Book 5 in this series came out a few weeks ago. After I picked up the new book I decided it would be a hoot to go back and reread all the previous entries first to see if my opinion of them held up over the past four years or so since I started reading them. Turns out, this one was one of the very last books I put on Goodreads that I didn't also review. 
 Most of that is because I started at Goodreads in hopes of finding a way to track books I'd already read. I didn't intend to review them all, just to have a quick guide so I can see if I've even read something before, and if I liked it. Turns out, I still have multiple copies of some books laying around because it was something I forgot that I'd read, then came across the back blurb later and became enamored with the book all over again. Sometimes I'd be halfway through a something before it would click with me and I'd realize I'd already read it. 
 Stupid brain. Wasting my time. 
 Anyway, I gave up on putting up my backlog of books, it was too much work. I decided instead to just focus things I was reading at that moment. So for the past four years I guess I've been reviewing everything I read... well, almost, there have been some things I've read that I haven't reviewed, some because my thoughts on the books were so anger fueled I was afraid that I'd be accused of hate-speech if I reviewed them. And other times because I didn't have time and then decided I just couldn't do it. Or maybe I knew the author, and I felt weird about it. I don't know, I'm complicated, don't be weird about it. 
 Wow. I've bored myself to tears typing these lame words. 
 So, whatever. All I know is that I had the general feeling that this book wasn't that great when I first read it. It had some hype around it when it was first released, and I read it almost immediately when it came out. My hopes left me like air from a popped balloon. I was so bummed that when the second book came out a year later I had no intention whatsoever to read it. It was only Border's going out of business that got me over that hump. It's hard to turn down cheap books. 
 And the second book was my vote as book of the year that year. Not sure what happened between the two. Book three came out, it was amazing. Book four blew my mind. 
 So, what gives? How did they screw up the first one so much? 
 Turns out - they didn't. It was me. I hadn't touched this book since that first time I finished way back in 2011 and it still looked brand new sitting on my shelf. I dusted it off and was hooked right from page one. This shit was good. 
 So what happened from Rusty of 2011 when compared to Rusty of 2015? Beats me. I might have been having a bad week when I read it the first time. But if I'm being honest with myself, I think that I was expecting the aliens to be much more in your face right from page one. I was taken aback by the more subtle portrayal of aliens in my space-opera. 
 That's my best guess. I don't know. I read it now and am honestly pissed at former me that didn't like it very much. 
 The story, as it were, is told through the eyes of just two people - James Holden, XO on a freighter ship that hauls icy bodies from the outer solar system (think Saturn and beyond) in to the inner regions (think Asteroid belt) so the millions and millions of people living there have the water they need to live. 
 It's a lazy life, and he and his shipmates are working in the least prestigious space-based job a person can have. People who do this, if they're good at what they do, are probably dealing with a lot of crap from their past that keeps them from doing something better. 
 No one in this series have ever been to the stars. Humans in this future are alone in the universe and spend their time puttering around the solar system. 
 The other person is a past-his-prime detective working on Ceres, the biggest community in the solar system outside of earth-moon-mars triumvirate that dominates every place else humans live. The millions of people that live inside the hollowed out dwarf planet have a chip on their collective shoulders in regards to the people that live in the gravity wells of planets that try to control their lives. 
 The detective's name is Miller. And he is on the trail of a missing girl. He's slowly putting together the clues that lead him to cross paths with Holden. And together they discover that the whole universe it just a whole lot weirder, and worse, than they ever thought it could be. 
 And me? I think it's the best damn series in the world. It's surpassed The Dresden Files in that regard. Alastair Reynolds might technically still be my favorite author, but these books are the single best reading experiences I think I've ever had in an ongoing series. 
 I'm sorry I didn't like the this book the first time I read it. I was probably going through a weird time in my life. This is as good as it gets. I read the words on these pages and wonder if I'll ever enjoy anything else I read as much as I do this? 
 It's hard to say. I loved the Golden Sun books I read at the beginning of the year, but those hit me in a different place than these books do. I think these work a bit more for me because they still have the same human drama of the Golden Sun series of books, but also hit the perfect amount of awe at some unknowable otherness of what an alien intelligence might actually be like. 
 I'm proud of the guys that make up James S.A. Corey. They've changed my life.