Leviathan Wakes: This is what it claims to be -- space opera -- warts and all. It moves quickly, a small band of heroes repeatedly saves the day, there are spaceships galore, a few space battles, a monstrous alien thing, etc. Unlike much "new space opera," this remains intra-solar, and it can take days or weeks to get from one place to another. Fuel never seems to a problem, just as ammunition is endless in westerns and crime thrillers. Among the warts is a paucity of interesting characterization. Chapters alternate between just two male leads -- Holden the idealist and Miller the moper. The first season of the television adaptation does a much better job of bringing the secondary characters to life, and introducing a strong female lead who appears later in the book series. Embittered detective Miller's hapless love for the woman he was hired to find is a critical but implausible plot device in both the book and adaptation.

Recommended for fans of the old stuff. Barely 3 stars for me.

Caliban's War: Continues the story begun in Leviathan Wakes. A marked improvement in that there are now four rotating point of view characters, one (Holden) from LW, two women, and the fourth is not a macho white male. More running around, primarily in the Belt and out to Ganymede, space battles, and monsters. While the larger story of the protomolecule moves forwards significantly but only slightly, the novel has a clear beginning, middle, and end for a more local story involving the search for children kidnapped by more human villains.

Recommended as a solid sequel that fixes one of the biggest weaknesses of the first novel, while still sticking to the main agenda of old-fashioned space adventure. Full 3 stars.

Abbadon's Gate: Like Caliban's War, this continues the story, but has only Holden as the only point of view character from the previous book, and introduces three new characters, including two women. A bit more of the protomolecule story is filled in, but most of the time is spent introducing the new characters and moving them all in place, and then many chapters of fighting, this time mostly within ships rather than between them.

A bit weaker than the second book, but recommended if you liked the first two in the series. Barely 3 stars. ( )