Finished Babylon's Ashes just before christmas. It was a bit slower and less packed than the previous ones, but that's basically because it's the second half of Nemesis Games.
Too much Marco, not enough alien, I guessEven if the alien Gates make a wonderful weapon
I finished it last night and felt it wrapped up too quickly and too convenient.
I really thought they were going to go with the gate teleporting them to a different location instead of it vaporizing them. I kind of hope it's like that and then Inaros (as much as I think the character is stupid) brings back an alien force through some wormhole. You heard it here first.
She appears originally in book #2. The season 1 is 3/5th of book 1, plus a couple of additions from book 2 they felt were necessary. Because otherwise, there would be nothing about earth or mars at all, it would be all belt, and earth "too much in the background". So they pulled Avasarala early, along with the rest of the earth cast (Jules Mao, the undersecretary, two admirals).Not clicking spoilers, and way behind the curve on this. Just finished book#1 last night, and I thought it was really good. Better than the show, and minus the dumb UN bitch.
The balance between book 1 & 2 is odd. There's a lot of the same general storyline, with different corps and different mad scientists. This is why they added Mao and most of the additional characters from book 2 (save Bobbie which came on S2 and Prax, which doesn't seem to be there) appear in season 1.What is the pace for the show compared to the books? Are they going to get through book 2 in season 2 of the show? Seems like it is moving forward at breakneck speed. Nauvoo already flying towards Ero etc.
... Thomas Jane comes back immediately for season 3.And actually said "YES!" out loud at the last line of book 2. Fucking great.
If you've missed it on ep 3, Bobbie grumbles because instead of going to fight Earth, her squad is headed to Ganymede to secure supply lines for Mars. So yes, Ganymede is probably happening as soon as Eros crashes...Definitely Venus, might end near Ganymede?
The core and focus of the books is humans and mankind's adaptation to changing things. The alien stuff is mostly a large McGuffin at that point. You get some serious peek at the alien stuff in book 4 because it's on the first real alien colony world (where Holden is sent to negociate peace between factions. What could possibly go wrong with that?), but relatively little in 5 & 6, which are all about OPA. Bits of Alien Ex Machina here and there.Just finished book 3, how much of book 4 and on is aliens vs "stories of humanity and character building"?
However, if you're really interested in the alien stuff and turned off by human politicsI wouldn't. The series is still good, and while 5 and 6 are very light on alien stuff it's pretty much guaranteed to pick back up at some point