever good; the crew of the Rocinante, Avasarala, Bobbie, Fred...they feel like old friends, the ways they keep getting pulled into these larger conflict really does play like a genuine result of necessity, and a superb job is done in reifying the concept of solar system-wide conflict. No-one, it's fair to say, is going to be starting the series at this point, and Abraham and Franck have doubtless earned a little patience from their readers for all the quality that has come before. So take a breath, skip the Prax chapters if you're feeling a little weary, and let's all hope that everything is cleaned up and now in place for the final third to begin. This is still about the most compelling series in the barren veldts of modern SF. Here's hoping Persepolis Rising gets us back on course.