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I can understand someone feeling the bullshit death battleship defeating the combined fleet of all humanity is something outside the frame of what they're interested in. I'm almost there myself. Like, maybe that's not what you signed up for when you started the Expanse and that's a fine thing to be disappointed by. To call it implausible when we've had magic bullshit alien tech centrally driving the story since the third book is kinda silly. Magic bullshit aliens have been breaking physics for a while now. They're literally gods. That's part of this setting. Perhaps that's dumb, but it means the bullshit death battleship is 100% plausible. Because please for the love of god bullshit plausibility arguments are so boring. Call it dumb and unsatisfying and get over it. Edit: Wow, this was a terribly whiny post to start a page with. Sorry about that.
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Dec 14, 2017 04:01
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I dunno, I don't mind the protomolecule reality warping stuff too much, but the real meat for me is the interplay between the various factions and the repeated idea that going to war is a very bad thing that will only end in everyone losing. Even the whole Free Navy war with its insane bodycount I could get behind because while Marco was obnoxiously persistent, he never felt like an insurmountable threat, and there was a way out, even if it did result in Earth and Mars throwing everything they had into the fight to get there. The Laconians taking a 30 year time jump to essentially make The Expanse equivalent of Star Wars's First Order superweapons and mega ships just feels a bit cheap to me. I mean, I still enjoy it, but just handing someone a superweapon like that to justify a 30 year timeskip is disappointing. On a somewhat related note, I've been curious about books similar to The Expanse with a few caveats. The Expanse is a setting that tries to answer the question of how humanity will adapt to live in the Solar System without wonder technology to make everyone's lives happy. Pre-protomolecule, the biggest advance in allowing the colonization efforts is the Epstein drive, but that hardly makes the setting a utopia. Even with the galaxy ripe for colonization, we bring all our problems with us as we go into space. My question is: Are there any books or franchises that address similar themes of human hardship, while being set in a post-scarcity society? Material needs are eliminated for the vast majority of people, but human fallibility persists, leading to conflicts that, rather than being fought over resources or territory, are instead fought on ideological grounds? Arc Hammer fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Dec 14, 2017 |
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Dec 14, 2017 05:06
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The part I'm having the most trouble with is the rebuilt combined fleet letting history's greatest monster chillax unmonitored for 30 years. Every single faction has a very compelling reason to grind Laconia into dust. but they blew up our probe
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Dec 14, 2017 05:17
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Arcsquad12 posted:My question is: Are there any books or franchises that address similar themes of human hardship, while being set in a post-scarcity society? Material needs are eliminated for the vast majority of people, but human fallibility persists, leading to conflicts that, rather than being fought over resources or territory, are instead fought on ideological grounds? The Night's Dawn! This is sort of a joke and sort of not. It's ridiculously large canvas space opera with a maximalist universe full of technologically and ideologically distinct human factions, ancient mysteries, some aliens, major cultural divides that lead to traumatic conflict, badly written wish-fulfillment sex, and some pretty kickass action scenes... ...and then the main thrust of the series is "what do we do when we discover hell is real, everyone goes there, the souls inside desperately want to get out, and they've just gained the ability to do it?"
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Dec 14, 2017 05:27
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Eiba posted:I can understand someone feeling the bullshit death battleship defeating the combined fleet of all humanity is something outside the frame of what they're interested in. I'm almost there myself. Like, maybe that's not what you signed up for when you started the Expanse and that's a fine thing to be disappointed by. I'm at Chapter 15 or thereabouts and that's the feeling I'm getting. I think I'll be happy with the series finishing at book #9. The timeskip still gets under my skin. For example, on one hand, I like that Chrisjen wasn't killed off in the interim. On the other... it's been thirty years. Did any character really change at all during the jump, beyond getting promoted or being Clarissa?
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Dec 14, 2017 05:56
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That's why I decided to ignore character ages- they have not changed at all.
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Dec 14, 2017 10:49
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A significant timeskip was good for the story. Besides Laconia building up, it let us have more advanced colonies, let Earth rebuild and gave us an interesting and fairly well developed Transport Union. I actually quite like the initial conflict of Drummer trying to run the Transport Union as... a transport union, but due to the geography of the human universe she was actually de facto the leader of humanity. I also really liked the fact that they mapped out the whole ring gate system and that it was spread over such a tiny portion of the galaxy. Space is huge!
