“The mechanic had laid out two suits of their Martian-made light combat armour, a number of rifles and shotguns, and stacks of ammunition and explosives.
“What,” Holden said, “is all this?”
“You said to gear up for the drop.”
“I meant, like, underwear and toothbrushes.”

James SA Corey – Cibola Burn

With Cibola Burn, I’m thoroughly invested in The Expanse. Leviathan Wakes pulled me into the series, Caliban’s War made me care about its politics and characters, and Abaddon’s Gate opened the door to something vastly bigger. Cibola Burn then takes that new universe and asks a rather uncomfortable question: what happens when humanity finally gets a chance to start spreading across the stars?

The answer, unsurprisingly, is that we immediately start arguing over who owns what.

I absolutely loved that aspect of the book. The Ring Gates have opened access to countless new worlds, and the rush to colonise has begun. Ilus, or New Terra depending on who you ask, has already been settled by Belters looking for somewhere they can call home when a corporation arrives claiming legal ownership of the planet. James Holden and the Rocinante are sent in to mediate, which is roughly equivalent to throwing a box of matches into a fireworks factory and hoping everyone behaves themselves.

What makes Cibola Burn work so well for me is that the central conflict is actually very familiar. Strip away the alien technology, spaceships and terrifying planetary phenomena, and this is a story about colonisation, property rights, corporate power and the people who get caught between them.

The Belters have risked everything to establish a new home. From their perspective, they have discovered an empty world and built a life there. Then a corporation turns up with paperwork declaring that it owns the place. Technically, that might give them a legal claim, but there is a wonderfully uncomfortable question underneath it all: how much does a piece of paper actually mean to someone who has already built their home somewhere?

Corey uses that conflict to explore the ugly side of colonialism. The frontier might be new, but the attitudes are depressingly old. The powerful arrive with legal authority, financial resources and the assumption that they have the right to decide what happens next. Those without power are expected to accept the decision.

It also gives the novel a fascinating take on corporate influence. Royal Charter Energy is not presented simply as a cartoonishly evil organisation. There are legitimate scientific and economic interests involved, and there are people within the corporation who genuinely believe they are doing important work. The problem is what happens when commercial interests become so powerful that human lives become another variable in the balance sheet.

That is where Murtry becomes such an effective antagonist for me. He is not frightening because he is completely irrational. Quite the opposite. His worldview is frightening because there is a logic to it. He believes in ownership, authority and consequences, and he is perfectly happy to apply those principles with increasingly brutal efficiency.

And then Holden arrives.

I have to admit that I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Holden by this point. I like him enormously, but I also regularly find myself thinking that if there were an award for making complicated situations even more complicated, Jim would be a strong contender. His determination to do what he believes is right remains one of his defining qualities, but Cibola Burn makes it increasingly clear that morality becomes rather more complicated when everyone involved believes they are the victim.

That ambiguity is one of the book’s greatest strengths.

There is no simple good side and bad side here. The settlers have understandable grievances, the corporation has legitimate interests, and both groups are capable of doing terrible things. Corey repeatedly demonstrates how quickly fear and resentment can turn a dispute into violence.

The other theme I really enjoyed is humanity’s relationship with the unknown. Ilus is not simply an empty planet waiting for us to put up some buildings. It contains the remnants of an ancient civilisation that created technology we barely understand. The more Holden and the others discover, the clearer it becomes that humanity is poking around in something vastly beyond our comprehension.

I love that sense of scale.

We have finally escaped the solar system and discovered hundreds of potential new worlds, only to realise that the universe was already here long before we arrived. Humanity thinks it has opened the door to a new frontier, but perhaps we have actually walked into someone else’s ruins.

There is also a lovely contrast between exploration and exploitation. We like to imagine exploration as a noble endeavour, but Corey keeps asking what happens when the explorers immediately start looking for resources, territory and profit. It is another example of how the series takes enormous science fiction concepts and anchors them in recognisably human behaviour.

Cibola Burn does have a few slower stretches, particularly while the various factions are being established, and I did occasionally find myself wishing that the story would get back to the Rocinante crew. But once the tension starts building, I was completely hooked. The planetary setting also gives the book a very different feel from the previous instalments, almost turning it into a science-fiction western, complete with frontier lawlessness and competing claims to the land.

And Jefferson Mays remains one of the great pleasures of the audiobook. His narration has become so closely associated with these characters for me that hearing him settle into the different voices feels like returning to familiar company. He handles the expanding cast with remarkable control, making conversations easy to follow while giving each character their own personality and emotional texture. What I particularly appreciate is how understated his performance can be. He does not need to hammer every emotional moment home because his delivery allows the characters’ reactions to speak for themselves. The result is an absorbing performance that makes twenty hours of audiobook disappear surprisingly quickly.

What I came away from Cibola Burn with most strongly is a growing sense that The Expanse is becoming about far more than spaceships and alien technology.

It is about what happens when humanity gets more room to expand but carries all its old problems along with it.

We have reached the stars, and apparently we have brought capitalism, politics, territorial disputes and an alarming inability to talk to one another.

Frankly, that feels about right.

Cibola Burn expands the universe, deepens the social commentary and gives the series another fascinating change of direction. I enjoyed the frontier setting, loved the moral ambiguity and found myself increasingly fascinated by the alien mysteries lurking underneath everything.

Four books in, I am more invested than ever.

And given what is waiting beyond those Ring Gates, I suspect things are about to get considerably more complicated.

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