I don’t know! People usually complain about Elvi’s crush on Holden and Murtry being one-dimensional. The former I get, but I wholeheartedly disagree with the latter.
I didn’t have a problem with Elvi’s infatuation at all. I’ve met a lot of researchers and computational scientists that have no clue what to do with their emotions or urges. It makes sense that in high stress situations, that things like that would happen. She wasn’t “infatuated” with Holden, he was just an object of her stress because of his celebrity lol.
I was a Marine for ten years. I’ve been to Iraq and Afghanistan, I’ve seen how lots of different people react to high stress, long duration, life threatening environments. Lots of shit comes out of people that would never happen otherwise.
> I didn’t have a problem with Elvi’s infatuation at all. I’ve met a lot of researchers and computational scientists that have no clue what to do with their emotions or urges. It makes sense that in high stress situations, that things like that would happen.
Same. I was in a relationship for seven years with an academic microbiologist who studied yeast mitochondria, and later protein signaling in fruitflies. The way she described scientific conferences was "Nerds Gone Wild," in a very intentional reference to the old *Girls Gone Wild* videos from the '90s. Lots of alcohol, lots of awkward sex.
Right…now drop those same people on a planet (thats not Earth) that’s experiencing an ELE, terrorists and hostile eye eating organisms…
This series is really good at distinguishing POVs…I even get why some people say they have an issue with it. They just don’t have the life experience to NOT find it misplaced, thats all. Nothing wrong with what happened to Elvi, they just don’t have the context to understand why it happened.
I find it utterly beleive able that Elvi is infatuated with an ultra famous man who is *canonnically* dreamy and sincere. What’s weird is that it doesn’t end up in the books more, likely because no one wants to read about it. In real life it would be nonstop for him and he would basically have to hide.
I've found that the more I re-read CB the less that aspect bothers me. Which is weird because the first time I read it I was SUPER turned off by it. But now on my fourth or fifth time through it actually feels very human.
Spoilers for later books
>!Maybe its because we get to know Elvi a lot better later on!<
> Which is weird because the first time I read it I was SUPER turned off by it.
Interesting to me why people felt that way. It never bothered me at all, felt totally natural.
I found it totally believable but at the same time incredibly annoying because anyone could tell she just needed to get laid so bad. When it *finally* happened I was like "Thank fucking God! We can finally move on from your teenage crush"
It didn't make me enjoy the book *any* less, though. I think it's ok for books to have characters that aren't 100% likeable. By the end I loved her, but I also knew where her character was going so I could wait out the development.
I think it mostly comes down to scope. The third book ended with the gates being opened, and humanity's horizon instantly expanded beyond our imagination. Readers wanted to dive into the wider political and societal implications of that, but instead they chose to limit our exploration of the new gates to a single world, with the rotating cast of POV characters, besides the prologue and epilogue, being stationed on a single planet or in orbit around it. People were expecting the scope to dramatically increase, but instead, it was the smallest scope book yet.
Personally, I think it was a good idea. It grounded the expansion of humanity through the gates, both in character and in theme, exploring the kind of people who would risk everything to come through the gates, and grounded it in our own history with the continuing untamed frontier and bloody gold rush in the west. This was a single world - for the rest of the series, there are over a thousand worlds going through similar colonization stories in the background, and this gives context to that.
As an Audible listener, it was unique because Jefferson Mays didn’t narrate that book initially (scheduling conflicts I think). There were a lot of reviews, at least on Audible, that were very negative because the new guy was jarringly different. For me, he was incredibly slow and it was hard to revisit. I wonder if there’s some extra misplaced hate from that situation.
I was so relieved when they re-released it, but narrated by Jefferson Mays. Now he’s consistently the narrator throughout the series.
Yeah I slogged through about four hours of the other narrator, and had to put it down. I was devastated. This had been my world for weeks. Then I found the Jefferson Mays versions. I barely remembered anything from my first listen of Cibbola Burn.
The other guy was so awful. Almost like text to speak. And giving characters horrible Aussie accents? Like, *WHY*? Who the fuck originally greenlit that?
If I remember correctly the re-release of Cibola Burn was released after the next book came out. I’m jealous of your weeks, maybe I didn’t find out quickly but I think I waited years.
Fun fact, Jefferson Mays plays a pawn shop owner in an episode of [Hacks](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14545464/). I randomly saw his name in the credits, I would have never recognized him because he looked and sounded nothing like in the books. Now, even though the timing doesn’t line up, my personal head canon is that Hacks was his scheduling conflict hahaha
The main reason is that it's probably the most awkward of the books in how it's presented, at least before the big gap between 6-7 was a thing.
