Caliban's War - James S A Corey

 Caliban's War is the second instalment in The Expanse series - space opera, certainly, but with ambitions.   What space opera often lacks is characterisation and overarching premise.  'James S A Corey' (collaborators Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) tackle the problem head-on.   The premise was where it all began as proposed game-play and thus the characters and storylines have all derived from the premise.  The fact that authorship is a collaboration and, moreover, they each write third-person-limited chapters from the viewpoint of certain characters, guarantees differentiation.

Thus our focus characters start with Captain Jim Holden, Earth-born but now working for the Outer Planets Alliance (OPA).   In the first book, which I haven't read but will soon, he is the survivor hero who stops the bio-engineered protomolecule escaping from the lab on Eros. 

Praxidike Meng is a botanist on Ganymede.  As an ecological disaster unfolds his daughter Mei is kidnapped.   His quest to find her is the driver of this novel.   The ecological disaster however is this novel's take on the overarching premise.   Holden soon realises that the protomolecule he is supposed to have destroyed is what caused the collapse of the station on Ganymede.   Mars Marine Roberta Draper already knows this - she watched her corps get literally torn apart by a indestructible mutated monster that ultimately destroyed itself.  

The Eros station crashed onto the surface of Venus.   Now Venus itself is morphing.   This brings in the UN, in particular our final focus character Chrisjen Avasasrala, potty-mouthed Indian granny and high-ranking bureaucrat.

Caliban's War is almost 600 pages long - space opera needs to be epic - but it races along.  There is humour, camaraderie, action, high politics, big business - even elements of romance.   There is real peril. Most important of all, though, there is the underpinning high concept: humankind, even more diverse than in our times, the solar system divided between three fragile alliances (Earth, Mars, the Outer Planets) needing to come together to defeat the existential threat to the existence of all or any.   It works really well.

Consider Phlebas - Iain M Banks

Consider Phlebas is the first of Banks's 'Culture' sci fi novels.  The Culture is at war with the tripedal Iridans and our protagonist, Bora Horza Gobuchul is a humanoid Changer working with the Iridans.  Indeed, the novel begins with the Iridans rescuing Horza from a fate worse than death - only to plunge him into another when their ship comes under attack and Horza is picked up by a bunch of space pirates and taken aboard their spaceship Clear Air Turbulence (CAT).  Their leader Kraiklyn is heading for the artificial world of Vavach and the ultimate high stakes game of 'Damage'.  The stakes couldn't be higher, because the Culture has announced it is going to destroy Vavach at midnight.

Horza escapes by assuming Ktaiklyn's identity and taking over command of the CAT.  His real identity is revealed by another escapee from Vavach, the Special Circumstances Agent Perosteck Balveda.  Horza leads the group to Schar's World, where he used to live with a group of other Changers and where a Culture Mind is said to be hidden.

Consider Phlebas is pure space opera.  Like all space opera, it is drawn with a relatively broad brush.  Entire civilisations are either wholly bad or wholly good.  Banks tinkers slightly with the form, blurring friendships and loyalties.  The imaginative stakes are very high.  Banks clearly loves describing the science behind his ultra-high tech conceptions.  To balance this, the prose and dialogue is deliberately prosaic.  Things move along nicely and there is refreshing humour when required.  In the end, things more or less work out.  But I still have no idea what the title refers to.

I'm new to the space opera form, though I have several other examples stacked on my Kindle, ready to try.  I enjoyed Phlebas and will certainly explore further.