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  • Babylon's Ashes

  • Book Six of the Expanse
  • By: James S. A. Corey
  • Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
  • Length: 19 hrs and 58 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (3,010 ratings)
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Babylon's Ashes

By: James S. A. Corey
Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
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Summary

A revolution brewing for generations has begun in fire. It will end in blood.

The Free Navy - a violent group of Belters in black-market military ships - has crippled the Earth and begun a campaign of piracy and violence among the outer planets.

The colony ships heading for the 1,000 new worlds on the far side of the alien ring gates are easy prey, and no single navy remains strong enough to protect them. James Holden and his crew know the strengths and weaknesses of this new force better than anyone.

Outnumbered and outgunned, the embattled remnants of the old political powers call on the Rocinante for a desperate mission to reach Medina Station at the heart of the gate network. But the new alliances are as flawed as the old, and the struggle for power has only just begun.

As the chaos grows, an alien mystery deepens. Pirate fleets, mutiny and betrayal may be the least of the Rocinante's problems. And in the uncanny spaces past the ring gates, the choices of a few damaged and desperate people may determine the fate of more than just humanity.

©2016 James S. A. Corey (P)2016 Little Brown Book Group

What listeners say about Babylon's Ashes

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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Filler?

I really enjoyed the first few books of this series, but recently it seems to be going downhill. This book continues with the 'Free Navy' saga that began in the last book, but it strikes me as a long, and drawn out filler portion of the wider arc. There is very little advancement of the overall plot, and everything covered in this book and the last should really have been condensed to a singular book at most. Also, the 'atrocity' of the attack on Earth from the previous book is massively downplayed, and it comes across as odd that there doesn't seem to be much of an emotional response about it from the characters.

As a final note, this may be because I have had some time away from the series and have forgotten the nuances of the writers' style; but I hope you like metaphors, because this book puts metaphors in your metaphors, so you can metaphor while you metaphor.

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10 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Another winner! 5 stars all the way

I love and adore this series. Not a committed fan of science fiction I have surprised myself by devouring all the books (Cibola Burns I had to read as opposed to listen to tho'). And this one absolutely delivers. I think what attracts me so much to these novels is character development and evolution and a really thoughtful and original plot, as well as a society which echoes political and socio-economic factions that are all around us, I can relate to these people. They might be fighting in spaceships miles above our heads, but they're waging the same sorts of wars. The intense humanness is what keeps me reading, and the great writing of course.

Of course, now that I've watched Season 1 of The Expanse their faces are fixed in my head as the tv characters, but mostly that's ok. Jefferson Mays he is the perfect narrator, every nuance, every tiny inflection comes through.

Brilliant.

ps Audible - will you finance re-recording Cibola Burns with Jefferson Mays? Nothing against Erik Davies, it's just that his narration is not as suited to the series as JM, it spoils an otherwise brilliant run of books.

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    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Complete change of pace... dead slow ahead.

What disappointed you about Babylon's Ashes?

The pacing was slow, predictable and repetitive.
The villain was just unbelievable. Every time Inaros started going off on one about his righteousness, I just wanted to yell "But you killed billions of people". What's worse, other characters supported him. Even with the differences between the belt and Earth, I refuse to believe that people would support someone who orchestrated genocide. I like my villains to at least be believable.
Plus the author seemed to completely forget about Amos half way through the book... he just disappeared and the re-appeared towards the end of the story. Very little exploration of Clarissa being on board the Rocinante aside from some thrown in angst that Jim just gets over between heartbeats.
Bearing in mind how much time the book spends building up the bad guy, the ending was anticlimactic at best.

What will your next listen be?

I'm invested in the Expanse series so shall listen to the next one. I just pray it'll be less dull than this dirge.
Until then, moving on to We Are Legion (We Are Bob) - which so far is excellent.

Have you listened to any of Jefferson Mays’s other performances? How does this one compare?

Mays was on form as always. I have no complaints about his excellent performance.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Babylon's Ashes?

Pretty much anything with Inaros would be cut - leaving him as some faceless entity causing terror. The Philip story was tedious and predictible and so would be mostly axed.
In short, by the time I finished editing this novel it'd be a short story.

Any additional comments?

In all honesty, I think you could skip this book entirely and go straight to the next one with little or no continuity issues.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Great performance

I really enjoyed book 6. The plot is expansive and nail biting at times. The book is beautifully read by Jefferson Mays. Thank you for bringing him back again to read it.

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4 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Good but lacking in on area

Look, I enjoy the style and delivery.
But for the first time In my life I read 6 books waiting for the payoff.
Okay I get it with Harry Potter and wheel and of time trying to copy epics like GOT and Anna Karinina, but you’re not those them so stop. And besides even they didn’t do more than you have done.
Since you’re not paid per word, why are you dragging out the overall story so much?
I listen on headphones on the way to work and it’s perfect for that because you will never be an all time great no matter how much you try.
Please finish the story and talk more about the soul sucking aliens you started with 7 books ago!!
✌🏼

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Damn. I've finished them!

This is last of the books in The Expanse series, and I've grown to love them more as I've progressed through them. The characters are complex and interesting, the scope is sweeping, and there's wit as well as drama, psychological insight as well as action. All six books are entirely satisfying.