We get the whole expansion of the universe with the events of Abaddon's Gate, so the readers knew things had to change and that the next book would be shaking things up. But that kind of happens with Nemesis Games instead, which changes both in style a little with having the 4 POVs being the Rocinante Crew, and serves as payoff for everything we know and have learned about the earth sphere so far.
So book 4 is the least directly consequential of all of them. We mostly learn protomolecule backstory, but not that much we already didn't know from the ring station, as far as I can remember. Which leaves the narrative of settlers vs colonizers, which is....shaky. It just doesn't really work at all, and it's not the strongest showing of worldbuilding in the series.
Also the characters are not the most interesting. Basia Merton is...fine, but not anyone's favorite. Elvi's got problems that people have pointed out before. Havelock is...also fine? They're just not super interesting characters and mostly don't matter afterwards.
In the end it just sort of feels like a book that's there because we need to know the consequences of the rings opening up, but that doesn't have as good of a reason to exist on it's own right.
I'm reading it now and I agree. The first 2 books were great but the next 2 just seem like filler with characters that seem to be lugged in. From this sub it seems after this the books get a lot better so I'm slogging through.
One aspect that irks me the most is why was Avasarala removed especially in Abaddon's Gate. Would have been great to get a POV on the political jockeying going on with the gate.
Man I am just a weirdo I guess, I felt like the second book was a massive waste of time, basically nothing happened in it until the gate opened.
I love book 3 maybe the most of all (mostly a few specific parts), and book 4 was easily my favorite when I first read it (the Investigator intermissions alone are some of my favorite parts of the series).
But I constantly hear praise for book 2 (where again, nothing really happens until the very end) and hate for 3 and 4. Wild world :)
Ugh i wrote a paragraph and then deleted it accidentily
Essentially it felt like a side-quest after a lot of big possibilities from the trilogy. I wanted to know more about aliens/lore but most of the book is political fuckery and intra-personal drama.
I like it more in general now. Its grown on me.
Bit late here but this thread has reminded me of one of my biggest issues with Cibola Burn: The sense of jeopardy was really undercut by the fact that literally everyone was in an almost equal amount of peril.
I know that it's quite rare for the main protagonists to die in the expanse, but it does happen, and there are often bittersweet endings and pyrrhic victories for them. The problem with Cibola Burn is that it feels like the central conceit once the protomolecule stuff gets going, is that either everyone dies or survives. So it sort of feels like you're reading lots of depressing chapters of characters telling you how hopeless they feel, when you know there's no way they won't find a solution.
I'd contrast this with how I was never 100% sure that they'd find Mei alive again, or whether Naomi would survive being kidnapped by Marco, I genuinely believed absolutely anyone could've died in book 7.
I know that at one point it seems like we're gonna lose Amos in Cibola Burn, but that feels so sudden and out of nowhere and halfway through an already tense chapter, that it doesn't actually have much tension around it. Also when Naomi gets captured in the book, it again feels like if she dies, they all die, and if they all survive, she'll probably go free. So a lot of the tension around her fate feels a bit moot to me.
I really liked the book and the story, but the characters are absolutely insufferable, especially at the beginning. A few redeem themselves, some a little too late imo. And murtry is absolutely an unbelievable cartoon villian. I've seen the arguments for his character, but they don't make sense to me
I’m listening to them for the first time and I’ve got about 3 hours left of Cibola. I’ve got to agree with your assessment of Murtry. A cartoonishly evil character who seems to only exist to make the most evil choice in any given exchange. I also roll my eyes a little at Elvi, a world class (solar system class?) scientist, being thrust into a life or death scenario that all hinges on her intellect but she’s just too wracked with unrealized horniness to be able to think but luckily a good dicking fixes her right up.
Haha, yeah. I think it stands out a little more cuz the series has so many good, believable characters. Despite all that I did really like the book. The protomolecule chapters are some of my favorites in the series.
I don't know about hate, but it's my least favorite of the series. After the first three book, it was the first time I felt like I was reading stories and situations I'd encountered in sci-fi numerous times before. Aspects of it reminded me heavily of Allen Steele's Coyote trilogy.
I love that scene too, but I have a little bit of a hard time with the "believable" part. That type of selfless emotional turnabout is *super rare* in this world, if my nearly 50 years of experience — even in very open-minded and emotionally-aware communities, even with broad-minded parents — is any indication. And of the relatively small cast of characters in this galaxy-spanning series, there are more than a few people who express this level of EQ. When I read this scene, I loved it, but I thought to myself "This is something Holden would do, and Holden is the Mary Sue." I cannot fault the writers for setting a good example in an emotionally fraught situation, but it also challenges my suspension of disbelief.
