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Abaddon's Gate (The Expanse Book 3) by [James S. A. Corey]

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James S. A. Corey

Abaddon's Gate (The Expanse Book 3) Kindle Edition

by James S. A. Corey (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

8,341 ratings

Book 3 of 9: The Expanse

Goodreads Choice Award nominee

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The third book in the NYT bestselling Expanse series, Abaddon's Gate opens the door to the ruins of an alien gate network, and the crew of the Rocinante may hold the key to unlocking its secrets. Now a Prime Original series.

HUGO AWARD WINNER FOR BEST SERIES

For generations, the solar system -- Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt -- was humanity's great frontier. Until now. The alien artifact working through its program under the clouds of Venus has appeared in Uranus's orbit, where it has built a massive gate that leads to a starless dark.

Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante are part of a vast flotilla of scientific and military ships going out to examine the artifact. But behind the scenes, a complex plot is unfolding, with the destruction of Holden at its core. As the emissaries of the human race try to find whether the gate is an opportunity or a threat, the greatest danger is the one they brought with them.

Abaddon's Gate is a breakneck science fiction adventure following the critically acclaimed Caliban's War.

The Expanse
Leviathan Wakes
Caliban's War
Abaddon's Gate
Cibola Burn
Nemesis Games
Babylon's Ashes
Persepolis Rising
Tiamat's Wrath
Leviathan Falls

Memory's Legion

The Expanse Short Fiction
Drive
The Butcher of Anderson Station
Gods of Risk
The Churn
The Vital Abyss
Strange Dogs
Auberon
The Sins of Our Fathers

Print length

547 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Orbit
Publication date

June 4, 2013
File size

1296 KB
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Show a human a closed door, and no matter how many open doors she finds, she’ll be haunted by what might be behind it.
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She felt that politics was the second most evil thing humanity had ever invented, just after lutefisk.
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What had been logical became dumb, and all it took was changing the context.
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

James S. A. Corey is the pen name of fantasy authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck.

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

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"A politically complex and pulse-pounding page-turner...Corey perfectly balances character development with action."

-- "Publishers Weekly (starred review)" --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00A2DZMYE
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Orbit (June 4, 2013)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 4, 2013
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1296 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 547 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #5,104 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #29 in Hard Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #50 in Hard Science Fiction (Books)
- #59 in Space Opera Science Fiction (Kindle Store)

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James S. A. Corey

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James S. A. Corey is the pen name of fantasy author Daniel Abraham, author of the critically acclaimed Long Price Quartet, and writer Ty Franck. They both live in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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C.T. Top Contributor: Star Trek

Not as good as the others

Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2018

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ABADDON'S GATE is the third volume of the Expanse and while it promises many new and interesting developments, isn't one I enjoyed as much as the previous installments. That's not to say the novel isn't good but it has some flaws which made me think this series might be running out of steam. I hope I'm going to be proven wrong but the only way I can do that is to pick up the next volume.

The premise of the novels is humanity has explored the solar system and colonized both Mars as well as the Asteroid Belt. Unfortunately, this hasn't come with prosperity for all mankind. Poverty and conflict remain with humanity as the need for resources has become greater than ever. The conflict between the three factions has been made worse by the existence of the protomolecule, a billion-year-old alien artifact that has opened up new areas of technology as well as science. One of these is a massive celestial gate on the other end of the solar system.

A group of priests, priestesses, reverends, and other religious leaders have been assembled on a publicity mission to investigate it. Meanwhile, Clarissa Mao, daughter of Jules-Pierre Mao, plots to frame Captain Holden and the crew of the Rocinate in order to avenge her father. This frame-up job ends up forcing Holden and the crew through the gate to become the first people to see what lies
across the universe.

The mystery of Abaddon's Gate is an interesting one as we get to see hints of what species created the protomolecule and why. The continued lack of actual aliens in the series is something which is both to its benefit and deterrent. It's really a series about humanity's reactions to alien life versus alien life itself. I don't know if we'll ever solve the mystery of what happened to them but it seems very likely we will and I'm not sure that's a great direction for the series to go. Then again, I compare it to A Song of Ice and Fire. I'm much more interested in the events in King's Landing versus the White Walkers.

An interesting element is the novel it is a surprisingly religious novel. The character of Anna is a devoted Eastern Orthodox priest (or so I believe--things can change a lot in Russia in 200 years) who wants to save the soul of Clarissa Mao as well as end the fighting without further bloodshed. She spends a lot of time contemplating God, the universe, destiny, and alien life which is not the sort of thing you usually find in hard science fiction novels.

The crew of the Rocinante are decent in this book but nothing really interesting happens with them. Yes, Holden is framed but no one believes it for very long nor is there much tension from the crew. We also lack interactions with Bobbie Draper, which is a shame as I really liked her character. I will say that Holden is starting to grate on me as a character since his naked idealism only works with very cynical characters to contrast him to.