This series is as free from gender bias as anything I've ever read. That two men can write a character like Avasarala - an old, sweary, powerful Indian woman - is impressive. Age, sex, race and sexuality are all incorporated into these books as unremarkable facts of life. They do not determine whether someone is a soldier, a politician, an engineer, a priest or a doctor. These authors write about People.

The book is well read. The voices of all the characters are consistent and evocative, and Maya's rendering of the Belter patois is excellent.

The overall message of this series is humane and tender and timely, but it is conveyed in riveting stories, and through characters it's easy to fall in love with.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Make this one last

Where does Babylon's Ashes rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

It's in the top 5, along with four other James S A Corey books.
Above Paul Hoffman, Robert Harris, Frank Herbert, James Clavell, Steven King... you get the idea.

What did you like best about this story?

Okay, maybe I was waxing a tad lyrical, after all it's the sixth book in the series. But much like the Rocenante's Epstein drive, this series seems to run on a different sort of gas.

What is notable in this book is that it concerns a real, human nemesis worthy of Holden - Marco Innaros. He is a fantastic villain; perpetrator of deeds that would make Atilla the Hun cough, yet with a warped moral framework that masterfully justifies everything he does. James SA Corey is a genius at shifting the narrative voice to describe though process, without changing the overall feel and pace of the book.

This book also has the best space battles out of the series; I would go as far as to say the most exciting ever written. Wait till the rail gun comes out... You'll understand what I mean.

Have you listened to any of Jefferson Mays’s other performances? How does this one compare?

His voice is now part of my head and I'm going to struggle going to sleep tonight without him.
Hence the lengthy review.

Mays has the rare gift of being able to capture the essence of characters with only the slightest changes of intonation. In a book of this scale, subtlety of delivery is key, and I was really awed by his control of the human voice.

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

With Earth in ruins, the only thing standing between humanity and a new dark age, is a Martian frigate, its crew... and a rail gun.

Any additional comments?

Good hunting!

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Long on Style, Short on Content

Having greatly enjoyed the Expanse series thus far, I looked forward with eager anticipation to this next instalment. We had been left with a mysterious cliff hanger relating to the way ships would disappear after passing through the new alien gateway and so everything was set to keep the momentum going.

It pains me to say but Babylon's Ashes falls far short of expectations and is the weakest book in the series by far. The sheer potential of over 1,300 new star systems left over from an ancient alien empire and instead we are plodding along with internal politics which are just plain dull. Now, I'm not one to pan any book because it spends time on the political struggle that was brewing between the inner planets and the Belters but to spend an entire book on this aspect was a mistake. I understand why Corey wanted to deal with this issue before perhaps moving on but it would have been much better handled as a sub plot to a far more compelling story featuring one or more of those myriad star systems yet to be explored.

It appears that in order to fill the required pages likely deemed necessary buy the publishers, Corey spends huge amounts of this book with the personal thoughts, musings and deep personal introspective of the characters. The story is padded out in this manner and the plot, such as it is, takes an absolute age to unfold. It's not really until chapter 25 that something interesting happens, then things sort of revert back to the naval gazing and lengthy prose describing such things as how a characters family take their breakfast or the philosophical musings of one character or another. Although "painting a picture" is what makes a good author, the detail Corey goes into here is just too much. We get to know why people think the way they do and are given overly detailed descriptions of mundane scenes that only serves to mire the pace of the narrative to a crawl where the reader has to fight to maintain interest or even care what's going on. This is a real shame as Corey is capable of so much better. Given how short the book is on content and excessively long on style makes for lots of pages that don't say very much or take a very long time to describe a simple concept. Reading this sort of reminded me of how a government report might read. Reports written by civil servants that manage to pour words into something and not say very much.

The thought occurred to me that perhaps Corey wasn't given the time he needed to come up with something good and being slaved to a publishing contract which demanded a book of a certain number of pages by a particular date succumbed to the pressures of said contract and penned something that was of the desired length and in order to do that had to fill the book somehow by having each main characters motivations, thoughts be incorporated into the narrative. Finally, things start to actually get interesting and the momentum is maintained from around the mid forties in chapter terms. This is sad as I think the story ends at chapter 51. There is an epilogue but it seems to be in the same vein as the rest of the book and has a lot of words but actually says very little and is just overly cerebral.

The Expanse series has massive potential as Corey has developed it to the point where now the scope of new worlds is just awesome and yet has wasted this in Babylon's Ashes. If Corey intended this as the breath to be taken before moving the pace up again for the next book then be warned that you just might fall asleep waiting for something to happen. I do like Corey's work but this book falls far short of what he is capable of I'm afraid to say.

This is an excellent example of form over function or style over content. In my opinion you could probably skip this book entirely and wait for the next to arrive, if there is one. Something about the way Corey wrote his last few words in that epilogue made me wonder if he has signed off on this series at least for a while.


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such a shame

big fan of the early books, but this was terrible. most of the book was the characters explaining what they did or were going to do. please make the story the most important part and not how they talk to each other with out apologising if they say the wrong thing.

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Bring on the next one

Another great installment of the Expanse series. I've been waiting for it for a while now and enjoyed it thoroughly, but sad it's already over. just going to have to wait again now.

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