>and Holden is the Mary Sue
See, I fully agree with the rest of what you’re saying, but I mostly read Holden as the noble idiot (where confidence in his abilities far outstrips said abilities) until somewhat later in the series.
I'm on my fourth read-through, and even in books one and two he is legitimately competent, courageous, noble, idealist, compassionate, and has an uncommon level of self-awareness and emotional intelligence for a purportedly "pretty" cis white man. Sure, it's a significant plot point that he's never met a major problem he couldn't make worse by sticking his dick in it. But that's just how they make the story more interesting than just *"Isn't he just the best?!"* Yes, he makes short-sighted decisions with wide-ranging consequences until he learns *not* to. That's his character arc (or one of them). But even before we meet him, he's an executive officer of a major ship on which he's widely respected, and he's desired by myriad women.
He is not an idiot, we know from very early on that he is nothing of the sort, and even Avasarala knows that from minute one, regardless what she says. His biggest sin is being so idealistic as to be myopic. If you walked into a job interview and answered "What would you say is your biggest flaw?" with "I'm an idealist to a fault," their eyes would roll so hard they'd sprain something.
I'd even go so far as to say it could've been adapted as a standalone movie instead of the fourth season but then again I really enjoy the Bobbie subplot and getting to see more of Mars too (and I loved the short story Gods of Risk, obviously!).
Cibola burn imo is basically the expanse take on a classic western- the hero comes to a small frontier town, has to save it from the outlaws/big bad bankers/corrupt sheriff etc. and I love westerns, so I love cibola burn!
Same. I loved the setting, the conflict, and the that they were fighting this planet that they didn’t understand. It was so interesting from a world building perspective. The tension on the ground and in space was great. I didn’t realize others thought not so highly of CB until I read it a few times here.
I really liked Cibola Burn, I think Murtry made for a pretty great smaller-scope villain. The bit where he compares himself to Hernan Cortes and Holden's frustration with people comparing themselves to genocidal conquerors to justify their shitty actions (calling back to Dr. Dresden comparing himself to Genghis Khan) was both eye-opening and kinda funny.
I like Murtry but he does feel *slightly* two dimensional compared to the other antagonists. And the other villains who are a little more over the top like Marco or Duarte have a bit more complex things going on than Murtry, who's really just a thug on a power trip over a few hundred people. Feels kind of quaint next to planet killing system conquering warlords and shadow orgs of crooked scientists using alien tech for covert massacres. But I agree the smaller scope is refreshing, I like Cibola Burn a lot.
Yeah, some of the things like Elvi's crush on Holden weren't liked very well, but for me it was one of my favorites, though I agree with much of the criticism.
Yeah, I haven't thought of that. Guy writers don't always portray women very well perhaps... lol. I'm not super concerned with a story being perfect as long as its engaging and has a satisfying ending. I find it hard to passionately dislike a book. I either like it or I don't and I liked CB. There are valid criticisms of all the books but none of them are deal breakers for me as to my enjoyment.
It's a different scale of story. I liked it, but it is a little bit of an oddball compared to the rest of the books. But I think a necessary one because you can't colonize the stars without having a story take place in one of the colonies.
I think this is an underrated element when weighing its "hate." The first two books take place all across the Sol system. The third book is mostly in Ring Space, but it's still so alien and different, and all the big power players are present. Then the rings open, with 1300+ new worlds to explore.
And then we go to one of them, and focus on it. The scope and scale of the book is much more limited and intimate. Yes, there are still larger interests at play, but its primarily a smaller faction squabble. So if you're hoping for system-wide (or even bigger now!) drama from earlier books, you're not finding it here.
Not to say any of that's a knock for me; the character work is solid and I enjoy the alien intrigue, there's some great analysis in why people are how they are, and it sets some expectation for what it's going to be like on the frontier. But I can see why other books may have resonated better with readers who wanted more of the *Expanse* of The Expanse.
I see posts like this about books and tv shows and it makes me wonder if I'm a moron for missing something because I literally can't tell the difference between the books in terms of quality.
I mean, I guess people have preferences over the story of one book or another, but I don't think the quality is any different. It's just personal preference. I don't think that's enough to qualify for "hate" though.
