When I finished Nemesis Games, the fifth entry in James S.A. Corey’s space opera opus The Expanse, I covered my face with my hands and squealed out loud. To understate it quite a bit, I was having serious emotions about what a perfect specimen of the genre I had just jammed into my brain. This is an absolutely magnificent, action-packed juggernaut, a 100-percent-must-read entry in the SF canon. It is, for me, James S.A. Corey’s best book. Please include a copy in my grave when I pass from this plane of existence to the next.

The Expanse is huge. Nemesis Games is the fifth massive novel in a series that also boasts multiple pieces of short fiction, not to mention an upcoming television adaptation on Syfy. Four additional novels are planned between now and 2019. The series’ history is rooted in gaming, and it’s been brilliantly ported to book form. Regardless of which entry you read, the universe feels tremendously rich. This series won my heart for a number of reasons, but the most compelling are its people: full of flaws, secrets, and drama, loyal to their friends and dedicated to their causes.

Post-Cibola Burn, over 1,000 new worlds are available for human colonization, accessible via an alien transport gate, and the political situation in the solar system is tenuous; the future remains uncertain for those who have chosen to remain. It is clear the lure of the new worlds will forever change life on the inner planets and within the asteroid belt. The book opens with the crew of the Rocinante in dock on Tycho Station, and at loose ends while they wait for their ship to be repaired. Before long, individual obligations send them in different directions. Only Captain James Holden remains, falling in with a reporter investigating the disappearance of colony ships ferrying people to new homes on life-sustaining planets.

Holden’s investigation into missing ships reconnects him with Fred Johnson, the leader of the OPA, as they inadvertently discover a plot to steal the last remaining sample of the protomolecule that has driven so much of the action since it was unleashed in the first book. Alex reunites with Bobbie Draper after an abortive dip into his past on Mars, and starts an investigation for Holden which puts him in the path of angry political radicals. Amos heads to Earth to see to unfinished business and visits Clarissa Mao, who he befriended while she was a prisoner transport on the Rocinante. He’s inadvertently trapped as the Earth becomes a victim of worldwide terrorism. After receiving a cryptic message from an old connection, Naomi is reunited with people she left behind on Ceres Station, for good reasons, years earlier, and pulled back into the fold by a group preparing to lay a path of destruction aimed at the governments across the system.

This scattering of the crew we’ve followed from the beginning of the series finally unites several disparate narrative threads from earlier books, as tensions between Earth, Mars, and various factions of the Outer Planets Alliance explode into active conflict, catching our heroes off-guard, and, in some cases, revealing more about their origins than I ever imagined. The story shifts between dramas both interpersonal and intergalactic, both offering their share of twists and turns. This crew of outcasts with complex pasts, who have survived for so long due to their unflagging commitment to one another, is spread across the system. Can they find their way back amid the inescapable destruction brought to bear due to decades of abuse and political unrest? These are real stakes.

There’s always a threat that this many separate storylines will fail to coalesce into a solid narrative. But by rooting the plots in the points of view of crew members we already know and love, it remains the beautiful, rollicking, occasionally extremely emotional tale we expect from this series. In many ways, it is also pure competence porn: each character gets a chance to shine, showing us exactly why the crew of the Rocinante is the beating heart of this series, and how they’ve all managed to stay alive despite insurmountable odds. Many long-planned plot developments are cleanly revealed, and so deftly handled I marvel at Corey’s cleverness, and the amount of work it must have taken to keep this many deck chairs organized.

This is a story about the power of friendship and human connection amid politics, social commentary, and explosive action. Friendships and alliances are laid bare against a complicated backdrop of old political grievances, corporate abuses of poor workers, human rights violations, terrorism, and the horrible things people are willing to do for power. The best space opera resonates because of the way we feel about the people out in the black, on alien worlds, aboard spaceships or inside spinning asteroids. We care deeply about what happens to them in the unforgiving harshness of the universe. We want them to be OK.

Nemesis Games is a fast-paced space adventure, heartbreaking and heartwarming in equal measure, and an incredible delight to read.

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