4 Stars! 
 Oh where to begin?! 
 Back into the world of The Expanse. It is great to be back reading about our erstwhile crew again and I was interested in seeing how this story developed given that the protomolucule part of the plot was stalled. For me, this is a solid 4 stars but no where near the 5 stars that I come to expect from the series. I can't help feel that some of the writing now is tailoring toward making the tv show easier to portray. I few decisions on team dynamics are interesting and maybe it is because the authors want to freshen up the crew that changes have been made, but a lot of the massive overall picture has been brought in into a pretty tight story now. Bobby on board, Peaches? wtf is going on with that storyline? Just a fill in character? Why is she still there. Fred Fucking Johnsons story? I don't know, it was neatly parceled up and delivered and didn't leave me wondering about anything. As I was reading, I was expecting a solid intro into what the next phase of the story would be and whilst the ending gave us a hint of that, it pretty much just put up a blank canvas and said 'not sure yet'. I still love the series and I can't wait for the next book or the next TV series to start, but I do think that it has lost it's edginess. Once again Avasarala stole the show. It is so sad that they used a 'nice personality brush' on her screen character. Her coarseness and ability to drop scathing one liners on people is what makes her so brilliant. In this book she is in her prime and long may she live.