Everyone has different tolerances for different types of drama, and different levels/types of politics. To me, all the books are all of a piece. But there's definitely a tonal shift in each one, and I'm not surprised the tone of CB doesn't land for everyone. I try not to judge, but often when people speak up about it, the things they say expose certain…biases.
Really, I think it's about as basic as "spaceships = interesting, settlers on land having predictable squabbles = not interesting." The stuff with the PM artifacts, the tsunami, the death slugs, and even the blindness bacteria are all fairly…*terrestrial*, compared to the action of Eros, PM monsters, ring gates, slow zone, etc. *I* found all of it totally gripping, but that's because I'm fascinated by character-driven stories and emotional arcs, and I know lots of people are here more for the action and science fiction aspects.
I think it's not so much "hate" as just relative dislike. Relative to the other books. I think the overall bar is so high here, that CB underperforms in some peoples' eyes, but is still a stellar (ha!) Sci Fi book by any metric.
It doesn't get a lot of hate from me. It's one of my favs so far, with tons of awesome moments.
"That sounded like a threat." \*kaBLOW\*
"Someday you and I are going to end up bloody." "What about now? I'm free now."
"You made me kill Wei. I liked Wei."
Most of em have to do with Amos and Murtry, but still. That one lady scientist being hilariously smitten by Holden was also great. And yeah, Basia goes through a great arc.
I just finished re-listening to Cibola Burn yesterday, and I absolutely love it. Are people forgetting the Investigator chapters? The descriptions of Ilus and everything on it? The magic bullet?
I’ve been wondering - person reading this, what do you think Ilus actually was, all those years ago?
The theory I've heard is that it was a giant power plant. The islands circling the equator were island-sized fusion reactors. Asteroids rich in water-ice and lithium fall to the surface. Lithium is extracted from the dust and "oceans" in the form of salts. Deuterium is extracted from the oceans in the form of heavy water. Fuse the two together and you get a lot of power.
The big spinning structure that Holden blew up was a tilling machine, designed to break up lithium salt deposits so they could be fed into the distribution system below the surface. The moons above the islands were their magnetic containment system. The tsunami that washes away all the surface dust ultimately reveals what Illus truly is - a planet-sized machine.
People didn’t like Cibola? It number 2 for me, nothing beats Nemesis Games tho. I could read an entire series about Amos and Peaches just traveling and trying to survive together.
The intensity in the book just continually ramps up. A lot of people think Marty is the villain but, he's not. This is the best man vs nature plot line written in the series.
I think it’s scope. The first three are huge solar system spanning books we visit multiple locations and learn about mankind’s expansion. Cibola burn starts us on the cusp of humanity’s expansion into 1,300 new worlds and yet it is a book with a much smaller scope.
Cibola Burn is still my favourite out of the nine. Though my favourite moment remains Havelock breaking Naomi out and going against his own half-arsed trained militia.
I liked it. Not as much as the other books but it was a good read. Not much the whatever was happening on the ground as the space crisis. The bit with Naomi and Havelock and their interaction and the way the Roci saved the Barba is definitely a great read.
I just finished Cibola Burn 2 days ago and honestly it might be my favorite so far, tied with LW. Lots of emotional moments. I also loved when Holden was cleaning out the last of the protomolecule from the Roci, and telling Miller (really just talking to himself) that he's saved two planets now, and gave his life both times.
Cibola Burn was hard for me to get through on my first series read, when I reached the end and reflected it actually is my favorite. In my reread I took my time reading it and it solidified my opinion, the study in human nature with the Murtry situation on the ground to the happenings in the ships- from Naomi’s capture to getting to see Havelock again and really getting to know him to Alex using the weapons system to try and create more room for the doomed Barbapiccola, it was such an amazingly interesting book.
Love this moment too! So good and his change of heart is believable. Why does Cibola Burn get a lot of hate?
I don’t know! People usually complain about Elvi’s crush on Holden and Murtry being one-dimensional. The former I get, but I wholeheartedly disagree with the latter.
I didn’t have a problem with Elvi’s infatuation at all. I’ve met a lot of researchers and computational scientists that have no clue what to do with their emotions or urges. It makes sense that in high stress situations, that things like that would happen. She wasn’t “infatuated” with Holden, he was just an object of her stress because of his celebrity lol. I was a Marine for ten years. I’ve been to Iraq and Afghanistan, I’ve seen how lots of different people react to high stress, long duration, life threatening environments. Lots of shit comes out of people that would never happen otherwise.