I also have to give the author's props for the fact they created the Behemoth--a converted Mormon generation ship which the OPA has turned into a completely useless military vessel. It can't fire any of its weapons due to the fact it's not structurally built for combat but it looks like it is. I will say, though, the book's handling on drug dealing offended me. One of the supposedly heroic characters spaces a man for dealing them and lost all sympathy as a result from me.

Indeed, my biggest issue with the book is the character of Bacca. One of the major plots of the book is how he has to seize power from his insane military commander who is grossly underqualified for his position. When, in fact, I think Bacca is a dangerously unstable murderer who mounts a mutiny for flimsy pretexts. When you actively hate one of the main characters and think he should fail, something has gone wrong.

In conclusion, Abaddon's Gate was....okay. I hope the next book is better, though.

6/10

26 people found this helpful

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Really boring unless you're a fan of theological debate

Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2018

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While I'm not giving up on the series, this book was astonishingly boring. I'm really hoping it's just a blip since I loved the first two books but, yeah, this book had very little going for it. The characters we've grown to love over two books suddenly became strange caricatures of themselves, making decisions that made no sense given their personalities or motivations. I don't mean decisions that turned out to be the wrong ones, I mean just weird things. In the lead up to this novel, I was never given the impression that Holden thought of himself as some sort of chosen one who was fated to be the only human being who could possibly make contact with the protomolecule, but all of a sudden in the span of a paragraph or two, he's making a huge decision based on nothing but the assumption that he's the chosen one. There are a lot of other examples, and honestly I wonder if one of the authors suddenly had a crisis of faith or something during the writing of this book because there's an extraordinary amount of time devoted to whether or not God wants them to interact with the protomolecule aliens and whether or not humans are sinners and if they've sinned coming through the ring and if they should die for their hubris and what it means about the nature of God and honestly, it was so boring I ended up just scanning most of the chapters to find the actual teensy little plot points hidden among all the bloated musings about the nature of the human soul. There are rings leading to hundreds, possibly thousands of unknown solar systems, there's mind-blowing alien technology, but you won't get to find out about any of it, because instead of all the cool stuff, this book is about people faced with really cool stuff and then getting in fights about Jesus.

21 people found this helpful

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Space Opera in the Grand Tradition!

Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2019

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James S.A. Corey’s “Abaddon’s Gate” continues the “Expanse” series, picking up shortly after the events of “Caliban’s War”. Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante have gained a measure of success as a ship-for-hire, only to find their work threatened when Mars claims the ship isn’t legitimate salvage. They take a job ferrying a documentary crew to accompany the Earth, Mars, and Outer Planets Alliance fleets to investigate the Ring the protomolecule built beyond the orbit of Uranus. Meanwhile, Clarissa Mao, the sister of Julie Mao, works to avenge her family’s fallen fortunes by destroying Holden and his crew’s reputation. Among the Earth fleet are several religious representatives, including Annushka “Anna” Volovodov, who seeks to discover how the Ring will change humanity’s perception of the universe. On the <i>Behemoth</i>, formerly the Nauvoo, Carlos “Bull” c de Baca wants to keep things running smoothly amid all the political tensions at the Ring. What the ships find on the other side of the Ring has grave implications for humanity.

Corey, the pen name of Daniel Abraham and Ty Frank, continues to use the series to examine the nature of humanity. In a chapter from Anna’s point of view, they write, “Show a human a closed door, and no matter how many open doors she finds, she’ll be haunted by what might be behind it… If humanity were capable of being satisfied, then they’d all still be living in trees and eating bugs out of one another’s fur. Anna had walked on a moon of Jupiter. She’d looked up through a dome-covered sky at the great red spot, close enough to see the swirls and eddies of a storm larger than her home world. She’d tasted water thawed from ice as old as the solar system itself. And it was that human dissatisfaction, that human audacity, that had put her there” (pg. 337). Further, Holden reflects on his experiences, “When he thought back to the man he’d been before the death of the Cant, he remembered a man filled with righteous certainty. Right was right, wrong was wrong, you drew the lines thus and so. His time with Miller had stripped him of some of that. His time working for Fred Johnson had, if not removed, then filed down what remained. A sort of creeping nihilism had taken its place. A sense that the protomolecule had broken the human race in ways that could never be repaired. Humanity had gotten a two-billion-year reprieve on a death sentence it hadn’t known it had, but time was up” (pg. 479).

“Abaddon’s Gate” continues one of the best space opera series in fiction. The technology isn’t too far advanced to be unfamiliar and Abraham and Frank explain the basic concepts, but the human drama drives this story more than the Epstein Drive. Abraham has written and collaborated on several adventure and graphic novels while Frank is George R.R. Martin’s personal assistant. Together, they craft a story that, for lack of a better description, is the “Game of Thrones” for sci-fi fans. Their evocative writing perfectly sets the tone. The grand scope easily leant itself to Syfy’s television series, “The Expanse”, with the third season serializing this novel. A must-read for sci-fi fans!