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Dec 14, 2017 18:58
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Yeah, unimaginably large, yet so small is pretty cool
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Dec 15, 2017 02:39
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There was one throw-away line in the first third of the book about how they were all taking anti-ageing drugs on top of their normal anti-rads and/or blood purges. I feel like some editor had all these same complaints about the time skip and that was their solution.
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Dec 15, 2017 22:46
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I think the authors kind of forgot the characters' ages after working with younger versions of them on the TV show.
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Dec 15, 2017 23:12
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I’m 60% through Leviathan and love Holden’s gimmick of accidentally starting wars.
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Dec 19, 2017 01:01
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Professor Shark posted:Also I've decided that the main characters being in their mid-to-late 60's is dumb so I'm head-canoning it so that they're in their 40's Well in a future where the average span in well over 120 that isn’t inaccurate
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Dec 19, 2017 17:31
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Averasala bitching about being on her last liver is on point.
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Dec 21, 2017 06:25
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Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:The part I'm having the most trouble with is the rebuilt combined fleet letting history's greatest monster chillax unmonitored for 30 years. Every single faction has a very compelling reason to grind Laconia into dust. Personally my biggest problem was Avasarala being present for all the poo poo going down. Not that she's still alive, because it's the future so whatever, but what the gently caress was she doing on one of the void cities in the first place? She always has said that she loathes space travel. I mean, I was happy that she was still there to drop f-bombs everywhere, but her showing up out of nowhere felt more than a little contrived.
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Dec 25, 2017 04:43
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Finished this one. It grew on me by the end and I think I like it more than Nemesis Games but not as much as Babylon's Ashes. A few things didn't feel right to me, such as the character death towards the end, but I want to see where they're going with the black and white bullets and Duterte such. I do think if they can hold to nine books and finish up they'll have a nice consistent series that never truly got bad.
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Dec 25, 2017 06:28
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So, if the show gets there, who are they going to drop: Marco or Duarte? I can't see them going with both, and if it doesn't get cancelled early (it will) they'll be in hyper-GoT mod, in a rush to get storylines finished.
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Dec 29, 2017 01:47
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Professor Shark posted:So, if the show gets there, who are they going to drop: Marco or Duarte? I can't see them going with the timeskip, much less expanding the series out that widely. I have a feeling the series will cap off with Marco Inaros and his whole thing and maybe the last episode might be a Babylon 5-esque 'twenty/thirty years later' thing.
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Dec 29, 2017 01:57
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hey you got a good end to the story arc after five seasons, time to let the actors do other things and do work on the script and poo poo. Launch the time skip 5 years later.
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Dec 29, 2017 06:53
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Grognan posted:hey you got a good end to the story arc after five seasons, time to let the actors do other things and do work on the script and poo poo. Or reboot the series actually 30 years later in 2047
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Jan 1, 2018 23:35
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Besides, isn't the plan for the show to wrap up the whole story in 4 seasons anyway
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Jan 2, 2018 00:01
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I hadn't heard that, but I can see them ending it with humans accessing the gateway and implying there will be no need to fight when everyone can have their own solar system I mean, that wouldn't be great, but it's the easiest way to end it
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Jan 3, 2018 12:23
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At the end of Perseopolis Rising, where Holden meets Duarte and exclaims that he's "using that poo poo on himself", and Duarte responds with something along the lines that most people don't notice but he's changed physically, was that ever elaborated on? How has he changed? How is it not noticeable to most people, but Holden notices? Are the Laconians just too terrified/awed/respectful of their Immortal Psychic Space Hitler to mention that his eyes are loving glowing or something?
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Jan 5, 2018 10:23
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Limited access and fear of being sent to the "Pen." Holden notices because the pm is changing him too.
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Jan 5, 2018 10:39
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Geisladisk posted:At the end of Perseopolis Rising, where Holden meets Duarte and exclaims that he's "using that poo poo on himself", and Duarte responds with something along the lines that most people don't notice but he's changed physically, was that ever elaborated on? How has he changed? How is it not noticeable to most people, but Holden notices? Are the Laconians just too terrified/awed/respectful of their Immortal Psychic Space Hitler to mention that his eyes are loving glowing or something? I want to say there's this mention maybe in the first Singh chapter of something that's off with Duarte but I'm not sure.
