With most series of this length, towards the end I’ve tended to wish that the author would just wrap things up already so I could find out the ending and move on with my life.

With this series I actually got sad as I made my way through the last book because it meant that the story was going to end soon and I had been enjoying it so much that I didn’t want it to end. (Having said that, I also absolutely loved the ending, which is also unusual for me for a series that is this long!)

Personally I group them into sets of 3 by release I.e. books 1-3, books 4-6… Each set is consistent with the others in its set, but the quality decreases as the sets go on. Which is alright because the first trilogy is amazing and the final trilogy is fine.

More than anything, I really enjoyed the found family in The Expanse and that’s what pulled me through the series. I get actual homesick for the Rosinante after finishing a book. As for the writing, everything is “said” by characters if that’s any indication, I primarily consumed them as audiobooks so maybe that’s why it was so jarring,

Generally, I would definitely recommend the first three, would probably recommend the second three, and after that inertia will either pull you through or not.

This seems like an unpopular opinion, but I quit after 3 books. The first book was great, the second not as good, the third confirmed some consistent discouraging writing patterns from the second.

My biggest complaint is that I started the series for the sci-fi concepts and plotlines, but it quickly became a standard political procedural, with action and drip-reveal mystery elements, and the actual sci-fi elements felt unnecessary and incidental. Or to put it a different way, with rare exceptions, there just weren’t reliable sci-fi “big ideas” introduced after the first book, just a lot of human drama and plot that felt like it didn’t require the sci-fi setting.

I also felt like some pacing was off and there was a ton of filler. What confirmed that for me was when I noticed the chapter dividers in my reading app and saw nearly every chapter was almost identical length. My guess is the authors worked backwards from a chapter outline with a planned word count for publisher deliverables. If that type of planning sounds more like a business then it does art, I’d say that’s actually my experience reading it too.

Finally, one of my pet peeves for any type of believable drama is when conflict is created by people acting stupidly. Kind of the opposite of deus ex machina resolution, it’s a transparently artificial conflict that is just meant to give the characters something to do, but lazy writing. I felt that many many times by the second and third books.

Again, I’m in a minority I guess, but I felt it just wasn’t worth the time. Not as bad as Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson (my all time worst offender for filler and lazy plot), but lots of squeeze for little juice.

Some are better than others, but they’re all fairly high quality? I’ve definitely read worse than even the ones I’m not super thrilled about, so I’d say it’s worth reading them all if you have the time.

As others have said, yes. Oh I’m so jealous of you right now!