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Chapter Thirty-Nine: Holden Holden's pouring himself a cup of coffee when the novel switches back to him. Omi commented simply with 'coffee' and that's about what I think, too. I get that it's something Holden likes but, boy, it feels like there's exactly three things we know about him after 1.7 novels: he's an idealist, he's got an unconventional family, and he likes coffee. And, right now, he's putting off talking to his crew by making some. Caliban's War, Chapter Thirty-Nine posted:He put some sugar in his coffee even though he always drank it black, just because stirring took a few more seconds. Holden asks his crew "Who are we?" and there's a funny bit where Amos is like "I'm Amos, are you feeling okay?" Mention is made of Naomi's eyes being 'almond-shaped' which is just about the worst, most stereotypical way you can describe Asian eyes. A minor thing. Holden basically apologizes for treating everyone badly. He says that he was terrified and needed an easy target to take out his anger on, and so picked Alex. Alex forgives him without any issue. Holden then starts talking about how they're not really a crew anymore. We find out that their bank account has eighty grand of space money in it, which makes me think about my earlier point about whether we needed the whole Prax GoFundMe thing. Surely it's more dramatic to have them risk the money they already have on a long shot kid-finding mission than just getting handed money. Holden says that they've never sat down and figured out what they are. Once they find Mei, what're they going to do? They could sell the Roci to the OPA and retire on Titan, for example. What're the steps after this job? Prax starts making chocolate pudding out of nowhere, which is a funny little beat to break up Holden's serious talk. Holden then says they should do what his parents did - stick together and make things legal, have an independent company that does whatever they want, which is really nothing at all like what his parents did. Alex points out that they do have a fantastic ship and Holden says that, hey, when they find Mei, they'll be super high profile. Omi: "The stuff about Holden's commune upbringing continues to maybe be the most interesting stuff about him." In the end, they put it to a vote. Unsurprisingly, every single person immediately votes to incorporate and get the paperwork done. Holden's like, hey, we should vote on the Captain and - unsurprisingly - everyone immediately votes for Holden. Caliban's War, Chapter Thirty-Nine posted:Holden started to speak but stopped when something uncomfortable happened in his throat and behind his sternum. No one pushes for leadership. No one really says anything about it. Naomi's like, hey, I'm just the engineer and she can't bluff or stare people down. Alex is like, hey, I just drive the ship. Amos is like, hey, I just do what Naomi says and you talk every single person down. With all of that handled, the crew splits off to take care of things. Meanwhile, Naomi and Holden kiss. Mention is made of the ill-fitting jumpsuits that still say TACHI on the back (eighty grand, but not enough to replace them over the past year?) Then they have sex, and we get some paragraphs on that sorta thing. Perhaps the most interesting part of it is the mention that Naomi is the only Belter Holden's ever had sex with, and there's physiological differences he has to account for -- but what are they? Like, does he have to worry about breaking bones or anything like that? Does she have to be on top? I'm not trying to be puerile or anything here, and I certainly don't want explicit erotica, but those feel more like what Holden might be thinking about in the moment than what comes next. Instead, Holden is reflecting on how he'd always been shallow when it comes to sex. Unintended irony to have Holden thinking about his own love life while he's with Naomi? Maybe. Mention is made that because Holden is pretty and charming, he usually got the ladies he wanted. I've mentioned before that I never took Holden as being particularly attractive in the novels, that in my mind he was always kind of an average joe who thinks he's good-looking, but whatever. Apparently, Holden's infatuation thing was a game he played to convince himself that he wasn't using the women he was sleeping with, even if they were using him in return. What? Was any of this necessary? I'm not sure. It's reiterating stuff from Leviathan Wakes, and not really focused at all on the angst Holden and Naomi have been through in this novel. Maybe because there's barely anything to explore there, which is kinda unfortunate. Omi noted that he felt that Holden and Naomi got back together pretty dang quickly. They were broken up for, what, two chapters? tl;dr - Holden thinks that because he'd come to know Naomi as a friend before a sex object, they have a better relationship than his usual conquests. Well, one: no poo poo. Two: this is all incredibly flat. I won't say it's a retcon, but it feels like a weird, messy development. Holden as a lovesick puppy who falls for just about every girl he has sex with feels like it fits his mentality more than manipulative nice guy who lies to himself that he cares for the ladies he sleeps with. Admittedly, it does fit well with that very weird moment in Leviathan where he reflects that he'd take advantage of a drunk Naomi, but, really, that should've just been forgotten about and chalked up to first book syndrome. Anyway, just as Holden is falling asleep after the sex, Alex gives him a call. It's Avasarala, and she's got a message for him! Caliban's War, Chapter Thirty-Nine posted:“My name is Chrisjen Avasarala. I’m the UN assistant undersecretary of executive administration. A UN admiral has dispatched six Munroe-class destroyers from the Jupiter system to destroy your ship. Track this transponder code and come meet me or you and everyone on your ship will die. This is not a loving joke.” It felt a little bit long, too, both parts of the chapter. The Holden meeting stuff feels like it takes too long to get through something we already know is going to happen, and the internal monologue during/after the sex Holden has with Naomi feels like padding.
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Apr 13, 2021 04:26
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Chapter Forty: Prax Back to everyone's favorite botanist. The Rocinante is accelerating and Prax is being pressed into a crash couch. It's only four gee, Prax thinks, but Omi wonders if Prax is really the kind of guy to say 'only four gee.' We get a whole bunch of words that tell us Prax is not the kind of guy to say that soon after - he never thought he'd leave Ganymede, and I'm pretty sure a previous chapter mentioned how he'd never been one for space travel. It's a fairly typical Corey Expanse opening. A lot of introspection and idle musing. Prax wonders about the drugs. He wonders about whether he'll die. He wonders if Mei is dead, or being tortured, yadda yadda. The Roci stops accelerating. They have fifty minutes to eat. Prax can't make it to the galley due to his knee, which hyper-extended during the burn. But my first thought went to Holden and his busted knee fighting the proto-monster. Feels strange that we keep seeing these recurring little elements - the various characters not catching themselves shouting, etc. Prax checks his incoming messages while he waits for Amos. BABY RAPERS SHOULD BE TORTURED TO DEATH, the first reads. Prax wonders about Nicola and how he used to love her, or thought he had. Again, shades of Holden thinking similar stuff about Naomi in the previous chapter. Strange. He thinks about sending Nicola a video message, but gets one word in before he isn't sure what to say. Amos shows up and fixes up Prax's knee, and then we get a really nice bit: Caliban's War, Chapter Forty posted:“Right,” Prax said, starting to sit up. Because, yeah, Amos basically asks Prax if it's true and then says he would've broken his neck and thrown him out the airlock if it was. All Prax takes from it is a 'gentle relief.' It's a good moment, but I think it could've been more of a scene instead of how quickly it passes over. It's both weird and interesting that Amos just kind of takes Prax at his word, given how it's such a hot button topic for Amos, but we can chalk that up to Prax being his friend. But then, conversely, one can wonder that maybe Amos would feel hurt and betrayed and push him to find out if it's true. Anyway, the two of them head to the galley. They're eating lentil soup, except Amos who decides to have some kind of tube paste. Sitrep from Alex: there's six destroyers burning hard toward them, and six from Mars chasing them. The Razorback is matching the Roci. As it is, they'll get to the Razorback before the Earth ships catch them - but the Earth ships will catch them. The crew debate whether they can trust Avasarala. Prax talks about ferns. They'll be accelerating for another eight hours. Back in his cabin, Prax checks his messages again. He records Nicola a message, basically saying that he doesn't know what they told her but none of it is true and she knows that. Then he deletes the message and refunds her money from the charity account. Later, and somewhat abruptly for an Expanse novel, the Rocinante is docking with the Razorback. Holden and Amos have guns. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty posted:“So I’m guessing the firearms mean you’re thinking trap, Cap’n?” Amos asked. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty posted:The inner door opened, and the biggest person Prax had seen in his entire life stepped into the room wearing a suit of some sort of strength-augmenting armor. If it weren’t for the transparent faceplate, he would have thought it was a two-meter-tall bipedal robot. Through the faceplate, Prax saw a woman’s features: large dark eyes and coffee-with-cream skin. Her gaze raked them with the palpable threat of violence. Beside him, Amos took an unconscious step back. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty posted:“Thank you. And, Captain? You need a loving shave.” But, wait, hang on... Caliban's War, Chapter Thirty-Five posted:Avasarala thumbed on the video feed again.
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Apr 27, 2021 08:38
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Chapter Forty-One: Avasarala We hop over to Avasarala, and I get to comment on one of my personal reader-writer bugbears. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-One posted:After the Guanshiyin, the Rocinante seemed dour, mean, and utilitarian. Agh! Seemed is one of those lazy words. It's up there with tried. A lot of writers misuse seemed because they seem (ha ha) to forget that the word has a quality of pretending to be. He seems like a nice guy. That seems like a good idea. It seemed like a battleship. Amos seems harmless. But the Rocinante, being a top of the line Martian corvette torpedo bomber attack ship frigate would be dour, mean and utilitarian - regardless of spending time on the Guanshiyin or not! This sentence implies that the Rocinante is not actually those things. What makes matters worse is that the rest of the paragraph is Avasarala listing how the Rocinante is precisely those things: no carpet, no sharp corners in case of sudden manuevers, no cinnamon smells - only the military-grade air recyclers. The closest thing to a private space is the size of a public toilet stall. So, why does the Rocinante seem to be those things? Where's the but? It never comes, of course. 'After spending that time in the Guanshinyin, the Rocinante reminded Avasarala of what space travel was like for whomever wasn't blessed with outrageous wealth: dour, mean, and utilitarian.' Avasarala's been shooting her press release in the cargo bays. Naomi's pretty much handling all of it, both shooting, visual editing, and professional-sounding voice over. They end up assembling it in the medical bay to watch it. We get a nice summary of Amos. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-One posted:The crew assembled in the medical bay, where the mechanic Amos Burton had changed the feed to display from her hand terminal. Now he was sitting on one of the patient beds, his legs crossed, smiling amiably. If Avasarala hadn’t seen the intelligence files on Holden’s crew, she’d never have guessed what the man was capable of. Anyway, they watch the film. In summary: Avasarala claims that she's meeting with an OPA representative (Holden) and a representative of the Martian military (Bobbie) to address their concerns over the Ganymede attack. She will be travelling with Captain Holden to the Jovian system to launch a multilateral investigation. When it comes to Prax, she claims that Nicola is mentally ill, that she abandoned her husband and child, and that she should have her psychological issues handled in private. I genuinely can't recall if it's been mentioned that Nicola had issues like that. Because of that, I can't quite tell whether it's a pitying if harsh truth, or a fairly offensive bit of character assassination. Sure, they've implied bad things about Prax, so, turnabout is fair play, and Avasarala is a shark of a woman, but still. Holden points out that he's not a member of the OPA anymore, and Bobbie says she's not able to represent the Martian military - or even be working with her. Avasarala says "Thank you for that. Are there any comments that matter?" and she continues to be fairly entertaining. Later on, Avasarala has got hold of the Rocinante's tightbeam. She's chatting with Admiral Souther, who basically says that she's kicked the beehive and made a human shield of people who don't work for the UN. Souther reports that Nguyen had been meeting with Mao and that Errinwright knew. The smear campaign against Prax came out of the executive office which means things might start getting really hairy really fast. She ends up listening in on Bobbie and Alex. Alex thought Amos was going to toss Avasarala (huh, a lot of A names) out the airlock. Bobbie's like, hey, he could try. Alex asks if anyone actually likes her and Bobbie's like, haha, nope. Then, Avasarala walks in and tells Bobbie that she's calling a big crew meeting and it's time to show them all the monster. At the meeting, Avasarala mentions she's not supposed to show it to anyone but she's putting all her cards on the table. Naomi plays the file but Avasarala watches the responses of the crew instead of the footage. Amos is calm. Alex goes from horror to shock to tearing up - Naomi just does the first two. Holden gets furious. Bobbie weeps. Prax... gets all science giddy. Omi: "Avasarala taking note of Bobbie's emotions when she mentions being a marine feels weird- sometimes she's aware of Bobbie's PTSD issues, but if I recall other times she doesn't care because it's soldier crap, not politician crap. "Everyone's reaction to Bobbie's bodycam footage feels really overdone- these are the same people who silently slaughtered a ton of people in the Ganymede sewers for basically no reason, and never thought twice about it." Prax goes on about how the protomolecule soldiers are breaking their programming and that Merrian - that is Strickland, remember - doesn't know how to stop it. Avasarala has no idea who 'Marion' is. Holden tells Avasarala about the stowaway attack. Avasarala hands over the Venus data and Prax talks about how he knows there's a secret base on Io. Prax mentions that the kids have been taken to Io because their lack of immune systems makes it easier for the scientists to transform them. Basically, this chapter has a heavy dose of needing to make sure the reader is up to speed with the 'main plot' after a bunch of chapters which didn't have much to do with it. It's all recounted: the protomolecule soldiers are going to be sold to the highest bidder (Holden doesn't get it which is just... Sigh...), Venus is an imminent apocalypse, yadda yadda. Avasarala calls Errinwright and tells him that no one can control the monsters and that Mao's basically sold him a bad idea. She tells him that "You will be personally responsible for the single deadliest screwup in the history of humankind, and I’m on a ship with Jim loving Holden, so the bar’s not low" which is another fun line. She tries to sleep but isn't able to, and ends up at ops as Holden gets there. On the tactical plot, the UN destroyers are burning hard for the Rocinante. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-One posted:“Bobbie?”
