Start with Leviathan Wakes, not with the prequel novella. Our path lists The Butcher of Anderson Station first because it happens first in the timeline, but it is a character study of a man you have not met yet, and it works far better once you have. Read Leviathan Wakes — a missing-persons case and a derelict ship, told in two alternating points of view — and then double back.
That is the general rule for the whole series and it makes the intimidating novella list simple: read the nine novels in publication order, and treat each novella as an optional bonus chapter after the novel it accompanies. None of the novellas is required. Two of them are very good. Skipping all eight costs you nothing structurally.
The full order, novels and novellas interleaved
- Leviathan Wakes
- The Butcher of Anderson Station (backstory for a major character)
- Drive (a short story about the invention of the Epstein drive; charming, ten minutes)
- Caliban's war
- Abaddon’s Gate
- The Churn (the best of the novellas, and the one most worth not skipping)
- Cibola burn
- Nemesis Games
- Babylon’s ashes
- Persepolis rising
- Tiamat's Wrath
- Leviathan Falls
The honest warnings
Cibola burn is the low point. It moves the story to a colony planet and spends most of its length on a land dispute between settlers and a corporate security team, with a level of frustration that many readers find deliberate and unpleasant rather than tense. It is book four of nine and it is the most common place people quit. Push through, because Nemesis Games immediately afterwards is the best book in the series: it splits the crew up, sends each of them into their own past, and detonates the status quo.
The other structural jolt comes between books six and seven. Persepolis rising jumps roughly thirty years forward. The crew are older, the political situation is unrecognisable, and the last three books are effectively a second series with the same cast. Some readers love this; others feel the story they signed up for ended with Babylon’s ashes.
Where to stop
Babylon’s ashes is a legitimate ending. It closes the arc that began in Leviathan Wakes — the same antagonists, the same political question, resolved. If you want a six-book series with a proper conclusion, stop there and you will not feel cheated.
If you continue, finish. Books seven through nine are one story and Leviathan Falls actually lands its ending, which is more than most nine-book series manage.
A note on the television adaptation
The show covers roughly books one through six, with material from Strange dogs folded in and a substantial reshuffle of who does what. If you have watched it, you already know the shape of the first six novels but not the last three, and the books are still worth reading for the interior life the screen version cannot show. If you have not, read first. Browse Discover if you want more space opera in this register once you are done.
Follow the full ordered path here: The Expanse Reading Order: Books and Novellas.
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