The Ring

The Ring is the name of a structure in The Expanse, and it enters the story with Abaddon's Gate, the third novel, whose title points at it. The series does not begin with the Ring, and the world of the earliest books has no such thing in it: Leviathan Wakes opens on a Solar System that belongs entirely to humanity, divided among Earth under the United Nations, an independent military Mars, and the Belt's scattered working class, with tension flaring after the destruction of the ice hauler Canterbury. Where the Ring comes from, what it is, and what it means for that divided system are the questions Abaddon's Gate is organized around, and every volume after it lives with the answers. The story that gives the name its meaning belongs to those books.