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May 11, 2021 10:50
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Chapter Forty-Two: Holden And we're back, and at a chapter that I'd been wanting to get to for a while. Remember when I said this back in the first chapter of Caliban's War? Milkfred E. Moore posted:Now, I think we get some mention of Bobbie's size and build in every single book she appears. This is one of the more mild ones, because I think later ones stress that while she's a tank of a woman, she's also curvy and hot. I feel like she's flat out called a 'beach bunny' in one of the later books, or maybe later in this book. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Two posted:During that time, he’d learned he had no desire to be a naval intelligence wonk, really disliked poi, and really liked Polynesian women. He’d been far too busy at the time to actively chase one, but he’d thoroughly enjoyed spending his few spare moments down at the beach looking at them. He’d had a thing for curvy women with long black hair ever since. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Two posted:No! he wanted to yell. I heard you. I’m not a freak. I have a lovely girlfriend that I’m totally committed to, so stop treating me like some kind of bumbling teenage boy who’s trying to look down your dress! There's nothing wrong with having a character go, wow, this other character is hot. It's a natural part of the human experience. But I think there are ways of doing it that don't come across like, as Omi said, a proclivity on the part of the writers. It's not something that happens much in The Expanse novels, which is why I figured it was some kind of RPG in-joke in the first place. But the way Holden thinks about it is similar to that of the teenage boy he swears he isn't. Now, maybe there's something to that. Diamond Head was Holden's first posting so he was a young guy (presumably) and maybe there's a part of him that, when exposed to buff Polynesian women, kind of reverts to being that newbie just out of the academy. But I don't think that's what is happening here. It's just kind of like: look at how sexy Bobbie is, isn't she sexy, aren't her proportions so unusual and sexy? What's kind of funny is that despite Holden's protestations that he's heard her and is listening to her and not just staring creepily at her, we don't actually know what information they were talking about. All we get is that it was an informative list. Anyway, after Holden's done with all that, Bobbie goes off to get some sleep. Enter Avasarala, whom Holden reflects sees "right through him to the warring lizards at the back of his head." But as she isn't "a giant Polynesian woman" Holden thinks he can "vent his frustration on her." I think this is supposed to be funny, like all the stuff with Bobbie immediately previous, if only because it otherwise paints Holden as a gross dude if it's intended to be read straight. But this also goes back to what Holden thought when he was having make-up sex with Naomi and that particularly weird scene where he reflects he would've taken advantage of her when drunk but felt bad about it. Maybe it's a sign of how much things have changed in the decade or so since when this book was written and now. Anyway, Holden and Avasarala talk strategy. When the pursuing UN destroyers catch them, the Rocinante will lose any fight. Avasarala asks for tea but Holden, of course, only offers coffee. Holden and Avasarala talk shop for a bit--Avasarala knows virtually nothing about sci-fi fleet tactics, not even what a PDC network is, but Holden does and explains things. But ultimately, any battle is going to be a last stand. The Rocinante will be caught and engaged and it will not survive the fight. Maybe, Holden thinks, if they get lucky, they could take down one of the UN ships. Avasarala asks him what the infamous Jim Holden will do at his last stand. Holden, perhaps unsurprisingly, says that he'd blab out all their evidence about what's going on with Mao-Kwik and the proto-monsters and the kids and so on. Broadcast it to the universe! Avasarala forbids it under the notion that Holden is a "one-trick pony." Instead, Avasarala says they should send it to Admirals Souther and Leniki. If you're confused about who Leniki is, you should be -- the guy hasn't been mentioned before this point in the text. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Two posted:"I’ve read your psych profile. I know all about your 'everyone should know everything' naive bullshit. But how much of the last war was your fault, with your goddamned endless pirate broadcasts? Well?" Enter Amos and Prax. Avasarala reminds Holden that they're on this mission to save a little girl from bad people. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Two posted:"The UN isn’t one person. It isn’t even one corporation. It's a thousand little, petty factions fighting against each other. Their side's got the floor, but that's temporary. That's always temporary. I know people who can move against Nguyen and his group. They can cut off his support, strip him of ships, even recall and court-martial him given enough time. But they can’t do any of that if we’re in a shooting war with Mars. And if you toss everything you know into the wind, Mars won’t have time to wait and figure out the subtleties; they'll have no choice but to preemptively strike against Nguyen's fleet, Io, what's left of Ganymede. Everything." Holden's still not happy about it so Naomi advises sending it to someone he trusts. Not Fred, because he'd just use it as a a political tool, but someone else. Holden sends it to his family under the idea that they'll know when to use it. It's a nice little bit. Holden goes up to the crew deck where everyone's waiting for him (how long did Bobbie get to sleep for -- an hour, maybe?) They have about two days before the UN pursuit fleet catches them and destroys them. Holden's new plan is to put two people on the Razorback while the Rocinante turns about and engages the UN ships. Amos and Avasarala are on-board with the plan. Prax and Naomi will ride on the Razorback. Prax so Mei can see her daddy again. Naomi because "I loving said so." Alex is okay with it. Naomi doesn't appear to be, but no one seems to listen to the smartest person on the ship. Bobbie points out that the Martian ships chasing down the UN ships are Raptor-class fast cruisers and they could probably catch the Razorback, but Holden points out that the Martian ships are chasing the UN ships, not them. And so with that all sorted, and Naomi still kinda spluttering something angry about the plan that no one is paying attention to, everyone decides it's good -- but then Bobbie says she has an idea and the chapter ends. It's an okay chapter, if we exclude the initial stuff with Holden and Big Beach Bunny Bobbie. I like the discussion between Avasarala and Holden and the interplay between the former naval officer and the canny politician. I think this chapter is shorter than a lot of the other chapters (it comes in at 2800~ words or thereabouts) and is the better for it. The plot's developed, we've had some nice character moments, I'm on for the ride. The Rocinante is going to turn and engage the UN ships? How are they going to get out of this one? Not much happened but I didn't find myself wondering when we're getting to the fireworks factory, so to speak, because it's bearing down on our cast. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Dec 14, 2021 |
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Dec 14, 2021 00:47
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Chapter Forty-Three: Bobbie We hop over to Bobbie. Something's bugging her but she's not sure what. It isn't that they're about to die, she's prepared for that. What Bobbie's concerned about is the Martian ships following the UN pursuit force. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Three posted:Along with the two cruisers were four Martian destroyers. They might or might not be better than their UN counterparts, but with the two cruisers in their wing, they had a significant tonnage and firepower advantage. So, Bobbie says she has an idea. Everyone goes silent. We get an interesting description of Holden. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Three posted:Captain Holden, the cute one who was a little too full of himself, was staring at her, a not particularly flattering gape on his face. He looked like a very angry person who’d lost his train of thought mid-rant.  Come on, isn't that just the perfect casting? Bobbie says what she had been thinking about, and then backs up my earlier thought, that the Martian ships outclass the UN flotilla. Her plan is to call up the Martian ships and ask them if they want to help out against the UN ships--but everyone is like, why would they listen to you, they think you're traitor. But, after a quick scene break... Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Three posted:“This is Assistant Undersecretary Chrisjen Avasarala of the United Nations of Earth,” Avasarala said again. “I am about to be attacked by a rogue element of the UN Navy while on my way to a peacekeeping mission in the Jupiter system. loving save me! I will reward you by talking my government out of glassing your planet.” Naomi asks why would Mars help them. Bobbie says that Mars doesn't want a war while "hoping she wasn't talking completely out of her rear end." And figures that framing it as UN hawks about to kill the UN voice of reason should help everyone out. It plays into earlier stuff with the Mars/UN talks and Bobbie's realization that an invasion of Earth was doomed to failure, sure, but it still feels tenuous and uncertain (which is good!) Still, Holden figures they need a plan, and that plan involves putting Prax and Naomi on the Razorback. Avasarala says it is a bad idea--if the UN thinks they're going to lose, they won't want anyone to know what went down and risk their little cabal, which means eliminating a key individual. Avasarala. Naomi's like but you won't be on the racing pinnace. Avasarala is like, yeah, but they don't know that and they'll think I'm on it and they'll shoot it down. Holden agrees. They continue planning and we get a rundown of how the Rocinante crew works: Naomi handles electronic warfare and such, Amos runs damage control, Alex pilots. Bobbie points out that they don't have a gunner and that she, as a gunnery sergeant who is qualified to operate fire control on a naval vessel, can take the role. Bobbie says: Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Three posted:“That’s because this is a multi-role fast-attack ship. Torpedo bomber is just one of them. Boarding party insertion is another. And gunnery sergeant is a rank with a very specific meaning.” What bothers me about this is that it's not even necessary. Bobbie doesn't need to be trained in the systems of the ship to play a role in the oncoming space battle. Bobbie's whole deal at this point is that she's a bit of a wreck who wants to get over her survivor's guilt. She could argue that the Roci needs a gunner, and maybe Holden could be like 'but you're not trained on the Roci' and then maybe Alex could be like 'Neither was I' and it'd be a nice little moment. Alternatively, Holden could point out they need a gunner and Bobbie tries to refuse it because she'll just get them killed like her unit but there's no choice and she accepts the position although she's nervous and it could play into getting a handle on her trauma. Either way, then there'd be a bit of tension in the ship battle where it's like, hey, does Bobbie have what it takes? I feel like this is one of those Corey things where the story just doesn't feel neat, if that makes sense. It comes across as overly complicated when it doesn't have to be. A scene where Bobbie points out she can totally aim the guns of a ship that is totally a marine boarding craft is, to me, less interesting than a scene that keys into her motivation and arc and slathers some risk and uncertainty on it. Given that I think it's fair to say that even first time readers aren't particularly concerned that characters are going to die or whatever during the fight, then the emphasis should be on the internal struggles, y'know? As an aside, I have no idea if Bobbie's position of gunnery sergeant means she needs to be proficient in shipboard weapon systems is in any way applicable to modern naval warfare. But there's a few hundred years between then and now, so, whatever. Anyway, Bobbie hops into the gunner seat which is, of course, too small for her. The Rocinante enters the maximum effective range of the UN ships. Alex and Bobbie have neat, easy camaraderie as they wait for the shooting to start which is nice. And, soon enough, it starts. I don't have much to say about the space battle. I think the Corey writing style works well with the slow pace of a 'hard sci-fi' space battle. The shooting, the waiting, the sedate pace of it all. As it happens, the Martian ships fire first. Half the UN ships turn to engage. The only dumb thing about the battle is that odd little place the Expanse worldbuilding sits in where the ships are smart enough to do a lot of things themselves yet there needs to be humans involved. What this means is that Bobbie seems to really just tap a touch screen to tell the Rocinante what to shoot. It makes you wonder why the Rocinante needs a human-interface component, y'know? Still, it's not as boring as it sounds, if only because the Rocinante itself is a bit of a thing to contend with. It almost crushes Bobbie into her seat as it bucks about under Alex's guidance. It's a neat little aspect to the scene. Space travel can be dangerous and space combat is even worse. The UN ships ignore the Rocinante and turn to engage the Martians. Bobbie tells the Rocinante to shoot the UN ships. The Rocinante eats some PDC rounds that punch through it. One of them almost kills Prax, who takes it remarkably calmly. We get another little Corey slip of the tongue, too. Remember what Holden said about lizards warring about Bobbie? Well, it turns out Bobbie has lizards in the brain, too! Emphasis mine. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Three posted:The part of her mind that had been trained to acquire targets and fire torpedoes at them worked without her interference. The lizard was driving now. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Three posted:Some of those things flying out of the shattered ship would be UN sailors. Bobbie ignored that. The lizard rejoiced. It's a minor thing, and I'd be kinder to it if this is something Bobbie had mentioned about her mind in an earlier chapter, but having it come up in two chapters one after the other like this is a little grating. It ties back to comments in an earlier chapter where the authors have been reusing things that could be neat individual character bits across their whole cast, seemingly without realizing it. Then, just like that, the battle is over--the loss of one ship breaks a hole in the UN formation and the rest of the ships go down in quick order. Three destroyed, three heavily damaged. The Martians lost two ships with one damaged. The Rocinante has... three bullet holes. The victory feels surprisingly flat and anticlimactic because of it. It's not a bad scene and it's not bad that the Martians help the Rocinante out, it all feels like it fits together in the narrative--yet it also feels too easy.