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Jan 5, 2018 11:02
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The guy is literally growing new alien organs inside his body, there are likely subtle physical features occurring that Holden picks up on because he still has some of The Investigator in him picking up on details.
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Jan 6, 2018 08:00
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The way Duarte can "see" the rough thoughts/feels of people was kinda neato.
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Jan 6, 2018 14:53
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TheOneAndOnlyT posted:I think the problem is, what exactly could they have done? You can't send a giant force through the gates without them getting eaten, and it's suicide to send ships through one by one when Laconia has demonstrated they have guns pointed at the other end that they're all too willing to use. They weren't Freehold; they had a third of the Martian navy in the system. Yeah with everything else going on it’s easy to forget that pushing through the gates is still kind of a finicky proposition. Use too much energy and the gates eat you, go in too soft and anybody on the other side who wants to kill you can do it very easily. The laconians pulled it off because they had a literally invincible battleship that could go at its own pace but trying to do any kind of invasion against a prepared defender through the gates sounds like it’s generally a death wish THAT SAID: didn’t the last book end with Naomi killing the free navy by figuring out how to turn the gates into kill mode while ships were inside it? Couldn’t the EMC have tried that same trick when the tempest tried pushing through the sol gate, or am I remembering the last book completely wrong?
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Jan 10, 2018 19:49
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Ainsley McTree posted:
Naomi had access to other gates to send stuff through. Not only did the Free Navy not know they could be eaten, they wouldn’t have been able to see stuff transitioning other gates to make it happen. Sol system couldn’t coordinate with other systems to transition ahead of the Laconians in the right time window.
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Jan 10, 2018 22:03
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They also make a point about not expecting the Tempest to move through the gate so soon, so Drummer's plans for dumping gravel in front of the gate are undone as a result.
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Jan 12, 2018 18:12
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I've been reading The Expanse off and on over the past few years and I guess I would say I like it pretty well. I just started the 4th book and really only have on question which I'll spoiler just to be safe - Is the vast majority of this going to take place on that planet and just be a pissing match between the squatters and that company? If it does, does it return to form in the next book?
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Jan 23, 2018 08:11
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Yes and yes. The next book is arguably the best in the series, in fact.
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Jan 23, 2018 08:37
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Hrm. Is it a decent read would you say? I'm wondering if I should just skip it and read a synopsis. mo.
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Jan 23, 2018 09:43
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Read it. It has some really good bits. It's an interesting change of pace. And even if it is the weakest novel in the series I feel it's still decent.
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Jan 23, 2018 09:54
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Yeah, I guess I will. I'll just have some other book on the sideline that I can swap to here and there if I need a change of pace.
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Jan 23, 2018 10:17
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I'd say skip it entirely but there's one mysterious entity near the climax which pops up again later.
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Jan 23, 2018 16:29
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I slogged through the audiobook version of Cibola Burn (4th book); you know, the only one not narrated by Jefferson Mays. It was absolutely terrible. As someone else said, it is only worthwhile insofar as some things pop up for the first time that appear later in the series.
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Jan 24, 2018 14:37
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Book 4 was actually dope
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Jan 24, 2018 17:38
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Book 4 was extremely my jam and I hope with the next couple books we get some real wild-rear end descriptions of other colonized planets to help fuel my imagination. The Clarketech ruins, the alien life, the robot crabs, I love all of it. Makes me really sad we've never gotten a drat Rama TV series.
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Jan 24, 2018 17:46
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Book 4 just felt so Mystery-of-the-Week when compared to the books preceding and following it. And it couldn't even do that right. It couldn't settle between having the crew solve a dispute between a conglomerate and squatting settlers that served as an example of the greater picture of exploring alien worlds, or dealing with the bonkers alien tech that made everything else seem pointless. I could never really get the tone of the book beyond "everyone's miserable," which makes for a sloggy read.
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Jan 24, 2018 18:01
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Put me down in the "sure, it was the weakest book, but that's kinda relative and it was still a lot of fun to read & fleshed out the universe in interesting ways" camp. For example, I wouldn't recommend any new readers skip it, it's absolutely not that bad. As long as someone goes in knowing that it's a bit of a tonal departure, I don't see why they'd be crazy disappointed.
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Jan 24, 2018 20:10
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