I find it interesting that all the major powers in Expanse are in a realistic cold war & pretty nasty. You migh find one of them sympathetic for a while, only to find out it was all a construction hiding the horrendous deeds they did for political power. Only to find out the others did even worse thing. And agains this backdrop you have the heroes, trying to keep some sort of moral integrity & helping to save what they can, often derailing various grand schemes withou even realizing it.