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Dec 15, 2021 11:16
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Chapter Forty-Four: Holden We hop back to Holden. Everyone's helping repair the ship, even Prax, whom Holden appears to be acquiring some respect for. There's a little bit where he wonders if Prax has "shell shock" which feels like a strangely antiquated term for a future space man to use. For those of you who are unaware, "shell shock" was a term coined by a psychologist during World War 1, prior to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder being devised, and has generally faded out of use as we've come to a better understanding of the trauma that people experience under immense stress. More modern terms would also include "combat stress reaction" or "battle neurosis." Holden's on the outside of the Rocinante, inspecting the damage and the repairs. The Martian ships are escorting them. Holden watches the stars and wants Naomi to be there watching them with him, a desire that borders on "physical ache." Avasarala said something similar to Holden back in Chapter 42, about how she misses her husband like an ache in her arms. I feel like this is more likely a deliberate call back than an authorial tic but, I don't know, it's hard to tell. So, Holden calls up Naomi and talks about how beautiful it all is. They have some romantic chatter and wonder if their grandkids will ever see another planet. Alex interrupts by letting them know that the captain of the MCRN cruiser wants to talk to Holden. So, Holden and Captain Richard Tseng of the MCRN Cydonia talk and Tseng agrees to replace the torpedoes and PDC ammo the Rocinante used up in the fight. Even Holden is shocked by how immediately Tseng agrees. There's that little part of me that wonders why Tseng is being so agreeable now, especially when he openly calls the Rocinante a stolen MCRN torpedo bomber. I don't know much about military protocol but it's one of those little annoying things where maybe we should've seen whatever negotiations Bobbie and the crew did to get the Martian ships on their side. I guess they told Tseng about their mission to Io? And he's fine with it? The MCRN Sally Ride links up the Rocinante and they begin transferring everything over. This includes something from the Martian marines, a gift for Bobbie that Holden asked for -- no, we don't get told what it is. There's a bit of what I guess you could consider ship crewman porn with talk of compressed nitrogen and torpedoes being loaded and so on. It's all okay. Meanwhile, Amos and Holden transfer the PDC ammo crates and it's all okay, too. There's just not much to say about it beyond that it happens. Once they're back in the ship, Amos says of Alex: Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Four posted:Amos shrugged with his hands, like a Belter. "I think he might have a wee bit of a thing for our ample marine." Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Four posted:Holden couldn’t picture it. It wasn’t as though Bobbie were unattractive. Far from it. But she was also very big, and quite intimidating. And Alex was such a quiet and mild guy. Sure, they were both Martians, and no matter how cosmopolitan a person got, there was something comforting in reminders of home. Maybe just being the only two Martians on the ship was enough. But Alex was pushing fifty, balding without complaint, and wore his love handles with the quiet resignation of a middle-aged man. Sergeant Draper couldn’t be more than thirty and looked like a comic book illustration, complete with muscles on her muscles. Unable to stop himself, his mind began trying to figure out how the two of them would fit together. It didn’t work. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Four posted:"Look," Amos said with a grin. "When it comes to scrapes, I'm what you might call a talented amateur. But I’ve gotten a good look at that woman in and out of that fancy mechanical shell she wears. She’s a pro. We're not playing the same sport." Chapter 44 feels inert, for lack of a better term. It's the sort of thing you could sum up in one of those Coreyian sets of opening expository paragraphs. The Rocinante had a fight, the Martians rearmed it, and brought some stuff over for Bobbie and now they're closing on Io. There's always value in a breather chapter after a big tense sequence but I don't think it was really necessary here. It's all okay but it doesn't really feel like it needs to be in the story at all, y'know? Oh, and the Sally Ride is named for the first female American astronaut in space. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 07:53 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 07:51
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I feel the best way to handle cool-down chapters is to get characters to talk/do something that expresses their character through what they do to cool-down. Also it's weird that they have a fair amount of stuff that could just be a couple of lines, but then cut out all the nitty gritty conflict and negotiation.
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Dec 16, 2021 11:59
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:
To me the Rocinante's ship class has always felt like the Martian Navy just uses that as their jack-of-all-trades small armed ship. Instead of having specialist boarding shuttles and specialist ground assault shuttles and so forth, it settled on a torpedo bomber that can do a bit of everything. Maybe it's not great at everything, but it's functional and that's what really matters. This seems pretty reasonable to me. Battleships have limited carrying capacity and parasite ships that can't participate meaningfully in naval warfare are largely a waste of mass and volume. Makes much more sense to design their torpedo bombers for multiple functions. Sure, you have to make them a bit bigger, but I imagine it all balances out when you figure that a specialist shuttle would still need engines and a reactor and environmental and all sorts of other necessities that every spacecraft needs.
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Dec 16, 2021 12:49
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Khizan posted:To me the Rocinante's ship class has always felt like the Martian Navy just uses that as their jack-of-all-trades small armed ship. Instead of having specialist boarding shuttles and specialist ground assault shuttles and so forth, it settled on a torpedo bomber that can do a bit of everything. Maybe it's not great at everything, but it's functional and that's what really matters. This is all true and reasonable. Given that boarding actions are summed up as suicide in Leviathan Wakes, I don't think Earth or Mars would make a dedicated boarding craft anyway. But I do have flashbacks to Pentagon Wars and the Bradley Fighting Vehicle thing. "This is all well and good, but what about boarding parties?" "It's a torpedo bomber, General." "It's a speedy ship, why can't it be both?" I think the first season of the TV series does a bit more with the idea that Rocinante would usually have a marine complement onboard, if I remember correctly. But then it's kinda like, why not give us some really good, crunchy warbook porn about the Corvette-class multi-role combat frigate with the inexplicable class designation? Have Alex laugh about how he heard the Corvette-class was so expensive and shiny that was why they called it 'corvette.' "All the eggs in one basket, hoss. But she's a lovely little basket." (The joke is that corvette is derived from French word, I think, for basket.) Kchama posted:I feel the best way to handle cool-down chapters is to get characters to talk/do something that expresses their character through what they do to cool-down. Also it's weird that they have a fair amount of stuff that could just be a couple of lines, but then cut out all the nitty gritty conflict and negotiation. My assumption is that the books, particularly the early ones, were written quickly and without much in the way of collaboration between the two writers. They hash out the general thrust of the story and then split up the perspective characters. Abraham writes his side of things, Franck writes his side of things, then they swap the chapters, edit them a bit and smooth them out (yet they didn't catch the thing with Soren...), and arrange them in chronological order. Because of this, I'm not too surprised that you end up with interminable stuff about cargo transfers, bulkhead lights, Holden's memories of Hawaii, repetitive conversations, and so on. Nitty gritty conflict and intrigue takes a lot more time and consideration to write and is the kind of thing that might risk throwing an outline out of whack. It's like when Avasarala wanted to call up Fred for a secret chat towards the start of the book and then we never hear anything further. Or there being all sorts of potential for the poor, patronless Roci crew to burn their savings in helping Prax find his daughter--only for him to crowdfund more than enough money to run the operation. I don't think there's that much coordination between the two writers on a chapter-by-chapter level and it leaves the pacing and plot feeling a bit uneven. It's not one story with multiple perspectives as such, but multiple stories running in parallel but not really in sync. edit: It's sorta like the AI thing, too. It surprises me that the Coreys never have a little explanation like 'In a crisis situation, the United Nations Navy always wanted humans calling the shots, and the MCRN was much the same. Neither of the superpowers wanted to risk an apocalyptic war on the basis of a software bug. Even if there were smart systems throughout the entire Solar system, war was the one thing that humanity wanted to keep their little monkey hands on.' Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 14:31
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Chapter Forty-Five: Avasarala We're back to Avasarala and she's giving a report to her boss' boss, Secretary-General Esteban Sorrento-Gillis. It's kind of interesting how little a presence he has been in this novel and, frankly, I had to double check after reading this chapter that is indeed who she was composing the report to. It's a bit of a gamble on Avasarala's part, given the earlier concern that Sorrento-Gillis was possibly in on it, too, but what else can she do at this point? As she says, "the die is already cast." Basically, she puts everything on the table: she's got a bunch of concerning information on the protomolecule (it can communicate across the Solar system, military utilization is next to impossible, possible second Venus scenario, etc.), she can't keep it hidden forever, and the damage if it gets out might provoke the usage of accelerated asteroids against the Earth itself. *laughs in Marco* She says that she's aware of some kind of plan within the Earth government to use the protomolecule and that the United Nations must "isolate and defang" that faction. She mentions that Admirals Souther and Leniki and her team are on her side. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Five posted:So this was what it came to. All of human civilization, everything it had managed, from the first cave painting to crawling up the gravity well and pressing out into the antechamber of the stars, came down to whether a man whose greatest claim to fame was that he'd been thrown in prison for writing bad poetry had the balls to back down Errinwright. Prax shows up. He wonders if the transmission is going to work. Avasarala says it would if she was there in person, but she's not. She thinks Prax resembles Michael-Jon who is another name I don't really recognize. A brief check tells me that he's Avasarala's guy who's been handling the Venus stuff. I'd so forgotten who he was that I completely overlooked that, just a few chapters ago, he was referred to as Jon-Michael. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-One posted:Avasarala did her best to recapitulate it, but she wasn’t at all certain she had the details right. She’d considered bringing Jon-Michael into it, but decided against it. Better to keep it in the family. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Five posted:"Reputation never has very much to do with reality," she said. "I could name half a dozen paragons of virtue that are horrible, small-souled, evil people. And some of the best men I know, you’d walk out of the room if you heard their names. No one on the screen is who they are when you breathe their air." General Battuta posted:"Some people think they can change the human species," the guy who was old and had seen too much poo poo said. "But whatever you do to change what's human, you're still a human doing changes. Isn't that funny?" He put the red kibble in the recycler. "Anyway, I don't think about this stuff. I just drink and shoot stuff. That's why I'm still alive." He was the real wise man. Anyway, Prax says that Mei is probably dead. She needs her medicine but, even if they have that, the bad guys have probably turned her into a monster. Avasarala says he doesn't believe it. If he does believe it, if he says so, then she'll get the UN to bomb Io with nuclear warheads. While Avasarala says that she can't justify it because destroying the lab would prevent them from acquiring evidence as to who is involved and who might be missing, the real reason is that Mei might still be alive. Some time later, Avasarala is pacing through the halls of the Rocinante as she waits to hear back from the Secretary-General. She thinks about the Rocinante crew and I feel like it's the most interesting description of the crew we've got yet--especially Amos, even if it feels like it's coming to the story a bit late. