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I got myself in a posting snit over the Expanse game because I thought people were saying 'wait to buy this first game until the entire series is completed' and as a book author I am driven to rage by 'wait to buy the first book until the while trilogy/whatever is done'. It turns out they'd already finished a bunch of episodes and were releasing them one a time, and people were saying 'wait to see if the episodes already in the pipe get good or not before buying the first one'. So whether you waited to buy the first one made no difference to whether the later ones would be funded or completed. I felt a fool. e: what an inane page snipe sorry. Truly the Coreyism of posts
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Dec 4, 2023 15:40
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I like Duarte's game theory approach a lot, actually. It's so loving stupid and thus exactly in line with what I'd expect from the kind of person who talks a lot about game theory without ever really digging into it. One of the more successful strategies in the iterated prisoner's dilemma is 'grim trigger', which is basically what Elsa does — the first time your opponent defects on you, go ape poo poo and never forgive them. You'd think Duarte would consider that the other dimensional aliens might take such an approach
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Dec 4, 2023 20:56
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Although I cooled on the series in its final books, by far one of my favorite parts was this plot where Duarte decides to 'negotiate' with the aliens that killed the protomolecule builders by deliberately blowing past the limits on the stargates. I love that he decides he's going to initiate this negotiation (because he has all the agency, definitely not the gods who destroyed the demigods who failed to snuff out earth in its cradle) and never seems to realize that the aliens are already communicating in this style by disappearing ships that ignore the limits. I wish more had been done with this strand of the plot.
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Dec 4, 2023 21:37
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PriorMarcus posted:I might be misremembering, but doesn't Teresa see the opalescence because she's already being experimented on at this point? I don't think so? Maybe Tiamat's Wrath will say something about it later, but I'm presently under the impression that the footage Teresa saw of Holden and Cortaza was the latter being upset that Duarte has only just recently given the permission for Teresa to be experimented on. Holden talking with Cortazar took place the same day he chatted with Teresa, I believe. General Battuta posted:I like Duarte's game theory approach a lot, actually. It's so loving stupid and thus exactly in line with what I'd expect from the kind of person who talks a lot about game theory without ever really digging into it. One of the more successful strategies in the iterated prisoner's dilemma is 'grim trigger', which is basically what Elsa does — the first time your opponent defects on you, go ape poo poo and never forgive them. Sarern posted:Although I cooled on the series in its final books, by far one of my favorite parts was this plot where Duarte decides to 'negotiate' with the aliens that killed the protomolecule builders by deliberately blowing past the limits on the stargates. I love that he decides he's going to initiate this negotiation (because he has all the agency, definitely not the gods who destroyed the demigods who failed to snuff out earth in its cradle) and never seems to realize that the aliens are already communicating in this style by disappearing ships that ignore the limits. I appreciate how it seems like Duarte, for all of his grandeur, feels like he's been slighted. He comes up with this plan, loads some freighters with antimatter, and sends them into the enemy's realm. And then the Goths don't change their behavior. It'd be one thing if nothing happened, another if it provoked an immediate overwhelming response (like the 'grim trigger.') But it feels like the Goths escalated in a manner that makes it obvious they're escalating (turning a star into a weapon), giving you enough time to comprehend it, while making it clear that they're pulling their punches. It's like the guys stealing your ships are going, 'hey, quit it, seriously.' And Duarte's proto-pilled mind flashes back to that time Teresa really wanted her wooden horse. "You'll eat your loving vegetables," he mutters as he squeezes the trigger. I like Duarte. I think he's my second favorite Expanse antagonist, and I think what happens to him in Chapter 22 is a bit of a disappointing choice. Overall, I think the Goth plotline needed more space. I still can't shake the feeling that the force that killed the Protomolecule builders was more 'conventional' or perhaps that the Coreys didn't really know what'd done it until this novel. Still, there's a little part of me that is miffed that Duarte fits into that model of 'guy with ego isn't as bright as he thinks he is.' At the same time, the plot is probably a lot harder to write if Duarte sees the gamma ray burst and goes, okay, I've proved to myself there's an intelligence on the other side, it's drastically more powerful than us, it defects when we do, so maybe I should just reconsider my strategy. The epilogue of Persepolis Rising was so intriguing, to such an extent that game theorying the monsters from beyond time and space just feels like a bit of a let down. Persepolis Rising was also the novel that told us Duarte was basically a Martian genius from his earliest days in their military. It wasn't like Avasarala was like, Drummer, this guy is kind of a dumbass but he has more firepower than you. It would've been really interesting to see how the series handled it. The other thing is that the Tecoma star collapse feels a little unclear, just based on my understanding of the final book and from seeing other people have similar confusion around the Internet about it. My understanding was as indicated above: Duarte sent a bomb through, and the Goths retaliated by triggering the star, which destroyed two gates, and this leads Duarte to send through another ship, which leads to what happens next. But as I wondered: if sending an antimatter bomb to the Goths can provoke a response, then what the heck does a gamma ray burst do? Thing is, this isn't exactly what happened. Based on some of the