I feel there are a lot of things wrong with The Expanse which make it really hard to enjoy. Personally I find the dialog often very weak and the acting very forced and obvious, but that's just my personal opinion. I seem to only be reading endless praise on reddit/HN.

As for the world, there seems to be a lot of nonsense tech such as see-through cell-phones? No way to even hide what you are doing, even crucial characters and VIPs have see-through communication devices, whilst they steal/look at top secret information? Why is AR (using HUGE eyeglass-like devices) reserved only for very special engineers/scientists? Haven't the shows creators heard of Hololens? It's like they took VR/AR and took it back to the 80s. Why do they need to do so many things manually, yet not completely manually e.g. control an antenna, but they can do it remotely they just have to be within 20 meters? How can they open solid metal doors without electricity in zero-g? It feels a bit like Star Trek back in the 60s, before they had any clue about what was to come, except it's 50 years later and they are still using similar ideas without adding anything new. I understand compromises need to be made to adapt to the screen so that viewers can understand the world, but it seems like there are tons of areas where a bit more creativity should be order.

> As for the world, there seems to be a lot of nonsense tech such as see-through cell-phones? No way to even hide what you are doing, even crucial characters and VIPs have see-through communication devices, whilst they steal/look at top secret information?

I'm sure that's just for TV viewers to be able to see their screens. It is better than projecting the screen over the face or reflecting it on the glasses of the actors like other TV shows do.

If you don't like it, that is OK, no one is forced to like anything. I don't like The Walking Dead, and it doesn't mean a lot of people is wrong, just that we have different tastes.

But to be fair the show is ages ahead of Star Trek TOS in terms of plausibility.

In fact, the lack of the fantastic technologies indistinguishable from magic that are present in Star Trek is very much part of the appeal. Is what makes the show more real. There's no faster than light space travel for a start. They have to use orbital mechanics to move around. They have to accelerate half of the way and deccelerate the other half. They have to dock very carefully instead of saying 'beam me down'. It is a very welcome change.

Once you're done with that try the "Remembrance of Earth's Past" trilogy (really hardcore sci-fi, eventually goes into weaponizing the laws of physics etc.), or the "Zones of Thought" trilogy (for something comparable to "The Expanse" in terms of sci-fi level).

I read the expanse to book 4 until it took a serious dive in quality, the dialogue and story just went awful and I got tired of the main guy constantly being on the spot, it felt contrived.

I really enjoyed the first 3 so was disappointed. Does it get better? Was it a temporary drop?

Luckly it's a temporary drop - book 4 (the one on the colony right?) is by far the worst part of the series and the next pair of books return back to the politicking and Holden being naive and kicked in the head due to it :) Also the story really starts tying up and gets better pacing.

I read them all and I'll probably read the next one, question for a fellow reader: am I the only one who absolutely hates Holden? He doesn't really seem to have developerd or grown up al all, he routinely puys whiney personal issues over the lives of billions and etc.

Things get rather interesting in 5&6 though. Scale gets quite good!

Yeah, the colony one, it was really dragging. Might just try reading a plot summary and skipping to 5 then.

Thanks!