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Five posted:The mechanic, Amos Burton. Implicated in several murders, indicted, never tried. Took an elective vasectomy the day he was legally old enough to do so. Naomi Nagata, the engineer. Two master's degrees. Offered full-ride scholarship for a PhD on Ceres Station and turned it down. Alex Kamal, pilot. Seven drunk and disorderlies when he was in his early twenties. Had a son on Mars he still didn’t know about. James Holden, the man without secrets. The holy fool who’d dragged the solar system into war and seemed utterly blind to the damage he caused. An idealist. The most dangerous kind of man there was. And a good man too. She calls up Souther. He wonders what they'll do if Sorrento-Gillis doesn't believe her. Avasarala figures they can go rogue but they won't last long. But then there's a message from Arjun and they talk for a bit. It's a nice little scene between the two. After that, half an hour later, she gets a call from Errinwright--and he's pissed. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Five posted:"Chrisjen," he said. "I know you won’t understand this, but I have been doing everything in my power to keep you and yours safe. You don’t understand what you’ve waded into, and you are loving things up. I wish you had had the moral courage to come to me with this before you ran off like a horny sixteen-year-old with James Holden. Honestly, if there was a better way to destroy any professional credibility you once had, I can’t think what it would have been." Avasarala immediately goes up and finds Bobbie and Alex and shows them Errinwright's message. Bobbie's like, poo poo, what the gently caress do we do, and Avasarala says they should break out the champagne because the message reveals that Errinwright has nothing to play but threats. Five hours later, Sorrento-Gillis gets on the public newsfeed and announces that the UN government is forming an investigative committee over accusations that have been made against certain individuals within the government, such as unauthorized and illegal use of military forces and dealing with private contractors. Sorrento-Gillis is going to get to the bottom of the corruption and rip it out. As a reader, it feels remarkably like what politicians say in any scandal, which means that nothing is going to happen for months at least, if not years, and a lot of it will probably involve two or three interns being sacrificed to the machine. Even The Phantom Menace acknowledged how slowly a bureaucracy will be to move, and Sorrento-Gillis' speech gives me a bit of a flash to that ("Queen Amidala of the Naboo, will you defer your motion to allow a commission to explore the validity of your accusations?"). Even Holden is like, so, what, did he actually say anything? Which is why it's so funny that Avasarala sees it as a win big enough to immediately demolish Errinwright's entire conspiracy and, indeed, she doesn't appear to be wrong. Turns out all she had to do to defeat a conspiracy of the second-most powerful man on Earth, members of the Admiralty, and some of the most powerful capitalists in the Solar system was send an email. Bing bong so simple. Anyway, that, to her, leaves only Admiral Nguyen, our old pal Mao, and Strickland to worry about. Oh, and Venus, of course. So, we get this great line that sums up the chapter: Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Five posted:"Ladies and gentlemen," she said, "I have just solved our smallest problem." Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 10:07 on Dec 20, 2021 |
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Dec 20, 2021 10:05
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Chapter Forty-Six: Bobbie We're back with Bobbie and she's recalling one of her most vivid memories--the day she got her orders to report to the 2nd Expeditionary Force Spec War training facility. It's the day that she knew she had the opportunity to be one of the biggest badasses in the Solar system -- Martian Force Recon. She didn't just get one of the prestigious four spots but was number one by an "embarrassing margin." She's sitting somewhere in the Rocinante and she's cleaning and assembling her power armor. There's a bit too much exposition throughout, I think. Basically, Bobbie's working on her armor it's all sort of worldbuilding about how much concentration she needs. Remember what I said about intrigue being hard to write? All of this 'Bobbie cleans a thing, she thinks about a thing' feels like the result of there being a Bobbie chapter in the outline but not nearly enough plot for its place. So, Franck (who wrote the Bobbie chapters) just kind of goes on for about a thousand words before getting to the meat of it, the stuff that might actually develop something. Which, in this chapter, is that Bobbie begins to figure the monster out. Why it blew itself up, how it moves, how it fights. It's not bad stuff actually, just like how the stuff about Bobbie cleaning and thinking isn't bad, but this chapter is doing a fair amount just reminding the reader of things that happened maybe twenty chapters ago and it gives it an unwieldy feel, I think. Basically, Bobbie thinks that the monster exploded because every time it gets wounded it gets an opportunity to throw off its leash. When that happens, the implanted bomb goes off and annihilates it. So, there's her objective: all she needs to do is hurt it enough to trigger the self-destruct. Makes sense! So, as Bobbie works on her suit she watches the playback of the firefight on Ganymede and basically works through the monster's capabilities--it's fast in a straight line, it's extremely strong but only really has two tactics: close to melee range and rip its target apart, or throw something heavy at them. So, when you get right down to it, Bobbie's only advantage is any firearm she'll have with her. She can fire on the move and it can't. Afterward, she goes for a walk. She wants to talk to someone but Holden and Naomi are together, Avasarala is busy, and Alex is asleep. Bobbie thinks about waking him up but thinks that might send the wrong message. She finds Amos but he's asleep, too. Bobbie calls her dad and leaves him a message about how they're going to hear crazy stuff about her but she's doing it for Mars, love you, yadda yadda. Then she calls Captain Martens and basically says she understands everything now. After that, she's being woken up by Holden and he asks her to join her in the machine shop. He's got with him the gift from Chapter 44: it's a three-barrel Thunderbolt Mark V gatling gun. When Bobbie says it's just a weird club without any ammo, Holden's like, hey, that's why I got five thousand incendiary rounds. After all, if the labs are putting incendiary bombs in them then incendiary shells should be a big help. "Oh, hell yes," Bobbie says. And that's it! There's really nothing to say about this chapter. It feels kinda odd given the length, really -- like 2000 words of content, if that, stretched over to about 3500. I think a chapter like this is necessary before Bobbie hits Io, but I think it really suffers from The Expanse's revolving door pacing. There's not even any bits I wanted to highlight! As always, there's something about the Corey style that makes me not mind reading so many words of 'character reflects while doing things' but I still feel like it's a crude concept to build much of the chapter around. Think of it this way -- would anything have been lost if someone, say Alex, had been there for Bobbie to bounce ideas off? They're both Martian, they have chemistry, and it'd give Alex something to do and some degree of personality which he's really not had for this book (and was, indeed, essentially absent from prior to Chapter 22.)
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Dec 22, 2021 14:36
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Five thousand rounds sounds like not a lot for a triple barrel gatling gun. Like modern-day gatling guns can fire 6000 rounds per minute.
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Dec 23, 2021 02:11
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Kchama posted:Five thousand rounds sounds like not a lot for a triple barrel gatling gun. Like modern-day gatling guns can fire 6000 rounds per minute. Interesting. Thanks for that! I didn't think to compare it. It makes you wonder if the only get loaded with such a small ammo count because they fire in bursts and won't be engaging in protracted firefights (which would fit with them being a reconnaissance unit.) Or maybe it's a case of the authors not doing the numbers. A quick look around online and I've found an Expanse blog that makes the argument that a 2mm round, even fired from a gatling gun, would basically be useless beyond point blank range. They seem to make the point that the gun just isn't very useful, unless you're expecting engagements to be very short (and, presumably, very close) and that the TV series upped the ammo to about 6.25mm, even though there's no way Bobbie's suit as depicted can carry five thousand rounds.
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Dec 23, 2021 02:38
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:Interesting. Thanks for that! I didn't think to compare it. It makes you wonder if the only get loaded with such a small ammo count because they fire in bursts and won't be engaging in protracted firefights (which would fit with them being a reconnaissance unit.) Or maybe it's a case of the authors not doing the numbers. I think they just thought gatling guns sounded cool and didn't realize that the point of them is firing long sustained bursts. They're mostly used on aircraft and sometimes tanks because they require electricity and lugging around a power source and the feed system for them alone is very difficult on foot, needless to say.
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Dec 23, 2021 04:31
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Some thoughts on the 2mm round: The formula for kinetic energy is 0.5*mv2, so you could get significant energy out of a 2mm projectile but it would need to be going really fast. Here is some super rough math on it. I'll approximate the two bullets as cylinders for ease of calculating mass. A modern 5.56 round is roughly 20mm long, so the first will be 5.56mm x 20mm and the second will be 2mm x 20mm. This means that the first cylinder has a volume of 0.486cm3 while the second has a volume of 0.063cm3. The density of lead is 11.34g/cm3m, so m = 5.5g for the first and 0.7g for the second. The muzzle velocity of a 5.56 out of an AR15 is ~990m/s, so I'll round that up to an even 1000m/s for easier calculation. This gives the 5.56 mm cylinder a KE of 2750 J and the 2mm of only 350 J. Getting the 2mm up to the KE of the 5.56 requires it to be fired at a blistering 2800m/s, which is roughly Mach 8. As a comparison, the absolute fastest current muzzle velocity of a rifle is the .220 Swift at ~1200m/s, so it seems like bullshit. However, she was carrying this weapon on Ganymede and Io, both of which have atmosphere so thin as to be effectively nonexistent so you can basically negate air resistance as a factor in aiming and acceleration, and we know that they have electromagnetic acceleration weapons from the Roci's railgun. Combine those two things and I'm willing to handwave that they have some kind of electromag gatling gun for use in those kinds of situations. Would draw a shitload of power but hey, that's why they use it with powered armor.
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Dec 23, 2021 07:10
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Khizan posted:Some thoughts on the 2mm round: I don't really have a problem with them having powered armor-wielding gatling guns in general, just the fact that 5000 rounds is expected to be all that's needed with a gun expected to expend that all in a couple minutes of firing. EDIT: That's why I was suggesting they didn't know much about gatling guns and just picked an ammunition number that seemed like a lot. Kchama fucked around with this message at 14:19 on Dec 23, 2021 |
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Dec 23, 2021 14:16
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There are ways it makes sense. Planes don’t carry a lot of ammunition, generally just enough for a couple seconds of firing. This is because you only need a few rounds to score a kill and most of your time will be spent lining up a shot. Bobbie’s armor may be designed with the assumption you’re just going to aimbot people with one or two shots. Plus ammunition is heavy and takes up space.
