Earlier this year, fans of James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse cracked open their copies of the latest installment of the series, Tiamat’s Wrath. While there won’t be another novel hitting stores this year, fans will have something to look forward to: Orbit announced that it will release a new Expanse novella in December, Auberon.
Since 2011, Corey (the pen name for authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck), has released a number of shorter entries in the series. There are short stories including “The Butcher of Anderson Station” and “Drive”, as well as longer novellas: Gods of Risk, The Churn, The Vital Abyss, Strange Dogs, and now Auberon. The stories are frequently released as ebooks, and fill in some backstory for characters that appear throughout the series. According to Orbit, Auberon is set between Persepolis Rising and Tiamat’s Wrath, and depicts the fallout of the brutal takeover of human-occupied space that the Laconian Empire undertakes in the former.
Here’s what it’s about:
Auberon is one of the first and most important colony worlds in humanity’s reach, and the new conquering faction has come to claim it. Governor Rittenaur has come to bring civilization and order to the far outpost and guarantee the wealth and power of the Empire.
But Auberon already has its own history, a complex culture, and a criminal kingpin named Erich with very different plans. In a world of deceit, violence, and corruption, the greatest danger Rittenaur faces is love.
The novella will be released as an ebook and audiobook on December 3rd—just 10 days before the fourth season of Amazon’s adaptation of the series debuts. At the very least, it’ll tide us over while we wait for the yet-unnamed final novel.