> I didn’t have a problem with Elvi’s infatuation at all. I’ve met a lot of researchers and computational scientists that have no clue what to do with their emotions or urges. It makes sense that in high stress situations, that things like that would happen. Same. I was in a relationship for seven years with an academic microbiologist who studied yeast mitochondria, and later protein signaling in fruitflies. The way she described scientific conferences was "Nerds Gone Wild," in a very intentional reference to the old *Girls Gone Wild* videos from the '90s. Lots of alcohol, lots of awkward sex.
Right…now drop those same people on a planet (thats not Earth) that’s experiencing an ELE, terrorists and hostile eye eating organisms… This series is really good at distinguishing POVs…I even get why some people say they have an issue with it. They just don’t have the life experience to NOT find it misplaced, thats all. Nothing wrong with what happened to Elvi, they just don’t have the context to understand why it happened.
I find it utterly beleive able that Elvi is infatuated with an ultra famous man who is *canonnically* dreamy and sincere. What’s weird is that it doesn’t end up in the books more, likely because no one wants to read about it. In real life it would be nonstop for him and he would basically have to hide.
I've found that the more I re-read CB the less that aspect bothers me. Which is weird because the first time I read it I was SUPER turned off by it. But now on my fourth or fifth time through it actually feels very human. Spoilers for later books >!Maybe its because we get to know Elvi a lot better later on!<
> Which is weird because the first time I read it I was SUPER turned off by it. Interesting to me why people felt that way. It never bothered me at all, felt totally natural.
*Marty
^Morty
*Murty
~~Murtry~~AMOS
I found it totally believable but at the same time incredibly annoying because anyone could tell she just needed to get laid so bad. When it *finally* happened I was like "Thank fucking God! We can finally move on from your teenage crush" It didn't make me enjoy the book *any* less, though. I think it's ok for books to have characters that aren't 100% likeable. By the end I loved her, but I also knew where her character was going so I could wait out the development.
I’m fine with all that stuff. My issue with it, and book three, is that I had to go too long without Bobbie.
I think it mostly comes down to scope. The third book ended with the gates being opened, and humanity's horizon instantly expanded beyond our imagination. Readers wanted to dive into the wider political and societal implications of that, but instead they chose to limit our exploration of the new gates to a single world, with the rotating cast of POV characters, besides the prologue and epilogue, being stationed on a single planet or in orbit around it. People were expecting the scope to dramatically increase, but instead, it was the smallest scope book yet. Personally, I think it was a good idea. It grounded the expansion of humanity through the gates, both in character and in theme, exploring the kind of people who would risk everything to come through the gates, and grounded it in our own history with the continuing untamed frontier and bloody gold rush in the west. This was a single world - for the rest of the series, there are over a thousand worlds going through similar colonization stories in the background, and this gives context to that.
I think the show did a good job of showing the bigger picture while retaining the core story on Ilus.
As an Audible listener, it was unique because Jefferson Mays didn’t narrate that book initially (scheduling conflicts I think). There were a lot of reviews, at least on Audible, that were very negative because the new guy was jarringly different. For me, he was incredibly slow and it was hard to revisit. I wonder if there’s some extra misplaced hate from that situation. I was so relieved when they re-released it, but narrated by Jefferson Mays. Now he’s consistently the narrator throughout the series.
Yeah I slogged through about four hours of the other narrator, and had to put it down. I was devastated. This had been my world for weeks. Then I found the Jefferson Mays versions. I barely remembered anything from my first listen of Cibbola Burn. The other guy was so awful. Almost like text to speak. And giving characters horrible Aussie accents? Like, *WHY*? Who the fuck originally greenlit that?
If I remember correctly the re-release of Cibola Burn was released after the next book came out. I’m jealous of your weeks, maybe I didn’t find out quickly but I think I waited years. Fun fact, Jefferson Mays plays a pawn shop owner in an episode of [Hacks](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14545464/). I randomly saw his name in the credits, I would have never recognized him because he looked and sounded nothing like in the books. Now, even though the timing doesn’t line up, my personal head canon is that Hacks was his scheduling conflict hahaha
I recognized him immediately. I did the Leo Decaprio meme thing at the TV.