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Dec 23, 2021 15:18
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General Battuta posted:There are ways it makes sense. Planes don’t carry a lot of ammunition, generally just enough for a couple seconds of firing. This is because you only need a few rounds to score a kill and most of your time will be spent lining up a shot. Bobbie’s armor may be designed with the assumption you’re just going to aimbot people with one or two shots. It still kind of sounds like a ammo-hungry would be ideal for it. As far as I know, the reason why aircraft have them despite only having so few rounds is that you're almost never going to get many chances to shoot it and you'll need an immense volume of fire to hit something like that, especially with only a second or two of opportunity you'll likely have. It seems like an autocannon of some sort would be more ideal in the circumstances. ... Of course, this might be why Holden decided on the gatling.
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Dec 23, 2021 17:57
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I mean an autocannon is much, much, much, much bigger than a 2mm (or 6mm) gatling gun.
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Dec 23, 2021 18:14
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General Battuta posted:I mean an autocannon is much, much, much, much bigger than a 2mm (or 6mm) gatling gun. Absolutely! I was just trying to come up with a better replacement if you absolutely needed a big hulking gun with big firepower that didn't rely on hurling huge amounts of ammo super fast. Granted, this all depends on just how strong the powered armor is and its capabilities. I don't have much clue on that.
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Dec 23, 2021 18:34
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One problem with that is that the ammo for that kind of gun is correspondingly massive. Instead of carrying 5000 rounds you end up carrying 50 so you'll probably end up with fewer total shots, especially if the gatling gun has a switch for something like a 20-round burst.
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Dec 24, 2021 00:26
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Khizan posted:One problem with that is that the ammo for that kind of gun is correspondingly massive. Instead of carrying 5000 rounds you end up carrying 50 so you'll probably end up with fewer total shots, especially if the gatling gun has a switch for something like a 20-round burst. That's true. I'm an idiot so I don't actually know what the answer would be in this situation.
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Dec 24, 2021 03:36
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First of all, Merry Christmas, Happy New Years, etc. etc.General Battuta posted:There are ways it makes sense. Planes don’t carry a lot of ammunition, generally just enough for a couple seconds of firing. This is because you only need a few rounds to score a kill and most of your time will be spent lining up a shot. Bobbie’s armor may be designed with the assumption you’re just going to aimbot people with one or two shots. This is sort of how I assumed it works and I'm pretty sure is how it depicts Bobbie fighting in Season 2 of the TV series (the AI tags all the hostiles then pops them with a shot each.) But correct me if I'm wrong because I'm extremely stupid when it comes to military tech, but what is the advantage of a gatling gun if you're going to aimbot people with one or two shots? Is there any? I'm under the impression that the reasoning for a design like that is a. cooling and b. rate of fire. Khizan posted:However, she was carrying this weapon on Ganymede and Io, both of which have atmosphere so thin as to be effectively nonexistent so you can basically negate air resistance as a factor in aiming and acceleration, and we know that they have electromagnetic acceleration weapons from the Roci's railgun. Combine those two things and I'm willing to handwave that they have some kind of electromag gatling gun for use in those kinds of situations. Would draw a shitload of power but hey, that's why they use it with powered armor. Otherwise, this. Still, it's an interesting little derail! Kchama posted:That's true. I'm an idiot so I don't actually know what the answer would be in this situation. You may be an idiot but at least you didn't mix up castration and vasectomy. my credibility... Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 09:53 on Dec 28, 2021 |
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Dec 28, 2021 09:51
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:I'm under the impression that the reasoning for a design like that is a. cooling and b. rate of fire. Cooling in in space is extremely difficult because vacuum is a perfect insulator. When you heat something up on Earth it cools off by heating up the surrounding air, which then rises up and is replaced by cooler air that absorbs more heat and so on and so on until the environment and the object are at equilibrium. When you heat that same thing up in a vacuum it cools off very slowly because there's nothing around it that can absorb the heat. With that in mind, I feel comfortable handwaving that the gatling design is needed for whatever cooling system they use for it.
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Dec 28, 2021 11:38
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Khizan posted:Cooling in in space is extremely difficult because vacuum is a perfect insulator. When you heat something up on Earth it cools off by heating up the surrounding air, which then rises up and is replaced by cooler air that absorbs more heat and so on and so on until the environment and the object are at equilibrium. When you heat that same thing up in a vacuum it cools off very slowly because there's nothing around it that can absorb the heat. Do these fights happen in vacuum? I was under the impression that they were in places with at least some atmosphere. The gatling design isn't good in a vacuum though, because a gatling deals with heat by having multiple barrels so that they heat is dispersed among them. In fact, they are extremely bad in a vacuum as a result of those properties you mentioned. Kchama fucked around with this message at 11:24 on Dec 29, 2021 |
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Dec 29, 2021 00:05
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Kchama posted:Do these fights happen in vacuum? I was under the impression that they were in places with at lease some atmosphere. Ganymede has an atmosphere but it's ridiculously thin. Earth atmospheric pressure is about 101,325 Pa. Mars has an atmosphere of about 610 Pa. Ganymede has an estimated atmospheric pressure ranging from 0.1 Pa(from a 1972 study using visible light) to 0.0000012 Pa(based on observations from Hubble). Io's atmosphere is estimated at something like 0.0003 Pa. So the atmosphere exists but it is super super thin. I don't think it would be thick enough for effective cooling but I could be wrong about that because looking that up is where I drew my effort line. And yeah, you're right about the gatling gun thing now that I think about it. I guess they just want the option for raw firepower despite needing a less efficient cooling system?
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Dec 29, 2021 02:15
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Chapter Forty-Seven: HoldenCaliban's War, Chapter Forty-Seven posted:Holden sat at the combat control console on the operations deck and watched Ragnarok gather. My brain kept coming back to this line, the opening line, as I read through this chapter. I feel that it's somewhat imprecise and somewhat inaccurate and, I'd argue, not particularly true to Holden's character. Ragnarok is the end of the world in Scandinavian mythology. Or, to be more accurate, it is the end of the world of gods and men. A bunch of wild poo poo goes down, the gods die, the earth sinks into the sea, and the stars go out. But after Ragnarok, the world will be reborn, some of the gods return, and life will go on. Is that accurate for what we know of this looming clash above Io? I think it seems that way if Ragnarok is understood as just 'a battle that ends the world' but I also feel like it's too hyperbolic for Holden to snap to immediately. I'll link this to something else Holden thinks in the next paragraph. But the Ragnarok line feels more like something Ty Franck thought was a nice opening line rather than something Holden might actually think or that was a particularly insightful allusion to the world of the Expanse (who are the gods, Fenris, Jormungandr, etc? Where's the rebirth?) I mean, has Holden even displayed any interest in Scandinavian mythology? Of course, most people know of Ragnarok like we know of Armageddon -- big bad cataclysm. But I feel this is the sort of thing that illustrates the issue of The Expanse: it's good, it's solid, but there's never anything that astounds. Anyway, it's a minor point. In the meantime, we get some nice... I'm not sure how to put it beyond... sci-fi space opera armada porn exposition. Thirty-five capital ships! Kill zones! Cruisers! Destroyers! Four Truman-class dreadnoughts! Three Donnager-class battleships! Any one of which, Holden reflects, could "depopulate a planet." As an aside, the Coreys keep italicising the class designation of their warships and I'm fairly sure that's not right. You italicise ship names, yes. But as far as I'm aware, you do not italicise ship classes. The USS Enterprise-D is a Galaxy-class starship. Like Ragnarok, it's a snappy line, that one about depopulating a planet with one ship, but it makes me think of Star Wars and its Base Delta Zero warships. Unless I'm severely mistaking what we know of the Expanse's warships and the firepower they can leverage versus the amount of firepower you need to depopulate an entire planet, I'm not sure that a single five-hundred meter long battleship can do that. Earth's population is given as thirty billion, according to the Expanse wiki, and I just don't believe that a single Martian battleship can pose an existential threat to an entire planetary population. It makes Holden -- the Earther fleet officer -- feel weirdly hyperbolic. This isn't just the biggest fleet battle in history, it's the end of history. These aren't just cutting edge Martian capital ships, but planet-killers. (However, I can absolutely buy that a single capital warship may be an existential threat to Mars given the fragile nature of the dome cities. But lobbing a nuke at each dome is far less impressive than "depopulating an entire planet" which brings me back to that thought that Holden is just being hyperbolic. Which is not a trait that I think I would assign to Holden. Idealistic, sure. Opinionated, yeah. Self-righteous? Yep. But hyperbolic?) Anyway, the strategic assessment continues. By Holden's reckoning, "his team" has the most ships -- Souther and the Martians have Nguyen's group outnumbered two to one. But Holden knows that, if it comes to a battle, you might not be able to count on the UN to fire their own. And that's best case! Worst case is that the ships under Souther's command may be waiting to flip sides to Nguyen! Holden thinks "it could turn into a bloodbath" which is kind of funny given his immediate thought was that it was an imminent Ragnarok. Personally, I feel like a bloodbath is a few steps down from the apocalypse but, hey. There's a nice little bit between Holden and Avasarala where both of them are uncomfortable and unsure of how things are going to play out, and that'll be eighteen hours from now. They talk a bit about how it's all the same old story with the implication that Earth lost Mars because of distance and Avasarala says that members of the Earth government have been waiting for the chance to humble Mars ever since they chose not to. I'm not sure whether this is a reference to the events of Leviathan Wakes or, perhaps, some worldbuilding as to the circumstances that led to Mars becoming an independent entity from Earth. Come to think of it, I don't think that was ever detailed yet. It doesn't really need to be--the conversation between Holden and Avasarala makes it clear that Earth's reach exceed its grasp when it came to Mars. Of course, Avasarala says that warmongering politicans and military-types are not the real problem. The real problem is that bad poo poo is going down on Venus and for all anyone knows, that might be the first move of an empire whose grasp is as long as its reach and, as far as Avasarala is concerned, they might just be cargo culting by comparison. I'm pretty sure this cargo culting allusion comes up a whole bunch in these books but this appears to be the first mention. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Seven posted:“But the story is always the same. No matter how good your technology is, at some point you’ll conquer territory that you can’t hold on to.” Later, everyone is on the ops deck. Prax is wondering why no one is shooting. For the moment, everyone's just floating around above Io. Amos is like, Prax, no one is shooting because it's like that thing you did on Ganymede with the gun. Naomi reports that Nguyen's fleet is only targeting the Martian ships, and the Martian ships are painting them back. Souther's ships aren't targeting anyone and don't even have their weapons ready. Everyone suits up for battle, and then a message comes through. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Seven posted:"—launch immediately against targets on Mars. We have a battery of missiles carrying a lethal biological weapon ready to fire. You have one hour to leave Io orbit or we will launch immediately against targets on Mars. We have a—" Nguyen tells everyone that Souther has no military authority and orders Souther's fleet to stand down. Souther says that Nguyen has gone rogue and that his fleet should stand down. It's fun. I like this stuff. Honestly, this might be the best chapter of the book so far. Prax starts freaking out about Mei and tries to get on the comms. Holden tells Amos to "sedate the poo poo out of him." It's interesting because this feels way more accurate to Prax's general mindset than how calm he was during battle a few chapters ago. Holden is apparently really angry about Prax's outburst and yet it comes across really flatly. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Seven posted:Holden looked around the room, seeing the shocked looks from Avasarala and Naomi but ignoring them. Prax’s need for his daughter to take precedence over everything else had almost put them all in danger again. And while Holden intellectually understood the man’s drive, having to stop him from killing them all every time Mei’s name came up was stress he didn’t need right then. It left him angry and needing to snap at someone. Sorrento-Gillis gets on the line and announces the first part of the UN investigation into current events. Specifically, that Admiral Augusto Nguyen is recalled to Earth for questioning. And, just like that... Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Seven posted:All over the ship, alarms started blaring. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 10:55 on Dec 30, 2021 |
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Dec 30, 2021 10:51
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Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Seven posted:Holden looked around the room, seeing the shocked looks from Avasarala and Naomi but ignoring them. Prax’s need for his daughter to take precedence over everything else had almost put them all in danger again. And while Holden intellectually understood the man’s drive, having to stop him from killing them all every time Mei’s name came up was stress he didn’t need right then. It left him angry and needing to snap at someone. I love this bit because it's another bit where Holden really hates his personality traits when they crop up in other people. You see it a lot with Miller in LW. Holden hates him for deciding that the Greater Good required the execution of Space Hitler without ever reflecting on the fact that he used that exact same justification to start a loving war. Similarly, here he's thinking about how stressful it is that Prax's dedication to his daughter potentially endangers them all, without ever realizing that that's what he does to everybody around him every time he hears a secret.
