Abaddon's Gate (Corey)
(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)
As previously noted: I watched the first season of The Expanse when it first aired on Syfy. I have to admit, I was somewhat lost and couldn't follow a lot of lost was going on. I couldn't even understand some of what was being said. Had I thought about it, I might've deleted the timer I had set for the series. However, I forgot to, so it taped the second season, which I watched and enjoyed more. I can now confirm that the third season aired on Syfy before it moved to Amazon, as I remember these episodes.
Comparing the book to the show: the first season of the show did not cover the entire first book. However, it did include characters from the second book, in particular, every character on Earth. The first half of the second season, which I recently rewatched, introduces a couple of Book Two characters in the first episode, setting them up for later, or repurposing them. The person whom I would call the "main" new character of Book Two, Prax, doesn't appear until halfway through the season when Ganymede is attacked (or about to be). Somehow they managed to finish book three by the end of season three. However, since most of it took place while everyone was trapped in one location, it sped things up. They also combined or repurposed existing characters so new ones didn't have to be introduced.
The book opens with the gate already out there in deep space and everyone keeping an eye on it, where it had been for about a year. In the show, it launches from Venus in the middle of season three.
A slingshotter, someone in a ship that slingshots around plantary bodies without crashing or crushing themselves, decides to make a name for himself by slingshotting through the ring. He dies in the attempt because the ring stops his ship, slowing it down to its own speed limit. The gate, now activated, draws even more interest.
Meanwhile, the daughter of Jules Mao decides to seek revenge against James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante. She's had her body augmented so she can kill easily, but needs to rest afterward. With a new identity, she boards a ship heading toward the gate working as a maintenance crew member. (She mostly supervises others' work but she took a crash course in it.)
The Roci crew, meanwhile, has a problem where the ship is locked down because the Martian government is suing to get it back. A documenatry crew shows up to hire the ship to go to the gate and promises that it can use its news connections to get the lockdown order lifted. This happens and Holden and crew are heading where Mao wants them. Added to this, a member of the crew is a saboteur who will allow Mao computer access so that she can fire the Roci's weapons at another ship, making Holden a villain. The ship's communications are also compromised with a spoofed Holden delivering an ultimatum and claiming ownership of the ring.
Miller starts making appearances. He only shows up when Holden is alone and only briefly. This is explained that the protomolecule is talking to him from Venus and it has to trip a lot of switches in Holden's brain for this to happen. It's more difficult if more are present. Miller warns him about doors and corners and rushing in blind.
When everything goes bad, and there's no safe harbor, Holden orders Alex to take the ship into the ring, but slow it down. Ships moving below the speed limit can proceed. Faster ships are halted and drift to the center.
Other ships follow, including the OPA's ship Behemoth, which is the Nauvoo repurposed. It turns out that the Nauvoo was never intended to accelerate forever to create gravity. Rather it has a drum in the center that could spin to provide gravity. However, within the solar system, that isn't necessary, so the ship is used top-down, and what should have been the ground is now a really thick wall. The fact that it can spin will become important will everything goes wrong again later on.
Holden comes to believe that Julie Mao is somehow manipulating him through the protomolecule, not knowing that it's her living sister. He ends up going to the station in the center of the spherical space within the ringspace. The Miller construct tries to help him fix whatever's wrong. Miller also wants answers to what happened to the race that created the protomolecule two billion years ago, and why are all the other exits closed?
Before they can get answers, Martians capture Holden. In the process, one fires off a weapon that the ring decides is bad. The speed limit is suddenly reduced dramatically. This causes a lot of death and injuries on all the ships. Worse, without a fix, none of the ships would survive the months-long voyage out to regular space.
There's a fight for control of the Behemoth to prevent in some setting in motion the destruction of the solar system by the ring, and everything works out. And Miller has plans for Holden.
The story is left wide open for the next book without it being any kind of cliffhanger.
This is the part of the show that I remember the most -- probably because that's when I was finally getting into it and understanding the characters. It seems funny that after spending so much time on each of the first two books that they managed to finish this one in so few episodes without leaving too much out. They hit all the major points that they had to. It's possible that they knew that they weren't being renewed so they needed to finish it, ending with Miller's promise that there's more out there. When the producers found out that Amazon was picking up the series, I couldn't say.
I enjoyed this book. I ordered the next, but barely started it before it was due back because of other book club readings. But I'll get back to it.
I do wish I'd written this sooner because Show "Expanse" is intermingling with book "Expanse", particularly with the minor bits.
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