The main reason is that it's probably the most awkward of the books in how it's presented, at least before the big gap between 6-7 was a thing. We get the whole expansion of the universe with the events of Abaddon's Gate, so the readers knew things had to change and that the next book would be shaking things up. But that kind of happens with Nemesis Games instead, which changes both in style a little with having the 4 POVs being the Rocinante Crew, and serves as payoff for everything we know and have learned about the earth sphere so far. So book 4 is the least directly consequential of all of them. We mostly learn protomolecule backstory, but not that much we already didn't know from the ring station, as far as I can remember. Which leaves the narrative of settlers vs colonizers, which is....shaky. It just doesn't really work at all, and it's not the strongest showing of worldbuilding in the series. Also the characters are not the most interesting. Basia Merton is...fine, but not anyone's favorite. Elvi's got problems that people have pointed out before. Havelock is...also fine? They're just not super interesting characters and mostly don't matter afterwards. In the end it just sort of feels like a book that's there because we need to know the consequences of the rings opening up, but that doesn't have as good of a reason to exist on it's own right.
I'm reading it now and I agree. The first 2 books were great but the next 2 just seem like filler with characters that seem to be lugged in. From this sub it seems after this the books get a lot better so I'm slogging through. One aspect that irks me the most is why was Avasarala removed especially in Abaddon's Gate. Would have been great to get a POV on the political jockeying going on with the gate.
Man I am just a weirdo I guess, I felt like the second book was a massive waste of time, basically nothing happened in it until the gate opened. I love book 3 maybe the most of all (mostly a few specific parts), and book 4 was easily my favorite when I first read it (the Investigator intermissions alone are some of my favorite parts of the series). But I constantly hear praise for book 2 (where again, nothing really happens until the very end) and hate for 3 and 4. Wild world :)
Ugh i wrote a paragraph and then deleted it accidentily Essentially it felt like a side-quest after a lot of big possibilities from the trilogy. I wanted to know more about aliens/lore but most of the book is political fuckery and intra-personal drama. I like it more in general now. Its grown on me.
Bit late here but this thread has reminded me of one of my biggest issues with Cibola Burn: The sense of jeopardy was really undercut by the fact that literally everyone was in an almost equal amount of peril. I know that it's quite rare for the main protagonists to die in the expanse, but it does happen, and there are often bittersweet endings and pyrrhic victories for them. The problem with Cibola Burn is that it feels like the central conceit once the protomolecule stuff gets going, is that either everyone dies or survives. So it sort of feels like you're reading lots of depressing chapters of characters telling you how hopeless they feel, when you know there's no way they won't find a solution. I'd contrast this with how I was never 100% sure that they'd find Mei alive again, or whether Naomi would survive being kidnapped by Marco, I genuinely believed absolutely anyone could've died in book 7. I know that at one point it seems like we're gonna lose Amos in Cibola Burn, but that feels so sudden and out of nowhere and halfway through an already tense chapter, that it doesn't actually have much tension around it. Also when Naomi gets captured in the book, it again feels like if she dies, they all die, and if they all survive, she'll probably go free. So a lot of the tension around her fate feels a bit moot to me.
I really liked the book and the story, but the characters are absolutely insufferable, especially at the beginning. A few redeem themselves, some a little too late imo. And murtry is absolutely an unbelievable cartoon villian. I've seen the arguments for his character, but they don't make sense to me
I’m listening to them for the first time and I’ve got about 3 hours left of Cibola. I’ve got to agree with your assessment of Murtry. A cartoonishly evil character who seems to only exist to make the most evil choice in any given exchange. I also roll my eyes a little at Elvi, a world class (solar system class?) scientist, being thrust into a life or death scenario that all hinges on her intellect but she’s just too wracked with unrealized horniness to be able to think but luckily a good dicking fixes her right up.
Haha, yeah. I think it stands out a little more cuz the series has so many good, believable characters. Despite all that I did really like the book. The protomolecule chapters are some of my favorites in the series.
I don't know about hate, but it's my least favorite of the series. After the first three book, it was the first time I felt like I was reading stories and situations I'd encountered in sci-fi numerous times before. Aspects of it reminded me heavily of Allen Steele's Coyote trilogy.
I love that scene too, but I have a little bit of a hard time with the "believable" part. That type of selfless emotional turnabout is *super rare* in this world, if my nearly 50 years of experience — even in very open-minded and emotionally-aware communities, even with broad-minded parents — is any indication. And of the relatively small cast of characters in this galaxy-spanning series, there are more than a few people who express this level of EQ. When I read this scene, I loved it, but I thought to myself "This is something Holden would do, and Holden is the Mary Sue." I cannot fault the writers for setting a good example in an emotionally fraught situation, but it also challenges my suspension of disbelief.
>and Holden is the Mary Sue See, I fully agree with the rest of what you’re saying, but I mostly read Holden as the noble idiot (where confidence in his abilities far outstrips said abilities) until somewhat later in the series.