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Dec 30, 2021 12:58
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Khizan posted:I love this bit because it's another bit where Holden really hates his personality traits when they crop up in other people. You see it a lot with Miller in LW. Holden hates him for deciding that the Greater Good required the execution of Space Hitler without ever reflecting on the fact that he used that exact same justification to start a loving war. That's true! It's funny, it's one of the things that I've been struck by a few times so far re-reading these novels: Holden really comes across as a bit of a dick. I'm glad you pointed this out because while I'd highlighted it with 'Prax pulls a Holden', I'd forgotten to actually mention it. I feel like the series desire to keep Holden as a 'party paladin' good guy type protagonist really limits what they can do with him, but I remember really liking how he features and acts in Book 8. Which could be, and I'm not sure I've mentioned this in this thread, because I had a thought once how interesting the series might've been if we never saw it from Holden's perspective. If we just saw him through Miller's eyes in Book 1, then Prax and Avasarala's eyes in Book 2, and so on. How differently would he come across?
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Dec 30, 2021 14:05
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Chapter Forty-Eight: Avasarala As the UN flagship opens fire, we switch over to Avasarala. She knows that Errinwright has apparently cut a deal with Sorrento-Gilles and left his conspirators, such as Nguyen, out to dry. Both Nguyen and Souther are shouting that the other is relieved of duty. A bunch of ships try to get around this rhetorical deadlock by contacting Avasarala. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Eight posted:"This is Assistant Undersecretary Chrisjen Avasarala, representing the civilian government of Earth," she said. "Legal and appropriate command of this force is given to Admiral Souther. Anyone rejecting or ignoring his orders will be subject to legal action. I repeat, Admiral Souther is in legally authorized command of—" Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Eight posted:She started making calls. In the heat of a battle, all she had to offer was this: making calls. Talking. The same things she always did. Something about it was actually reassuring. The Greenville was accepting Souther’s command. The Tanaka wasn’t responding. The Dyson opened the channel, but the only sound was men shouting at each other. It was bedlam. Anyway, Souther gives all the conspirator ships thirty seconds to stand down and be spared. All of them do -- except Nguyen and his ship. Then, things go from bad to worse when Io fires off two hundred and thirty missiles. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Eight posted:“What the hell are they? Are those torpedoes?” Alex asked. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Eight posted:Any one of them was the death of a planet, and the acceleration data put them at ten, fifteen, twenty g's. Nothing human survived at a sustained twenty g. Nothing human had to. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Eight posted:"This is Admiral Nguyen of the United Nations battleship Agatha King. I am offering to surrender to UN ships with the condition of immediate evacuation. Repeat: I am offering surrender to any United Nations military vessel on the condition of immediate evacuation." Nguyen says he's surrendered. Avasarala says it's not about that: if the protomolecule gets loose, they're all hosed. Nguyen says that it's not proven but also refuses to turn on his internal cameras so they can inspect the ship. She implores him to turn the missile transponders on so the good guys can track them and shoot them down. She can't save him but maybe they can still save Mars. Yeah, she's pleading with a guy who would happily knock Mars off, but I appreciate how desperate it is. All it does, however, is give Nguyen a crack in her armor. If they can get him off the ship, he'll turn the transponders on. He doesn't care if they throw him in the brig for the rest of his life, but he won't stay on the ship. Avasarala says... She can't do it. Which feels about the closest thing this series ever gets to a twist! Nguyen cuts the connection. Meanwhile, Holden and co. inspect data from Nguyen's flagship. Someone's venting the reactor into the air recycling. Prax figures that whatever protomolecule monster hit the ship is now turning it into something like Eros. Avasarala feels hopeless and forwards her conversation with Nguyen to Souther. Someone ejects from the Agatha King and the other ships shoot it down. Holden then says that the crew can take the Rocinante down to Eros. Meanwhile, he'll take the Razorback over to the Agatha King and get those missile transponder codes back on. Avasarala asks why. Holden says that only two people got off Eros, and only one of them is left. This is another chapter I really liked. Having a space battle happen around Avasarala while she puts her political chops to work as best she can while kind of working as a glorified switchboard operator is a fun idea, I think. It works well and the plot developments all feel well-accounted for. Even if I think one can make a good argument that it doesn't quite live up to Holden's internal monologue about the biggest space naval battle history had ever seen -- Ragnarok! I had some thoughts I didn't mention in Forty-Seven, so, I'll mention them now. As shaky as the Expanse books get, I feel like they generally have effective climaxes. Every character has something to do and some role to play. Prax has to find Mei. Bobbie has to fight the monster. Avasarala tries to get through to Nguyen. And Holden, as the resident protomolecule veteran... has to go over to Agatha King and deal with the missiles that will kill Mars. Admittedly, the Holden one feels pretty weak and artificial, and feels the most like it's there to give him something to do in the climax. It's not bad per se but there's a part of me that feels like it'd be more honest if it was just like, well, Holden has to go over there to have a manly fistfight with Nguyen for the fate of Mars. Either way, it's not surprising that the TV series cuts it out and alters the whole thing with Nguyen. But overall, I think the final chapters of Caliban's War (there are seven left including an epilogue) are a big part of the reason why this book is more well-regarded than Leviathan Wakes. Compare it to Wakes where you had the Miller ending and climax (great) and the Holden ending and climax where he kind of meaninglessly shouts at random naval guys (bad.) Here Holden at least feels like he has a narrative reason to be here, even if it ultimately concerns the fate of a planet we know very little about and haven't actually seen. Like, why not have Bobbie go over and clash with the monster there? Why not have the missiles fired at Earth? There're characters like Arjun who we like and care about on Earth, y'know?
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Jan 5, 2022 06:57
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Chapter Forty-Nine: HoldenCaliban's War, Chapter Forty-Nine posted:"Don’t do this," Naomi said. She didn’t beg, or cry, or make demands. All the power of her request lay in its quiet simplicity. "Don’t do it." See, the thing that sticks out to me about Naomi, however, is that those opening sentences feel like they define her character until Nemesis Games where they awkwardly graft a terrorist backstory to her. She's Holden's girlfriend who is the voice of reason. As a character, the only things I feel like I can say about her, here, at the end of two novels, is that she's intelligent, a Belter, can do electronic warfare stuff, and doesn't like to handle weapons (although she isn't really a pacifist.) Some people call Naomi a pacifist but I think that's remarkably incorrect given that she has no problem with, say, blowing up space pirates at the start of the novel. Either way, she has two character traits. But then again, maybe that's intentional: Holden has like two traits, too -- idealist and coffee. Anyway, throughout the opening scene of this chapter, all Naomi does is ask Holden not to go over to the Agatha King. I think it's supposed to come across as romantic and intelligent because it's so dangerous but just kind reads as childish and pathetic--in the pitious sense, not that stupid sense. That's not to say that Naomi shouldn't have concern for what Holden is about to do, but she just doesn't feel right in this chapter. So, Holden's getting ready for his journey to the King. He gets out his armor until he remembers that the King is being bathed in radiation and therefore will need a "full-on hazard suit." Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Nine posted:Holden opened his equipment locker and took out the assault rifle he kept there. It was large, black, and designed to be intimidating. It would immediately mark anyone who carried it as a threat. Holden reflects that, given what Prax and Avasarala have said, the protomolecule on the King knows what the protomolecule on Venus knows--how human spaceships are put together (thanks to the Arboghast incident) and how to turn humans into -- yes, you guessed it -- vomit zombies. Holden thinks he'll be fine in his fully sealed hazmat suit. The one thing Holden seems to think is a good thing is that the protomolecule acts "like a virus, not an army" and therefore doesn't think he'll run into a horde of proto-monsters. Holden tells Amos that Bobbie is in charge once she hits the service and that his job is to keep Prax safe and find Mei. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Nine posted:Amos looked hurt for a moment. "Of course I will, Captain. Anything that gets to him or that baby will already have killed me. And that ain’t easy to do." Instead of making an argument or maybe saying anything about the situation, Naomi just says that it's not fair because she and Holden just got back together -- see what I meant with those earlier comments? In the end, Naomi and Holden say they'll work together to get him back. Soon after, Holden's flying the Razorback to the Agatha King. He likens it to taking a race car to the corner market which is a fun analogy. He spends some time eyeballing how pretty Io and it's okay. Holden does a spacewalk over to the King and, with Naomi looking through his video link, Holden goes into the airlock. As soon as Holden steps inside the King, a naval officer bursts out of a locker and tries to brain him with a wrench. Holden promptly grabs him and the guy, whose name is Larson, says that his plan was to get a suit and run out the airlock but it was locked so he hid in a locker. Naomi says Larson might live if they can get him to sickbay in the next couple of hours. Holden enlists Larson to get him to CIC and Larson calls him 'sir' because Holden mentions he has "admiralty-level overrides" which is fun. Larson leads Holden through the ship but they don't see any other crew. Larson says galley in a funny way and Holden quizzes him and it turns out that the monster put all the crew in the galley. But they need to go past the galley to get to the CIC. So, Holden tells Larson to run for it and let him deal with anything weird. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Nine posted:Tiny blue flickers floated in the air around them like fireflies. Like the lights Miller had reported when he was on Eros the second time. The time he didn’t come back from. The fireflies were here now too. Then the vomit zombies show up, but they're not just any regular vomit zombie... Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Nine posted:But when it turned to look at Holden, its eyes glowed with a faint inner blue. And there was an intelligence in them the Eros zombies hadn’t had. Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Nine posted:There was a single man still in the CIC: a squat, powerfully built Asian man with an admiral’s uniform and a large-caliber pistol in one shaky hand. Nguyen reiterates his terms -- the codes for a ride off the ship. Larson's like, sure, this guy says he's taking me, too. Holden says: Caliban's War, Chapter Forty-Nine posted:"No loving way," Holden said to Nguyen. "Not a chance. Either give me those codes because there’s a scrap of humanity left in you, or give them to me because you’re dead. I don’t give a poo poo either way. You decide." Holden wants to blow the ship to deal with the protomolecule problem but they can't set the self-destruct on a timer as, y'know, that'd allow someone to disarm it if they tried to take the ship. Someone has to manually hit the button. Holden says it's not like he can get off the ship anyway, but it turns out Larson's suit got damaged when his arm was caught in that door and he caught the proto-goo in the process and so now he can do it. Well, okay. In the last paragraph, Holden strips off his suit, gets another one, gets over to the Razorback, and is halfway to the Rocinante when the King self-destructs. As mentioned in the last chapter, Holden's part in the climax feels weak and artificial. Larson is the highlight of the chapter, honestly but despite Holden telling Larson that he'll let everyone know he's a hero, Larson doesn't get mentioned after this chapter. It doesn't help the feeling that this is a bit of a shaky climax assembled out of pieces that weren't ending up with anyone else. Like, it has all the pieces of something reasonable: the Arboghast stuff presenting a complication, Nguyen being taken out, a bit of Holden or Miller personality stuff, etc. but it feels a bit weak. Like a grab bag of story components and not a big ending for Holden that the story was leading to. General Battuta made a comment over in TV IV that the Expanse is just kind of "extruded narrative product" at times, and I think chapters like this exemplify it. All the pieces are there, all the logic is there... but it feels like it gets assembled in the most bland way possible. For example, the Arboghast stuff is like, poo poo, the protomolecule knows how to mess with starships because it disassembled the Arboghast -- but nothing really happens as a result of it. It primes me to expect almost a sci-fi haunted house where doors are closing and the ship is really starting to change. Like the interesting visuals from the end of Leviathan Wakes but super-charged. Instead, it feels like something that's mentioned just to mention it and, besides, surely the systems of Eros which the protomolecule/Julie gestalt had full control of gave it some idea of that, too? Meanwhile, Nguyen feels almost like a call back to Dresden, but Holden blows him away and Naomi excuses it (and I don't think we have enough of an insight into her personality at this point to know why.) She mentions that it's okay because she knows Holden will feel bad and maybe that's supposed to be cute but it just kind of makes her sound like a bit of a dick. Even having Naomi overlook it because she just wants Holden back would be more interesting and reveal more about her character than that! So, yeah, hard to rate this one highly. Holden wraps up a part of the climax even though I really do think it would've been more interesting and saved a chapter if, in the last Avasarala one, Nguyen had a change of heart and shut down the missiles and blew his ship. Instead, Nguyen's an Expanse antagonist to the end -- stupid, shallow and easily foiled. Like, the chapter doesn't even really do anything with the idea that Holden is riding the Razorback -- Julie's precious racing ship -- to the site of what could be Eros 2.0!