6 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

sft

It’s a bad’un all right

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 23, 2021

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3/10 • Well, the writing doesn’t get any better. The prose in this third novel is mediocre at best, and is often quite poor. The same can be said of the first two books in the series but at least they had strong story lines to compensate for this. The same cannot be said for ABADDON’S GATE. Here the narrative is laboured to the point where much of it feels like padding. The characters are one-dimensional, unconvincing, and frequently annoying (sadly, the crew of the Rocinante are sidelined for most of the novel). Some of them are pretty much superfluous, when you consider their actual impact on the flimsy plot. (The only saving grace on this front is that my favourite character from the first book is back, sort of.) The story is tedious at times and is cynically engineered rather than being holistic and organic – this is writing as a manufacturing process rather than a creative one. I get the impression from reading this that the authors had already assessed how many books they could stretch their story arc over (kerching!) and that no matter how thinly they would have to spread the story they were going to stick to that number. My initial enthusiasm for this series (fuelled, it has to be said, by the far superior TV series) is beginning to wane. I have book 4 already, which I shall read, but whether I go any further remains to be seen.

3 people found this helpful

Imyril

Epic

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 23, 2018

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Not going to lie: I was a bit taken aback to discover a plethora of new POV narrators at the start of Abaddon’s Gate. I shouldn’t have been: Caliban’s War introduced 3 new POVs, but I became very attached to Avasarala and Bobbie at least – it was a wrench to discover that every book in the series will throw a new set of perspectives at me.

This is high octane space opera of the absurdly action-packed variety, and if I missed the political wiles of Chrisjen Avasarala, it was (mostly) made up for by getting a glimpse – if only a glimpse – of what awaits beyond the solar system. It's another epic episode with lots of excellent set pieces, although it took me a long while to warm up to the new characters.

My only real criticism is that given just what’s out there I’m a bit disappointed that we’re still wallowing in humanity’s worst flaws for our villains. I’m hoping that the future will hold something different to arrogance, pride and self-interest.

12 people found this helpful

Barry Mulvany

I really enjoyed Holden's interactions with an old friend and the limitations ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 15, 2018

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So part three in the adventures of the Roci. We are introduced again to a new set of characters, though Holden is still around. We have Anna a preacher, Bull an Earther working for the OPA and Melba/Clarissa who I won't say too much about. I think an issue I had was that I didn't connect as well to these characters as I did to Bobby and Avasarala in the previous volume. There is a lot of action and the most of it revolves around the consequences of the end of Caliban's War. I really enjoyed Holden's interactions with an old friend and the limitations in the 'slow zone'. I think another issue I had was that the climax at the end felt a little forced, not entirely realistic, but saying that it was still great to read about. So another very good book but I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the previous two.

7 people found this helpful

Captain Tom Cat

A mildly disappointing 3rd novel but it opens the gate to a far greater expanse (see what I did?)

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 27, 2018

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I have hugely enjoyed Books 1 and 2 in this series. I enjoyed the TV series as well (but not as much as the books).

So I was a little disappointed with this 3rd instalment . Why? Well i think some of the personal story-lines are becoming a bit more predictable, which is perhaps to be expected in a 3rd book, the author uses the same phrases about the same characters several times throughout the book (which can break the 'escapist-spell' of the story and bring you back to reality, when you realise this is the third time he has used that simile, but mostly because, bizarrely religion features heavily within the story.
Religion within a science fiction setting is a difficult thing to master and even the best at it, Frank Herbert, didn't always get the balance right. This book certainly doesn't.
BUT.... this book does open the gates to a huge potential for future stories in this series. I hope that the potential is in fact realised. (I have just 5 minutes ago bought the 4th book in the series, so I will let you know.

5 people found this helpful

Dan

2&3 are the best of this series.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 26, 2019

Verified Purchase

2&3 are the best of this great action sci-fi series. Reviewing them together as I feel the story is a continuous arc. The writers improve significantly in style and character development over the first book, and expand well on concepts and plot (Avasarala is a sublime creation!). Broader perspectives and more complex plot. All comes together well, and above all feels a believable and logical vision of human society in the future. I never felt the direction of the plot went as well or they explored the full potential of the world they built after these, but these 2 books really hold up.

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James S. A. Corey
9,536
Kindle Edition
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James S. A. Corey
8,335
Kindle Edition
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James S. A. Corey
8,053
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $9.99
James S. A. Corey
7,709
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $11.99
James S. A. Corey
15,138
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $9.99
James S. A. Corey
7,507
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $11.99

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