The novel “Persepolis Rising” by James S.A. Corey was published for the first time in 2017. It’s the seventh book in the Expanse series and follows “Babylon’s Ashes“.

The crew of the Rocinante has a contract with the Transport Union and must carry a message to a colony that has not complied with its rules. James Holden decides to go his own way and ends up bringing the colony’s governor to the solar system as a scapegoat. For the Transport Union’s president Camina Drummer, there’s no time to deal with Holden because a spaceship comes out of the portal and attacks Medina Station.

Despite its defenses, Medina Station is taken by the invaders, who arrive from the colony of Laconia, formed by the people who, thirty years earlier, left Mars taking with them a part of the Martian fleet and above all some protomolecule technologies. The Laconian spaceship demonstrates overwhelming superiority thanks to the technologies developed in the colony and takes control of the portal demanding to unite all humanity under Laconia’s rule.

After the end of “Babylon’s Ashes” there’s a leap forward in time of about thirty years. The Rocinante crew continues to do freelance jobs, and James Holden continues to find ways to do things in ways totally different from what he was asked to do. The beginning of “Persepolis Rising” strongly gives the feeling of the time elapsed because the job done by Holden and his crew is told quite hastily being basically as an excuse to show how the characters have aged, how the relationships among them have evolved, and Holden and Naomi Nagata’s decision to retire.

All projects and changes on the Rocinante are paused when a spaceship arrives from the colony of Laconia and takes control of Medina Station using very advanced technologies obtained by studying protomolecule technologies. The Laconians introduce themselves not as invaders but with the declared intention of bringing unity, peace, and prosperity to all humanity. In theory, these are ideals you can appreciate, the problem is that anyone who doesn’t share the methods decided by the Laconians to enforce them is considered a criminal or a traitor and treated as such.

Captain Singh of the Laconian Navy is appointed governor of Medina Station and is the perfect representative of Laconia as he blindly believes in the teachings of high consul Duarte, former admiral of the Martian Navy before founding the Laconia colony. Singh is sincerely convinced that the Laconian government can only benefit humanity and feels sorry that there are opponents. He loves his wife and daughter but has no qualms about following the orders he received and condemn other people, who might be husbands and fathers, to death. Basically, you can’t say he’s a bad person, but he blindly follows the ideology he was taught, which is even worse.

You can say that in “Persepolis Rising” there are no real villains, and perhaps that’s a merit considering that in previous novels of the Expanse series they tended to be a burden because honestly they never seemed to be developed very well. To put this into perspective, Clarissa Mao has become an interesting character after abandoning her slightly demented plans against James Holden.

The leap forward in time allows the authors to introduce Laconia as the new superpower. In this case, its technological advantages derive from the study of alien technologies, but the result is what happened over and over in human history when one nation has become more powerful than the others and started expanding into an empire.

In “Persepolis Rising,” Medina Station becomes the center of the clash between the old superpowers of the solar system and the new Laconian superpower. Often the Expanse series is adventurous without offering real insights, this time the plot development also offers some reflections on ideologies, invasions, resistance, and more. It’s nice to see that the seventh novel in a saga can still offer interesting ideas that in some ways make it the best of the series.

For these reasons, “Persepolis Rising” was even surprising in a pleasant way. A leap forward of thirty years wasn’t easy to manage, and in my opinion, it was exploited well. For this reason, anyone who had doubts about continuing to read the Expanse series can go on without hesitation.