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Jan 10, 2022 10:29
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:Chapter Forty-Nine: Holden God, I forgot all about this one. Holden really is the worst about hating on other people for displaying his own personality traits. Just fuckin’ ices this dude out of nowhere and thinks “Miller would like that” without ever realizing that maybe that maybe he should be ashamed of himself for treating Miller like poo poo. Honestly, I feel like these books would be way better if Holden never got a POV chapter and you only ever saw him through the eyes of the others. Keep him as a central figure and important to the story, but only ever show him through the eyes of Amos/Miller/Bobbie/Naomi/Avarasala/etc. Do the chapter on the King from Larson’s viewpoint. That kind of thing.
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Jan 10, 2022 11:05
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I'm not an expert on gunshot wounds but it sticks out to me that Holden shot him in the throat. I feel like that could be a terrible way to die if it didn't sever an artery or the spinal cord, and even then it might not be that quick (Holden doesn't aim at Nguyen, he just snaps the shot off.) Nguyen's already a "corpse" by the very next paragraph, so, it was quick in this case I guess but that also feels a little simple. Why not shoot him in the head? That's what Miller did to Dresden, then popped him two more in the chest to make sure. When I read shooting someone in the throat, I kind of expect horrible bleeding and gagging. It just feels like you could do something with Holden shooting Nguyen in the throat who then expires slowly, choking on his own blood or something, while Holden has to pry the hand terminal out of his grip. I feel like that's the sort of thing that could give Holden's arc here a bit of oomph. Again, he kills the bad guy, but it's not quick and it's kinda ghoulish and maybe he imagines Miller might approve, Holden realizes that even someone like Nguyen shouldn't die like that. Time and time again, Miller's been framed as a bit of an amoral bogeyman in Caliban's War. He's called a "broken" man, whenever Holden thinks Miller would tell him to do something he thinks that's argument enough for not doing it, Naomi directly calls him out for acting like Miller and it breaks them up, Holden thinks Miller was bad for distributing justice at the end of a gun... And yet this act doesn't read like something bad or unfortunate or sad or inescapable or anything. Of course, there's a contamination danger of taking Nguyen into custody or trying to get him off the ship. But no mention is made that, say, Nguyen's uniform is splattered with vomit zombie goo. Like, there's a lot of ways they could've taken the final confrontation with Nguyen but, somehow, Holden executes a terrified man by shooting him in the throat feels like one of the stranger ways given how the story has gone until this point. I feel like the Avasarala established that Nguyen was a useful component of the Mao conspiracy but ultimately a patsy with fleet pull (she definitely wonders a few times who are the powerful people backing him.) The previous chapter established that he'd been abandoned by Errinwright. Just who is Augusto Nguyen, why did he do all this? About the most we get is that he's young for an Admiral and really wants to go to war with Mars. Is he a patriot? Is the kind of guy who might realize how stupid he's been at the eleventh hour? Could Holden's naval background allowed him to get through to him somehow? Avasarala said that Nguyen authorized the launch from Io, but did he really? The launch transmission didn't come from his ship and, I mean, his own ship gets hit by one of the missiles seemingly at random. That feels to me that Mao's people went over his head, perhaps. But the story does also refer to the conspiracy as "Nguyen's cabal" so maybe he's the ultimate kingmaker within it... and yet what of old man Mao from the beginning of the novel? Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Jan 10, 2022 |
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Jan 10, 2022 14:35
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Chapter Fifty: Bobbie Maybe it's simply because we met her in the first chapter of the book, but Caliban's War strikes me as Bobbie's story more than anyone of our other protagonists. Sure, Prax is looking for Mei and the prologue was Mei's chapter, but he hasn't really done much and much of his contribution to the novel has been infodumps, exposition, and being out of his depth. He wants to find his missing baby girl, and yet he feels like a supporting character in his own story. Meanwhile, Avasarala's intrigue plot feels kinda half-baked and, again, is basically a vehicle for infodumps and exposition. Despite all the time spent on it, and despite this being my second or third reading of this novel, I'm still not really sure about the shape of the protomolecule conspiracy. Given the stuff with Soren, I'm not sure the authors are that sure of the overall shape of it either. Then there's Holden. Holden's side of things, as established in the last few posts, feels more like it resulted from the idea that he had to be the constant, consistent leading man in every novel and less that the story actually suited him. There's some good pieces there, like sliding into pragmatic cynicism, chafing with Fred, etc. but it doesn't feel like the story is really about that, either. Bobbie, however, has a simple goal (avenge her dead buddies, kill the monster) and I think we've seen just enough of her psychological make-up and interior world that Bobbie's confrontation with the proto-monster feels like what the story should be concerned with. Let's find out how it turns out. We hop back in time to the Rocinante as Amos tells Bobbie that Holden has just left. I'm not actually a big fan of stories that run their perspective characters a bit out of sync like this but it's ultimately a minor thing. Bobbie's got her suit and a bunch of different weapons. Amos ogles her for a bit which feels like another Sexy Bobbie moment. Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty posted:"Seriously. Now?" she said. "We’re talking about your captain going off to his death, and all that’s going through your head right now is 'Ooh, boobies!'" Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty posted:Bobbie nodded her fist at Avasarala. Recon Marines were trained to use the Belters’ physical idiom when in their combat armor. Avasarala just looked baffled at the gesture and said, "So stop playing with your hand and go get the loving kids." Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty posted:"I like the backup plan better," Amos said. They dash out of the Rocinante and into the Io base. The radio dies as they get inside which is a sign of the monster being near and, honestly, it's remarkably understated for these novels. Bobbie gets Amos and Prax inside and then goes out to face the monster. We get a bit more info on her gun: Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty posted:She aimed her gun at it. The suit helped her correct for deflection based on the range, but she was using ultrahigh velocity rounds on a moon with fractional gravity. Bullet drop at three hundred meters would be trivial. Only for the monster to throw its self-destruct device at Bobbie. It sends Bobbie flying and disables her suit. The monster finds her and vomits brown goo over her and then begins curiously poking at her suit. Bobbie's like, wait, I've seen this thing rip a combat mech apart, what's it up to? Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty posted:The tube was probing at her armor more insistently now. It pushed its way into gaps, periodically shooting brown liquid into them. It was as repulsive as it was frightening. It was like being threatened by a serial killer that was also fumbling at her clothing with a teenager’s horny insistence. Part of me thinks it's a little odd that despite its behavior at the end there, Bobbie never seems to realize that the proto-monsters are all transformed children. Maybe that's deliberate on the part of the writers. Hard to reconcile Bobbie's big moment of triumph over her demons, literal or otherwise, with her blowing the head off a kid-turned-science experiment while singing "Anything you can do, I can do better." About the closest we get is her thinking the eyes are "curiously childlike." There's a little part of me that's disappointed that more time and words is spent on the pre-fight and scenario setting than Bobbie's confrontation with the proto-monster. It's also a little disappointing that it comes down to 'Bobbie shoots it a whole bunch, it throws a bomb at her, then she shoots it a whole bunch again (but this time at point blank range.) It feels a little odd that the monster doesn't just tear her apart like its kin had done to everything during the Ganymede attack, especially when Bobbie harms this one far more. Then again, given the 'rules' as established by the story, I'm not sure how else it could be resolved if the writer was dead set on having Bobbie triumph over it one-on-one. She can't engage it in melee because it can tear her limb from limb. She can't outrun it but she can prevent it from reaching her. She can't lose the suit because Io will kill her in seconds. Her minigun only appears effective when she blows away the creature's entire head at point-blank range and its the only weapon she has. It makes the action sequence feel pretty underwhelming. And then, ultimately, she only survives because the monster "seemed reluctant to damage her for some reason" which feels, well, cheap.
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Jan 11, 2022 03:11
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Chapter Fifty-One: Prax Prax and Amos are running through the Io base. Prax wonders where they should plug in Naomi so she can do whatever it was she was going to do but Amos decides they can just follow the signs instead. The conspirators are firing at the Martian encirclement but the Martians are not firing back--yet. There's a lot of stuff about labs and corridors as they go through and it's not particularly interesting, especially not at this stage of the novel. I think I mentioned back on Ganymede that even then the novel was lampshading these descriptions with a sort of 'if you've seen one, you've seen them all' sentiment. Finally, Prax and Amos find two people arguing: a man and a woman. The man has a gun and is saying they can't evacuate because there's nowhere they can run. The woman is saying that she's been doing this poo poo for seven years and can keep it going for seven more. Prax thinks the man might be Strickland. The man says the only card they have to survive this is "them" which pretty obviously means the kids. Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty-One posted:"Carlos," the woman said as Prax came to the corner of the bay. "We can have this conversation later. There's a hostile enemy force on the base right now, and if you’re still here when they come through that hatch—" Then Mei says "Da?" and Strickland shoots the woman in the neck. Which is another of those odd little thing that I'm not sure if is deliberate or if the authors just really liked the idea of shooting people in the neck and throat when they wrote these chapters. There's also an odd tone to the description that I don't think fits Prax or the vibe they're shooting (heh) for. Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty-One posted:Strickland's pistol barked, and some sort of high-explosive round destroyed the woman's neck and face in a spray of blood and cartilage. She tried to scream once, but with significant portions of her larynx already compromised, what she managed was more of a powerful, wet exhalation. Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty-One posted:"What happened to these kids? Are there others somewhere else?" Amos asked. Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty-One posted:"Protogen's dead," he said. "There is no Protogen." Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty-One posted:"My home is gone," Prax said, speaking slowly. "My job is gone. Most of the people I’ve ever known are either dead or scattered through the system. A major government is saying I abuse women and children. I’ve had more than eighty explicit death threats from absolute strangers in the last month. And you know what? I don’t care.” Amos and Prax make their way out of the base. Amos blows up a bunch of dudes with grenades and Prax realizes that he's kind of completely numb to violence now. Outside, on the surface of Io, they meet up with Bobbie who is walking back to the Rocinante in her busted up armor. Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty-One posted:"How’d the extraction go?" It's okay. Amos shines as per usual and him blowing Strickland away works really well with how the series has established him until this point. I think a lot of Prax's stuff, like him realizing he's all jaded now, doesn't quite land but the stuff with Mei mostly works. It's probably the simplest of the big climactic chapters but it doesn't feel as strangely disinterested in its own idea as Bobbie's does nor as needlessly invented as Holden's does.
