I'd gladly have taken prequels actually, with only human tech and stories from the period before the protomolecule appeared.
I agree though. I’m a huge Expanse fan (read all the books/novellas 5 times over, etc) and not a huge fan of a lot of other space opera. It really is unique in how much world building they do, with realistic explanations of all sides of the story and a lot of relatable characters. So much other space opera is “this/these person/people took on the universe and kicked their butt because.. spaceships and guns.”
I usually read before bed. There’s been times where I have to restrain myself from waking up my partner by moaning in frustration while he spends page after page on some nonsense that adds nothing to the story. There’s something interesting in there. But I feel like it’s at least 50% fluff.
The number of times I've muttered "James fucking Holden" is orders of magnitude higher than the times I've been frustrated by Hamilton's verbosity.
I was truly disgusted and disappointed to see the Expanse series jump decades into the future and it's still about James fucking Holden
Say what you will about Hamilton, but he's got more than one character to beat up on. I found Banks to be much more tedious to read. He says the same things over and over and every story is the same as the last. Every problem has a deus ex machina solution. Every problem is also a deus ex, but that's kind of the point.
The ending and epilogue to the Expanse was deeply unsatisfying. More deus ex, more protomolecule. Nothing truly resolved, nothing answered.
My read is that Banks is an inexperienced author with more space to talk than things to say.
i am always on the lookout for new authors, but there are to many to choose from. so i have a hard time whenever i have to pick my next book. like you, i loved the realistic details in the expanse, but i am also very much into exploration, so when the gates appeared, i thought now it would get really interesting and i picked the last three books (and some novellas) after watching the tv series because i wanted to know how it progresses.
it is not my favorite series though, because while society in the expanse is formed through the experiences and discoveries they make, the humanity itself doesn't actually develop, like it does in say the culture series by Iain M. Banks. halfway through book 8 the end is now predictable.
Though the whole inaros pirate thing and the fascist Laconia empire (in the book only for now) things were a bit dragged out IMO.. I thought the alien tech parts were much more interesting and the last 2 TV seasons were very forgettable in particular.