The novel “Nemesis Games” by James S.A. Corey was published for the first time in 2015. It’s the fifth book in the Expanse series and follows “Cibola Burn“.

The Rocinante is back to the solar system with rather extensive damage, which will take a long time to be repaired. Amos Burton discovers that a woman who was important to him has died and decides to go to Earth to say goodbye to her. Alex Kamal takes advantage of the break to go to Mars and try to reconnect with his family. Naomi Nagata decides to go to Ceres, where she receives a message connected to a person from her past.

While overseeing the Rocinante’s repairs, James Holden is contacted by journalist Monica Stuart, who is investigating a series of missing spaceships. It0s not at all easy to trace the movements of spaceships when they can pass through a portal that allows access to another area of space transporting people in search of a new life on one of the planets open to colonization. The exodus is seen as a threat by an extremist OPA faction.

James S.A. Corey is the pen name of two writers: Daniel Abraham, who on his own writes mostly fantasy, and Ty Franck, who worked as an assistant to George R.R. Martin. Together, they’ve been writing the stories of the Expanse series, a space opera set in a future where humanity has colonized part of the solar system.

“Nemesis Games” begins shortly after the end of “Cibola Burn” meaning after an adventure in which the Rocinante took quite a beating and consequently is for once blocked for most of the novel to be repaired. This doesn’t mean that the story is static or that the protagonists just watch important events from afar, only that their participation takes place a little differently than in previous novels.

The situation started in “Cibola Burn”, with the availability of a huge amount of new worlds, led to the beginning of an exodus by anyone looking for a new beginning or a simpler life. The move for the Earth’s people is the easiest because their destination is a planet with characteristics similar to the Earth’s. Martians need some adaptation to planets with a gravity similar to Earth’s but they can do it. For Belters a choice like this is much more difficult because they need significant medical treatments to be able to live on a planet and there are no guarantees of success.

For many Belters, the new situation means being even more at the margins of humanity with the risk of ending up dying out. An extremist faction has developed a plan to hit the inner planets and stop the exodus by taking control of the access to the new worlds. The authors separate the members of the Rocinante’s crew to tell the consequences of that plan from their points of view, experienced in different places of the solar system.

This plot makes terrorism a central theme in “Nemesis Games”. Belters have been discriminated for a long time and have a number of reasons to hate Earth and Mars inhabitants but under Fred Johnson’s leadership their position has strengthened, however for someone that’s not enough and the beginning of the exodus has also brought new tensions and new fears. Extremists can only act with violence, even attacking their own leaders. Naomi Nagata becomes a witness of those violent choices when she reconnects with an old acquaintance, the extremist leader Marco, a manipulator who also forces her to come to terms with her past.

One of my complaints about the Expanse series was a certain superficiality. For this reason “Nemesis Games” is a positive surprise as it tackles difficult issues, even forcing the protagonists to face difficult parts of their past. In previous novels there were only a few details to allow the readers to understand certain behaviors by the protagonists, in this case the authors tell much more and this gives them greater depth.

All this is an addition to the action that marks the Expanse series. In “Nemesis Games” the catastrophic element manages to surpass that of the previous novels with new dramatic peaks. The twists and turns are sometimes linked to the protagonists’ past, in particular for Naomi Nagata.

My only doubt is that at some point the authors use remarkable coincidences to develop the plot but in general the combination of the events, with all the possible future consequences, and of the protagonists’ stories make “Nemesis Games” perhaps the best novel in the Expanse series. One of the positive aspects of this series is that the authors tell a great story in which there are great changes for humanity and in each novel there are new elements, using what was done previously for new developments, without repeating it. I keep on considering this series far from a masterpiece but it always remains enjoyable so I think it’s worth reading it.