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Jan 12, 2022 05:01
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The woman feels like a missed opportunity to be honest, since she ends up basically not mattering and we never find out her deal before Strickland kills her and the others just shrug and don't immediately shoot him for it since he was very blatantly not just stalling her if he had a gun pulled on her and could shoot her at any time.
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Jan 12, 2022 06:29
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It's odd because I don't think we really needed to know what the deal with the woman from the prologue is. I just assumed she was some random member of the conspiracy who Strickland employed to fake the part of Mei's mother. Then, in this chapter, she seems to be Strickland's superior or, at least, a conspiracy veteran. It's hard to tell though because while we know she was part of it (presuming Protogen) for seven years, we don't really know how long Strickland has. He worked in a university lab on Ceres then swapped out to Protogen at some point. I feel like the woman could've been folded into Avasarala's Earth intrigue stuff somehow, even if not blatantly. Like, in some chapter Avasarala mentions she's suspicious of someone with distinctive features and then she shows up in this chapter. "Haha, oh, that's Director So-and-so, cool."
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Jan 12, 2022 09:30
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:It's odd because I don't think we really needed to know what the deal with the woman from the prologue is. I just assumed she was some random member of the conspiracy who Strickland employed to fake the part of Mei's mother. Then, in this chapter, she seems to be Strickland's superior or, at least, a conspiracy veteran. It's hard to tell though because while we know she was part of it (presuming Protogen) for seven years, we don't really know how long Strickland has. He worked in a university lab on Ceres then swapped out to Protogen at some point. I feel like the woman could've been folded into Avasarala's Earth intrigue stuff somehow, even if not blatantly. Like, in some chapter Avasarala mentions she's suspicious of someone with distinctive features and then she shows up in this chapter. "Haha, oh, that's Director So-and-so, cool." Yeah, I agree. If she didn't show up again I would have forgotten her entirely as just some mook, so to speak. But her reappearing just to be suddenly killed just raises questions.
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Jan 12, 2022 09:45
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We're into the denouement now and, strikingly, this is an interesting chapter because it's one of the few where I think the TV series is weaker for not including it. Chapter Fifty-Two: Avasarala Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty-Two posted:It was over, except that it wasn’t. It never was. Avasarala's chatting with Souther. In the aftermath of the scuffle at Io, everyone's friendly. A lot of ships on both sides need a lot of repair work. The kids are fine, Souther's people are working on finding their families. They've also got locks on those 171 missiles and Mars should be able to knock them all out. Souther wants Avasarala to come back on one of their ships but Avasarala a. doesn't want to do paperwork, b. thinks it is good symbolism to ride back with Holden and Bobbie, and c. she's already on the Rocinante. With all that handled, she heads down to the galley where Prax is arguing with Holden. The topic is the donation crowdfunding account -- Prax wants it shut down since they've found Mei and worries he could get sued but Holden mentions he's put up a notice and still taking money if people want to give it. Both are drinking, of course, coffee. Prax feels far more like himself in this chapter, all frantic and anxious, than he really has at any other chapter for a fair while. Prax tries to give the money to Holden but Holden's like, hey, we already took a generous fee from the account--it's all yours and Mei's. Avasarala thinks: Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty-Two posted:Avasarala scowled. That changed her personal calculus a little. She’d thought this would be the right time to lock Prax into a contract, but Jim Holden had once again ridden in at the last moment and screwed everything up. Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty-Two posted:Bobbie and Amos stood at opposite ends of the shop. As Avasarala watched, Bobbie caught the little girl out of the air and launched her back toward Amos. Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty-Two posted:"When they send you to play catch with a child, they don’t mean that she’s the f—that she’s the ball," Avasarala said, moving across to him. "Give that child to me. None of you people has any idea how to take care of a little girl. It’s amazing you all lived to adulthood." Turns out Venus spiked up again during the battle. Proof enough that there's a network there and it has no lag and it reacts when threatened. Avasarala says it is as "weird as tits on a bishop" which is sort of interesting because it implies, even in the far future of The Expanse, bishops are still male. I want to compare it to a line from Babylon 5: "He's not the Pope! He doesn't look anything like her!" It also feels a little odd because the very next novel will introduce Pastor Anna. Avasarala and Bobbie talk about what happened down there on Io. Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty-Two posted:"You were going down there to die, only the universe hosed you over again. You won. You're alive. None of the problems go away." I mean, Bobbie's singing children's songs and has the monster on the ropes until it gives her a Hail Mary pass and then decides, for some reason, not to rip her to pieces. Given that Avasarala and Bobbie were written by different members of the writing pair then, yeah, it could be a bit of a mix-up of understanding where the story was going. Or maybe Franck just wasn't able to write that sort of thing. Avasarala says that Errinwright, Soren, and Nguyen have all been taken care of. Errinwright will be forced to retire and the Secretary-General will offer Avasarala his job. Avasarala doesn't want it but politics means she can't not take it and she can't retire. Bobbie asks why not. Avasarala says she will when her son comes home which is a really nice beat--remember, her son is dead. They talk a bit more. Bobbie says she isn't looking to get herself killed, but now she's a traitor to her government. Avasarala says that Bobbie should take some time to figure out what she wants and that, once she has, she'll do what she can to make it happen. Political favors, she says, are how she expresses affection. They fly back to Luna. As Avasarala thought, Errinwright's political career is done for: Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty-Two posted:On Earth, Sadavir Errinwright was quietly celebrated, his career with the UN honored with a small and private ceremony, and then he went off to spend more time with his family or farm chickens or whatever he was going to do with the remaining decades until death. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t involve wielding political power. Arjun is waiting for them on Luna. Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty-Two posted:He was waiting for her on the landing pad in his best suit with a spray of fresh lilacs in his hand. The low gravity made him look younger too, if a little bloodshot about the eyes. She could feel the curiosity of Holden and his crew as she walked toward him. Who was this man that he could stand to be married to someone as abrasive and hard as Chrisjen Avasarala? Was this her master or her victim? How would that even work?
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Jan 13, 2022 14:54
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Chapter Fifty-Three: AvasaralaCaliban's War, Chapter Fifty-Three posted:"Hi, Mom. We’re on Luna!" Mother Elise wants Holden to come down and see them on Earth, but Holden says he can't and that, in fact, they should come up to Luna--and why not? The UN Undersecretary is paying for it, after all. Mention is made that Holden's been away from home for "years" but nothing more precise than that which feels like a missed opportunity to inform us more concretely about Holden and his parents. Elise's hair is grey now, but did that happen quickly or has it been a decade? Did Holden last see them before he shipped out on the Cant? Elise says that Father Tom won't ride a shuttle up to Luna because he hates microgravity, but it's not really negotiable because Holden wants them to meet Naomi and she, being a Belter, can't go down the well. Especially because Holden implies he wants to marry her! Mother Elise doesn't appear happy with either prospect, especially the thought that Holden's children may be Belters. I like this aspect of Holden's family, this 'polite racism' it feels very realistic. Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty-Three posted:His parents had spent their whole lives on Earth. The only outer planets types they knew were the caricature villains that showed up on bad entertainment feeds. He didn’t hold their ingrained prejudices against them, because he knew that meeting Naomi would be the cure for it. A few days spent in her company and they wouldn’t be able to help falling in love with her. Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty-Three posted:"My parents are racists," Holden said to Naomi later that night. She lay curled against his side, her face against his ear. One long brown leg thrown across his hips. Caliban's War, Chapter Two posted:He glanced at his brown-haired Montana farm boy reflection in a darkened panel and felt very generic by comparison I understand why fans (and the authors) may want to perceive Holden differently, but I think that's dishonest and prevents an accurate reading of the content in these books, much less a wider conversation about race in publishing. Why is this book series essentially led by two white guys? Why are they (and Amos, another white dude) the characters who seem to have the most detail? We've had two books now and Naomi is just 'Holden's love interest, doesn't like weapons, Belter' and Alex doesn't even get that level of detail (pilot, Martian, funny accent.) The other alternative, of course, is that the Corey boys intended to write a mixed-race guy but were inept enough that they wrote him so he appears like a white dude. As much as I critique these novels and some of the decisions they make, I don't think they're that poor at being writers. Holden's a white Montana everyman and I've never seen much in the way of textual evidence to illustrate otherwise. The only part I can think of is Holden thinking Amos' skin is pale, which isn't exactly conclusive. Anyway, Naomi and Holden spend the night in a phenomenal, luxurious hotel. Holden mentions that his parents are racists and are worried that any babies will be Belters. Naomi cryptically says "No babies." Which is perhaps the most interesting thing we've seen from her partially because we know very little about her and it could have multiple meanings--does she not want children for a particular reason or just because it's dangerous for Belters? As an aside, how does this mesh with Naomi saying in Leviathan Wakes... Leviathan Wakes, Chapter Forty-Five posted:"I'm open to the idea of it being more than just sex, but in my experience that will happen on its own if it's going to. I have eggs in storage on Europa and Luna, if that matters to you." The next morning, Holden gets up early and goes to see Jules Mao. Turns out a bunch of people got arrested following what went down at Io. Mao himself was caught at his private station trying to get on a fast ship to the outer planets. Holden's going to be there as Avasarala takes the opportunity to gloat. This is a nice, memorable scene from the novel and, like in the chapter previous, one I would've liked to see adapted. So, Avasarala comes in with Mao and two guards. Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty-Three posted:As they approached, Holden stood up straight and stepped in their way. One of the MPs yanked on Mao’s arm to stop him and gave Holden a subtle nod. It seemed to say, I'm down for whatever with this guy. Holden had a sense that if he yanked a pistol out of his pants and shot Mao right there in the corridor, the two MPs would discover they had both been struck with blindness at the same moment and failed to see anything. Holden asks Mao if it was worth it. In the space of three paragraphs, Mao goes from "frowning down at" Holden despite being the same height, implying a sense of gravitas and power despite his apprehended state, to looking "smaller" and being unable to make eye contact because Holden asks him, again, if it was worth it. Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty-Three posted:"A dead daughter, a company in ruins, millions of people slaughtered, a solar system that will probably never have peaceful stability again. Was it worth it?" Mao points out that Dresden was executed. Holden says that Avasarala isn't going to shoot him. She enters then and puts on a bit of a show of ignoring Mao to talk to Holden. Holden says they've got a job escorting the first reconstruction flotilla to Ganymede, shooting down an offer from Avasarala to work for her. Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty-Three posted:"I’ve just gotten done working for a government," Holden said. "I didn’t wear it well." Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty-Three posted:"I have additional information that could be of benefit—" Caliban's War, Chapter Fifty-Three posted:Avasarala had known exactly where to hit him. Because men like him lived for their legacy. They saw themselves as the architects of the future. What Avasarala was promising was worse than death. Overall, it's an enjoyable, memorable chapter, though. The next chapter, the one rounding out the main characters in this novel, last before least before the epilogue, is Prax. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 13:20 on Jan 19, 2022 |
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Jan 19, 2022 13:05
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