The ships of the Earth-Mars Coalition Navy floated around it, dots of darkness swimming on the high sea of air. The terminator crept across, pulling a blanket of darkness and city lights behind it. The planet glowed on her wall screen, whorls of high white clouds and glimpses of the still-greenish sea beneath it. After three decades of struggle, Mother Earth was open for business. TSL-5 was about to be open for business, and even as tired as she was, as annoyed as she felt at having to haul herself halfway across the system for what was ultimately a ribbon-cutting ceremony, there was also an excitement to it. All those berths and warehouses were at rest now, but starting tomorrow, that would change. The dome in the center of the station had berths for hundreds of ships and warehouses that seemed so numerous and deep that filling them would leave Earth as empty as a squeezed-out bulb. The air had a constant smell of terp ene compounds, as if the station were the largest chrysanthemu m in the universe. TSL-5 had a small city’s worth of offices with the same fake-marble walls and soft, full-spectrum lighting as the one they’d given her, the same crash-couch beds and water showers as her quarters there.

T he habitation ring of the transfer station at Lagrange-5 was three times the diameter of the one Drummer had lived in on Tycho, half a lifetime ago. A price that will change the shape of humanity - and of the Rocinante - unexpectedly and forever. But human nature is not the only enemy, and the forces being unleashed have their own price. New technologies clash with old as the history of human conflict returns to its ancient patterns of war and subjugation. On the lost colony world of Laconia, a hidden enemy has a new vision for all of humanity and the power to enforce it.

In the vast space between Earth and Jupiter, the inner planets and belt have formed a tentative and uncertain alliance still haunted by a history of wars and prejudices. Every new planet lives on a knife edge between collapse and wonder, and the crew of the aging gunship Rocinante have their hands more than full keeping the fragile peace. In the thousand-sun network of humanity's expansion, new colony worlds are struggling to find their way.

The seventh book in the NYT bestselling Expanse series, Persepolis Rising finds an old enemy returning home with more power and technology than anyone thought possible, and the crew of the aging gunship Rocinante tries to rally forces against the new invasion.

James sa corey persepolis rising