Review: Abaddon's Gate, by James S.A. Corey

[Russ Allbery]

Abaddon's Gate
by James S.A. Corey

Series:    The Expanse #3
Publisher: Orbit
Copyright: 2013
ISBN:      0-316-23542-3
Format:    Kindle
Pages:     540

Abaddon's Gate is the third book in the Expanse series, following
Caliban's War. This series tells a single long story, so it's hard to
discuss without spoilers for earlier books although I'll try. It's a
bad series to read out of order.

Once again, solar system politics are riled by an alien artifact set up
at the end of the previous book. Once again, we see the fallout through
the eyes of multiple viewpoint characters. And, once again, one of them
is James Holden, who starts the book trying to get out of the blast
radius of the plot but is pulled back into the center of events. But
more on that in a moment.

The other three viewpoint characters are, unfortunately, not as strong
as the rest of the cast in Caliban's War. Bull is the competent
hard-ass whose good advice is repeatedly ignored. Anna is a more
interesting character, a Methodist reverend who reluctantly leaves her
wife and small child to join an interfaith delegation (part of a larger
delegation of artists and philosophers, done mostly as a political
stunt) to the alien artifact at the center of this book. Anna doesn't
change that much over the course of the book, but her determined,
thoughtful kindness and intentional hopefulness was appealing to read
about. She also has surprisingly excellent taste in rich socialite
friends.

The most interesting character in the book is the woman originally
introduced as Melba. Her obsessive quest for revenge drives much of the
plot, mostly via her doing awful things but for reasons that come from
such a profound internal brokenness, and with so much resulting guilt,
that it's hard not to eventually feel some sympathy. She's also the
subject of the most effective and well-written scene in the book: a
quiet moment of her alone in a weightless cell, trying to position
herself in its exact center. (Why this is so effective is a significant
spoiler, but it works incredibly well in context.)

Melba's goal in life is to destroy James Holden and everything he holds
dear. This is for entirely the wrong reasons, but I had a hard time not
feeling a little bit sympathetic to that too.

I had two major problems with Abaddon's Gate. The first of them is that
this book (and, I'm increasingly starting to feel, this series) is
about humans doing stupid, greedy, and self-serving things in the face
of alien mystery, with predictably dire consequences. This is, to be
clear, not in the slightest bit unrealistic. Messy humans being messy
in the face of scientific wonder (and terror), making tons of mistakes,
but then somehow muddling through is very in character for our species.
But realistic doesn't necessarily mean entertaining.

A lot of people die or get seriously injured in this book, and most of
that is the unpredictable but unsurprising results of humans being
petty assholes in the face of unknown dangers instead of taking their
time and being thoughtful and careful. The somewhat grim reputation of
this series comes from being relatively unflinching about showing the
results of that stupidity. Bad decisions plus forces that do not care
in the slightest about human life equals mass casualties. The problem,
at least for me personally, is this is not fun to read about. If I
wanted to see more of incompetent people deciding not to listen to
advice or take the time to understand a problem, making impetuous
decisions that make them feel good, and then turning everything to
shit, I could just read the news. Bull as a viewpoint character doesn't
help, since he's smart enough to see the consequences coming but can't
stop them. Anna is the one character who manages to reverse some of the
consequences by being a better person than everyone else, and that
partly salvages the story, but there wasn't enough of that.

The other problem is James Holden. I was already starting to get
annoyed with his self-centered whininess in Caliban's War, but in
Abaddon's Gate it turns into eye-roll-inducing egomania. Holden seems
convinced that everything that happens is somehow about him personally,
and my tolerance for self-centered narcissists is, shall we say, at a
historically low ebb. There's a point late in this book when Holden
decides to be a sexist ass to Naomi (I will never understand what that
woman sees in him), and I realized I was just done. Done with people
pointing out to Holden that he's just a wee bit self-centered, done
with him going "huh, yeah, I guess I am" and then making zero effort to
change his behavior, done with him being the center of the
world-building for no good reason, done with plot armor and the clear
favor of the authors protecting him from consequences and surrounding
him with loyalty he totally doesn't deserve, done with his supposed
charisma which is all tell and no show. Just done. At this point, I
actively loathe the man.

The world-building here is legitimately interesting, if a bit cliched.
I do want to know where the authors are going with their progression of
alien artifacts, what else humanity might make contact with, and what
the rest of the universe looks like. I also would love to read more
about Avasarala, who sadly didn't appear in this book but is the best
character in this series so far. I liked Anna, I ended up surprising
myself and liking Melba (or at least the character she becomes), and I
like most of Holden's crew. But I may be done with the series here
because I'm not sure I can take any more of Holden. I haven't felt this
intense of dislike for a main series character since I finally gave up
on The Wheel of Time.

Abaddon's Gate has a lot of combat, a lot of dead people, and a lot of
gruesome injury, all of which is belabored enough that it feels a bit
padded, but it does deliver on what it promises: old-school
interplanetary spaceship fiction with political factions, alien
artifacts, some mildly interesting world-building, and, in Melba, some
worthwhile questions about what happens after you've done something
unforgivable. It doesn't have Avasarala, and therefore is inherently
far inferior to Caliban's War, but if you liked the previous books in
the series, it's more of that sort of thing. If Holden has been
bothering you, though, that gets much worse.

Followed by Cibola Burn.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Reviewed: 2019-06-15

URL: https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-316-23542-3.html

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org)              <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>