10 Space Adventures to Read While You Wait for SYFY’s Expanse Season Three
Can’t wait for season three of SYFY’s The Expanse? Here are a few action-packed space adventures to tide you over until the premiere on April 11th.
- Behind the Throne by K. B. Wagers
Hail Bristol has made a name for herself in the galaxy for everything except what she was born to do: rule the Indranan Empire. When she is dragged back to her home planet to take her rightful place as the only remaining heir, she finds that trading her ship for a palace is her most dangerous move yet.
Behind the Throne is the first in an action-packed, Star Wars-style trilogy, perfect for fans who love the kick-butt female leads of The Expanse, like the powerful Chrisjen Avasarala.
- The War Dogs Trilogy by Greg Bear
The Gurus made their presence on Earth known thirteen years ago. Providing technology and scientific insights far beyond what mankind was capable of, they became indispensable advisors and promised even more gifts that we just couldn’t pass up. But they were followed by mortal enemies from sun to sun, planet to planet, and now the Gurus are stretched thin—and they need humanity’s help.
The War Dogs trilogy has all the military space battles Expanse fans love—and you can get all three books (War Dogs, Killing Titan, and Take Back the Sky) collected for the first time in a single volume.
- Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty
Maria Arena awakens in a cloning vat streaked with drying blood. She has no memory of how she died. This is new; before, when she had awakened as a new clone, her first memory was of how she died.
Maria’s vat is one of seven, each one holding the clone of a crew member of the starship Dormire, each clone waiting for its previous incarnation to die so it can awaken. And Maria isn’t the only one to die recently…
Nominated for the 2017 Nebula Awards and the 2018 Philip K. Dick Award, Six Wakes is a bold science fiction thriller for Expanse fans who remember the Cant well and love a good conspiracy.
- Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
In The Expanse, Tycho Station constructs a massive generational ship called Nauvoo designed to send thousands beyond the solar system to the Tau Ceti system. In Aurora, prominent science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson tells just that incredible story: humanity’s first mission to colonize a planet’s moon beyond the solar system.
The generational ship Aurora was launched from Saturn in 2545 and after 160 years is finally approaching the Tau Ceti system, ready for humans to create a new home. But the systems are breaking—decaying infrastructure, bacteria mutations, human intelligence dropping—and their new home may not be all that it seems.
- Provenance by Ann Leckie
Love the intergalactic politics of The Expanse? Then you’ll love Provenance by multi-award-winning author Ann Leckie.
Set in the same universe as Leckie’s record-breaking Radch trilogy, a power-driven young woman has just one chance to secure the status she craves and regain priceless lost artifacts prized by her people. She frees their thief from a prison planet from which no one has ever returned—only to discover her home world is at the heart of an escalating interstellar conflict.
Interested in Ann Leckie’s Radch trilogy as well? Start with Ancillary Justice here.
- Places in the Darkness by Chris Brookmyre
Hundreds of miles above Earth, the space station Ciudad de Cielo–The City in the Sky–is a beacon of hope for humanity’s expansion into the stars. But not everyone aboard shares such noble ideals. Bootlegging, booze, and prostitution form a lucrative underground economy for rival gangs, which the authorities are happy to turn a blind eye to—until a disassembled corpse is found dancing in the micro-gravity.
Places in the Darkness is a propulsive tale perfect for Detective Joe Miller fans who like a little crime in their science fiction.
- Rule of Luck by Catherine Cerveny
A Brazilian tarot card reader and a Russian crime lord race to stop a conspiracy in the first book of a new steamy science fiction adventure series—for those who love to ship Jim Holden and Naomi Nagata (or anyone else in The Expanse, for that matter.)
In the year 2950 advanced technology is available to all, and enhancements to appearance, intelligence, and physical ability are commonplace. In this future, Felicia Sevigny has built her fame reading the futures of others. Alexei Petriv, the most dangerous man in the TriSystem, will trust only Felicia to read his cards. But the future she sees is darker than either of them could ever have imagined.
- Elysium Fire by Alastair Reynolds
Ten thousand city-state habitats orbit the planet Yellowstone, forming a near-perfect democratic human paradise. But across the habitats and their hundred million citizens, people are dying suddenly and randomly, victims of a bizarre and unprecedented malfunction of their neural implants. And these “melters” leave no clues behind as to the cause of their deaths.
Evocative of the sprawling world of The Expanse, Elysium Fire is a thrilling space opera from the author of the Locus Award-winning novel, Revenger.
- One Way by S. J. Morden (out April 10th)
In this electrifying read written by a trained rocket scientist, Mars is far from the advanced civilization found in The Expanse. The company that’s been contracted to start the colonization process has made promises they can’t fulfill…and is desperate enough to cut corners.
Frank—father, architect, murderer—is recruited for the mission to Mars with the promise of a better life, along with seven of his most notorious fellow inmates. But as his crew sets to work on the red wasteland of Mars, the accidents mount up, and Frank begins to suspect they might not be accidents at all. As the list of suspect grows shorter, it’s up to Frank to uncover the terrible truth before it’s too late.
- The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey
And of course, if you haven’t already, don’t forget to read the books that inspired The Expanse show! James S. A. Corey’s landmark series starts with Leviathan Wakes: two hundred years after migrating into space, mankind is in turmoil. When a reluctant ship’s captain and washed-up detective find themselves involved in the case of a missing girl, what they discover brings our solar system to the brink of civil war, and exposes the greatest conspiracy in human history.
Visit James S. A. Corey’s website for information about the series and SYFY’s The Expanse. The eighth book in The Expanse lands this December.