This is the 12th book in The Expanse series I've read, and again I'm excited and delighted.

The Expanse series is part of the near-future science fiction sub genre, depending on your definition. Things don't come easy. They need to be figured out. They don't always work perfectly. Terraforming has not been perfected. There are whole populations that grew up without sufficient gravity, who could never safely go down a gravity well to a planet like Earth, and whose bodies look like they've always lived in low gravity. Weapons, propulsion, food, it's all work, and all discussed in the series in ways that pull you deeper into the world that's created.

And that's where The Expanse is part of another sub genre of sci-fi - space opera. In space opera the author creates an entire world, with distinct languages and cultures and histories, not just characters and stories. You could feel this from the earliest books in The Expanse series, but in Persepolis Rising you definitely feel it.

You also experience so many characters and their motivations and needs and wants and pain. The way all of the stories and desires of different characters overlap and crash into each other makes this a really fantastic story. Early on it seems like all hope is lost, and later on the feeling might be the same, but for different reasons.

Doors and corners. Doors and corners.