Earth branched out many years ago and colonised the system. Earth and Mars are the big super powers and "The Belt" are the down trodden working class miners. Things have become kind of stagnant within the galaxy and like Earth today; everyone hates everyone else which results in an uneasy peace. 
 We have two POV characters: Holden and Miller. 
 Miller is the old gruff detective with a slightly skewed moral compass but lives his life by his code. He also drinks and has a failed marriage! To be fair, I don't think it is possible to write a detective character that isn't cliched anymore, it's just been done to death. 
 Miller gets handed a case where he has to track down the girl from the prologue which eventually drags him into a massive conspiracy. Miller started out kind of boring but he did grow on me as the story progressed, to the point where if I was about to stop reading for a bit, it wouldn't be on his chapter. He does go super Gaius Baltar about halfway through which is kind of odd but sure, why not? 
 Holden is as bland as he is sexy. He has a heart of gold and was kicked out of the military because he wouldn't fire on innocent ships. Holden is you, the reader. You are in this book little reader; does that make you feel special? You can just slip on his skin and go on a wild adventure! 
 Holden is second in command of a mining ship that is transporting Ice. They receive a distress call, check it out and then shit hits the fan. Holden is swept up into the conspiracy and must solve it before the galaxy kills each other. 
 I am being a little unfair to Holden, he is flawed and makes bad decisions but he still is kinda' bland. His crew are fun but could have done with a little more fleshing out. 
 I really struggled with the first 200 pages of this. You are constantly bombarded with info dumps. I know I bitched about cliched before but we could have really done with a farm boy, fish-out-of-water character. There is so much information and the bulk is not given to us organically, the author just stops mid conversation and tells us stuff. Eventually it did all click but there is a lot to digest. 
 The plot itself was fine. I guessed "who dun it" pretty early but I tend to blame all my problems on them anyway. Eric, why haven't you done the washing up? 
 (view spoiler)[Aliens honey (hide spoiler)] 
 Of course the company that is behind it is not actually something you could really guess because I'm pretty sure the first time I heard about them was during the big reveal. 
 I did have fun with it though and once I got over the initial hurdle, I raced through the remainder of the book in a couple of days. 
 I got quite a Mass Effect vibe throughout the book. The world building is great and places you don't even see (Earth, Mars etc.) feel like they exist and are living planets, we just haven't had the chance to see them yet. 
 Fun fact, I just started watching the tv show adaption and some of the music is very similar to Mass Effect (Galaxy map dun dun dun dun dun) and one of the actresses plays Admiral Shala'Raan vas Tonbay in ME (I totally had to look up the name of that character). 
 This was fun. It had some problems but the world felt fully alive and had depth, the plot kept me engaged and I'm curious about how the story progresses. 
 I'm in a good mood so this just touches on 4 stars. Hopefully the sequel will iron out some of the first books flaws.