I've been wanting to read this series ever since I read The Dagger and the Coin series by Daniel Abrahams, one of two authors behind the name James S.A. Corey. I watched the first four episodes of the show and decided I needed to read the source first. Took me a while but here I am.

I'm a bit disappointed because the series came with so much praise, and at least the first book hasn't earned all this praise yet. The worldbuilding and setting are amazing. I really like to imagine this SF universe that is focused on different powers in our solar system. The two major powers of the inner planets Earth and Mars, opposing the rougher faction of the Belters, the Outer Planet Alliance, with their own lingo, physique and attitude to life. And in comes a life-threatening event that causes a solar system-wide war as diversion.

However, what held this book back for me was the narrow PoVs. You just get two of them. There's Miller, a cop on Ceres, who gets charged with finding Juliette Mao, and Holden, the captain whose ship gets destroyed and who basically starts the war by announcing the destruction of his ship. Those two end up together eventually and find out where Julie Mao is, and save Earth from destruction. But Miller's chapters showed a broken and interesting character, whereas Holden mostly went on my nerves. He's a righteous, holier-than-thou character, who turned out to be super-needy and weird about relationships. I for one would have been happier if Naomi hadn't started a relationship with this needy dude, but whatever. I thought she was cooler as an independent, opinionated XO.

I would have loved to see more diversity in the PoVs. Someone at Protogen, someone else in the Belt, Mars, Earth, anything. Those two points of view were too self-contained somehow.

Of course, I need to continue now, because the threat was just stopped, not destroyed, and it was delightfully weird and fascinating. I just hope Holden becomes more interesting. He strongly reminded me of Geder Palliako from Dagger and the Coin somehow. Only that Geder was more interesting.

Anyhow, 3 to 3.5 stars.