This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The Faith of Beasts will be released on April 26, 2026.
While I’m still only one book deep in The Expanse, I have been sufficiently impressed with the fantasy side of James S.A. Corey (that is, Daniel Abraham) to be highly intrigued by the Captive’s War series. The first book had some weaknesses, but there were certainly enough strengths to convince me to continue on to the sequel: The Faith of Beasts.
The Faith of Beasts opens where the first book left off, with humanity enslaved by a race of terrifyingly powerful, deeply Nietzschean aliens entrenched in a war with another, mostly unseen, galactic power. The best and brightest of the prisoners have been tasked to prove humanity’s usefulness and thus stave off the genocide of an entire species. In book two, the parameters of that task have become better-defined, but the broad strokes of the conflict remain the same: determine some means of clandestine, long-term resistance while showing enough short-term usefulness to stay alive.
The most fascinating parts of the first book were the vital attempts to understand the minds of humanity’s captors—after all, if you don’t understand what your captors value, how can you prove yourself valuable?—and those elements don’t abate at all in the second book. Humanity must understand their enemy both in order to stay in their good graces and to figure out weaknesses that may be exploitable in the long-term. If anything, the necessity of understanding aliens only increases in The Faith of Beasts. After all, humanity isn’t the only intelligent species in servitude, and it will be difficult to accomplish anything without learning more about their fellow captives. Throw in one captive human on a research mission to another planet and another handful stationed on warships and the scope of exploration increases noticeably.
And not only are those plotlines plentiful, they also tend to produce the most powerful scenes. There’s not much here that’s really first contact per se, but there are several moments of sudden realizations about a group that’s deeply other, and those are the moments that make this worth the price of admission.
On the other hand, humanity’s internal politics—none of the best and brightest want to play second fiddle—were a weakness in the first book and remain so here. While the failure of the ensemble cast to provide any truly fascinating character in book one makes for a relatively easy time getting back up to speed after a nearly two-year layoff, that cast simply doesn’t get much more compelling in the second book. The difficulty of organizing a group of people who all think they should be the lead makes for an interesting subplot, but The Captive’s War remains relatively weak when dealing with intra-human conflicts.
Like the first book, The Faith of Beasts has enough strengths to make it worth the read but enough weaknesses to keep it from being a must-read. Readers that fit the classic sci-fi “come for the aliens, don’t sweat the characterization” stereotype will surely find it a fascinating read. On the other hand, those who want to deeply invest in the main cast ought probably skip this one. As for me, I’m somewhere in the middle. Through two books, the series has consistently kept me engaged but not yet had me truly enamored.
Recommended if you like: survival stories, exploring alien mindsets.
Can I use it for Bingo? If you wait until publication date, it’ll surely fit Published in 2026 on next year’s card.
Overall rating: 15 of Tar Vol’s 20. Four stars on Goodreads.