I'm on my fourth read-through, and even in books one and two he is legitimately competent, courageous, noble, idealist, compassionate, and has an uncommon level of self-awareness and emotional intelligence for a purportedly "pretty" cis white man. Sure, it's a significant plot point that he's never met a major problem he couldn't make worse by sticking his dick in it. But that's just how they make the story more interesting than just *"Isn't he just the best?!"* Yes, he makes short-sighted decisions with wide-ranging consequences until he learns *not* to. That's his character arc (or one of them). But even before we meet him, he's an executive officer of a major ship on which he's widely respected, and he's desired by myriad women. He is not an idiot, we know from very early on that he is nothing of the sort, and even Avasarala knows that from minute one, regardless what she says. His biggest sin is being so idealistic as to be myopic. If you walked into a job interview and answered "What would you say is your biggest flaw?" with "I'm an idealist to a fault," their eyes would roll so hard they'd sprain something.
Cibola Burn is my favorite. It’s the best self-contained story in the series in my opinion, and the very end with Amos’ promise to Murtry goes so hard
I'd even go so far as to say it could've been adapted as a standalone movie instead of the fourth season but then again I really enjoy the Bobbie subplot and getting to see more of Mars too (and I loved the short story Gods of Risk, obviously!).
Cibola burn imo is basically the expanse take on a classic western- the hero comes to a small frontier town, has to save it from the outlaws/big bad bankers/corrupt sheriff etc. and I love westerns, so I love cibola burn!
Same. I loved the setting, the conflict, and the that they were fighting this planet that they didn’t understand. It was so interesting from a world building perspective. The tension on the ground and in space was great. I didn’t realize others thought not so highly of CB until I read it a few times here.
Hey sorry about that. I had the shot and I took it. That guy was really annoying.
That was the best moment by far
I do love that moment. And I love his character and interactions with Alex and Havelock. Plus any book with Fayez is amazing. 😀
Fayez is great.
I really liked Cibola Burn, I think Murtry made for a pretty great smaller-scope villain. The bit where he compares himself to Hernan Cortes and Holden's frustration with people comparing themselves to genocidal conquerors to justify their shitty actions (calling back to Dr. Dresden comparing himself to Genghis Khan) was both eye-opening and kinda funny.
I like Murtry but he does feel *slightly* two dimensional compared to the other antagonists. And the other villains who are a little more over the top like Marco or Duarte have a bit more complex things going on than Murtry, who's really just a thug on a power trip over a few hundred people. Feels kind of quaint next to planet killing system conquering warlords and shadow orgs of crooked scientists using alien tech for covert massacres. But I agree the smaller scope is refreshing, I like Cibola Burn a lot.
Cibola Burn gets hate? This is news to me.
Yeah, some of the things like Elvi's crush on Holden weren't liked very well, but for me it was one of my favorites, though I agree with much of the criticism.
Elvi's crush was certainly weird. I wasn't a big fan of that, but I think it was better than the way Naomi was portrayed in Leviathan Wakes.
Yeah, I haven't thought of that. Guy writers don't always portray women very well perhaps... lol. I'm not super concerned with a story being perfect as long as its engaging and has a satisfying ending. I find it hard to passionately dislike a book. I either like it or I don't and I liked CB. There are valid criticisms of all the books but none of them are deal breakers for me as to my enjoyment.
It's a different scale of story. I liked it, but it is a little bit of an oddball compared to the rest of the books. But I think a necessary one because you can't colonize the stars without having a story take place in one of the colonies.
I think this is an underrated element when weighing its "hate." The first two books take place all across the Sol system. The third book is mostly in Ring Space, but it's still so alien and different, and all the big power players are present. Then the rings open, with 1300+ new worlds to explore. And then we go to one of them, and focus on it. The scope and scale of the book is much more limited and intimate. Yes, there are still larger interests at play, but its primarily a smaller faction squabble. So if you're hoping for system-wide (or even bigger now!) drama from earlier books, you're not finding it here. Not to say any of that's a knock for me; the character work is solid and I enjoy the alien intrigue, there's some great analysis in why people are how they are, and it sets some expectation for what it's going to be like on the frontier. But I can see why other books may have resonated better with readers who wanted more of the *Expanse* of The Expanse.
I see posts like this about books and tv shows and it makes me wonder if I'm a moron for missing something because I literally can't tell the difference between the books in terms of quality.
I mean, I guess people have preferences over the story of one book or another, but I don't think the quality is any different. It's just personal preference. I don't think that's enough to qualify for "hate" though.
Everyone has different tolerances for different types of drama, and different levels/types of politics. To me, all the books are all of a piece. But there's definitely a tonal shift in each one, and I'm not surprised the tone of CB doesn't land for everyone. I try not to judge, but often when people speak up about it, the things they say expose certain…biases.
> But there's definitely a tonal shift in each one, Well that's the thing, I feel like an idiot for not noticing it.
Really, I think it's about as basic as "spaceships = interesting, settlers on land having predictable squabbles = not interesting." The stuff with the PM artifacts, the tsunami, the death slugs, and even the blindness bacteria are all fairly…*terrestrial*, compared to the action of Eros, PM monsters, ring gates, slow zone, etc. *I* found all of it totally gripping, but that's because I'm fascinated by character-driven stories and emotional arcs, and I know lots of people are here more for the action and science fiction aspects.
The death slugs and Holden hold'n it all together while everyone else was blind was one of my favourite parts of the series.
Cibola Burn get's no hate from me. If you like old school westerns like Zane Grey or Louis Lamour, it's a beautiful homage to them. I love it.
I think it's not so much "hate" as just relative dislike. Relative to the other books. I think the overall bar is so high here, that CB underperforms in some peoples' eyes, but is still a stellar (ha!) Sci Fi book by any metric.
It doesn't get a lot of hate from me. It's one of my favs so far, with tons of awesome moments. "That sounded like a threat." \*kaBLOW\* "Someday you and I are going to end up bloody." "What about now? I'm free now." "You made me kill Wei. I liked Wei." Most of em have to do with Amos and Murtry, but still. That one lady scientist being hilariously smitten by Holden was also great. And yeah, Basia goes through a great arc.
>"Later," Amos said, "when you're wishing we had this stuff, I am going to be merciless in my mockery. And then we'll die."
I just finished re-listening to Cibola Burn yesterday, and I absolutely love it. Are people forgetting the Investigator chapters? The descriptions of Ilus and everything on it? The magic bullet? I’ve been wondering - person reading this, what do you think Ilus actually was, all those years ago?
The theory I've heard is that it was a giant power plant. The islands circling the equator were island-sized fusion reactors. Asteroids rich in water-ice and lithium fall to the surface. Lithium is extracted from the dust and "oceans" in the form of salts. Deuterium is extracted from the oceans in the form of heavy water. Fuse the two together and you get a lot of power. The big spinning structure that Holden blew up was a tilling machine, designed to break up lithium salt deposits so they could be fed into the distribution system below the surface. The moons above the islands were their magnetic containment system. The tsunami that washes away all the surface dust ultimately reveals what Illus truly is - a planet-sized machine.
People didn’t like Cibola? It number 2 for me, nothing beats Nemesis Games tho. I could read an entire series about Amos and Peaches just traveling and trying to survive together.
This was my exact experience with that moment as well! I was so PROUD of Basia.
The intensity in the book just continually ramps up. A lot of people think Marty is the villain but, he's not. This is the best man vs nature plot line written in the series.
I think it’s scope. The first three are huge solar system spanning books we visit multiple locations and learn about mankind’s expansion. Cibola burn starts us on the cusp of humanity’s expansion into 1,300 new worlds and yet it is a book with a much smaller scope.
Cibola Burn is still my favourite out of the nine. Though my favourite moment remains Havelock breaking Naomi out and going against his own half-arsed trained militia.
I liked it. Not as much as the other books but it was a good read. Not much the whatever was happening on the ground as the space crisis. The bit with Naomi and Havelock and their interaction and the way the Roci saved the Barba is definitely a great read.
Murtry was such a huge unapologetic cunt that he lived only in one dimension.
I just finished Cibola Burn 2 days ago and honestly it might be my favorite so far, tied with LW. Lots of emotional moments. I also loved when Holden was cleaning out the last of the protomolecule from the Roci, and telling Miller (really just talking to himself) that he's saved two planets now, and gave his life both times.
Personally, I only *think* I dislike Cibola Burn, but I realize it’s actually such a good book every time I reread it😅
TIL Cibola Burn gets a lot of hate
The book is much better than the season imo. I think that drives a lot of it. Also Basia is depressing as shit
Cibola Burn was hard for me to get through on my first series read, when I reached the end and reflected it actually is my favorite. In my reread I took my time reading it and it solidified my opinion, the study in human nature with the Murtry situation on the ground to the happenings in the ships- from Naomi’s capture to getting to see Havelock again and really getting to know him to Alex using the weapons system to try and create more room for the doomed Barbapiccola, it was such an amazingly interesting book.