readings I've seen from people trying to fix everything together, the Tecoma collapse was not initiated by the Goths. It was a contingency on the part of the Romans to basically direct a gamma ray blast into one or more gates, and also supercharge the ring station, as a weapon against the Goths. A shotgun pointed at a door, basically, that was triggered by a ship going dutchman inside the Tecoma gate. It strikes multiple gates to maximize damage to the Goths. The Goths interact with us via the gates and are therefore vulnerable via the gates. And, y'know, it fits. But does it? Because I still think that what we know of the fall of the Romans is that they had no idea what was killing them. We know they tried to blow up stars and that accomplished nothing. I don't think them creating an interstellar weapon of this scale really fits with that, nor maintaining the 'absolute zero' status of the system for millions of years -- that feels very much like a Goth element, a tit-for-tat trap they set for whoever came next. We also know that shutting down the gates didn't save the Romans and so the gates being a vector for the Goths doesn't feel like it fits. Some people suggest that the Tecoma star is how the Romans sterilized systems as mentioned in Abaddon's Gate, but are seemingly forgetting that it was a property of the ring station itself (and the gates were closed.) Additionally, the Sol gate changed the position of all the other gates, which means it's unlikely that the Tecoma gate would've been pointing at another gate prior to the Sol gate coming online. And while it is fun that this puts a twist on Duarte's game theory strategy (the Goths didn't notice it, but they did notice the gamma ray burst) I also feel that's not really interesting to read and discuss outside lorehound theorycrafting. And that point about lorehound theorycrafting is really a big reason why the last book fell flat for me. (It's also complicated, I think, by the next ship going dutchman at the same time as the star collapse, in which case it being taken was an unfortunate side effect of hitting the gate at the same time as the gamma ray burst fired off -- which is what Medina's governor basically says. And Elvi, in her next chapter, attributes the collapse to the Goths.) It's always interesting what I remember reading over the course of this re-read and what my brain has omitted or rewritten. It's like Duarte -- in my memory, the guy was some lowly ensign who just happened to see the sensor data first, and no one knew about his involvement with Inaros until Persepolis Rising. Or, y'know, the Amos castration thing. The Tecoma star collapse is something that's missing. In my head, the 'game theory' events of Tiamat's Wrath basically went: they find the space diamond, Duarte sends the bomb, the events of Chapter 21 happen. Like my brain just goes 'this isn't necessary, and it's unclear' and decides it didn't happen. With a lot of the cosmic level Goth stuff, I think my mind prefers the version of events hinted at back in Abaddon's Gate, and I just don't think it's consistent with what the authors are showing now. Maybe it's because I feel like this extradimensional warfare drama just doesn't feel relevant to the core of the Expanse. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Dec 5, 2023 |
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Dec 5, 2023 14:58
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:Maybe it's because I feel like this extradimensional warfare drama just doesn't feel relevant to the core of the Expanse. There's a version of this story that ties back into the core of The Expanse, and the heart of it all, but I can never quite tell how short the books end up of it. I feel like the ending I would've wanted is right there, but they never quite reach it. I'm not sure if that's because they were never able to, or if the TV show changed enough of how they were writing the books that it didn't gel back together, but it definitely left me colder on the books than I had been.
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Dec 5, 2023 15:23
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PriorMarcus posted:There's a version of this story that ties back into the core of The Expanse, and the heart of it all, but I can never quite tell how short the books end up of it. I feel like the ending I would've wanted is right there, but they never quite reach it. I'm not sure if that's because they were never able to, or if the TV show changed enough of how they were writing the books that it didn't gel back together, but it definitely left me colder on the books than I had been. Interesting. Would you mind expanding on this? I'm curious, although I think I agree with the general gist. I would've said the adaptation had very little effect on the books, although there were certain elements of Tiamat's Wrath that stood out to me even on my first reading as seemingly writing for the TV series budget. Specifically, the giant space diamond and the space battle later in the novel that is skipped over in such a manner I felt there was something wrong with my Kindle copy. But there are certain elements of the novels that have been altered due to the adaptation's depiction of events, I think. The unique physiology of the Belters, for example, feels like it has been written out since Babylon's Ashes. Bobbie's inclusion on the Rocinante feels like they wanted to ensure Frankie Adams had work. Avasarala meeting Drummer in Persepolis Rising, too, felt like a way to get two of the most popular members of the cast (Gee and Aghdashloo) in scenes together. In the final season of the series, they hyped up the meeting between the two, but I don't remember it being anything special. My memory is telling me that elements of the final novel, as far as settings and location go, might also make an argument for a TV series budget, but we'll see. Could those changes extend to the Goths? I'm not sure. Prior to this novel, I don't think the book series has given us enough information to figure it out. The TV adaptation does bring them into play much earlier (after the events of Abaddon's Gate) and Holden attempts to warn Fred after the incident on Ilus. I think these are great changes. My mind goes back to some of the elements of the 'second trilogy' of books four through six that stuck out to me on this re-read. The anxiety of waking things up on the colony worlds, the frantic reports of alien activity, and colonies going dark without warning. Obviously, none of this really is a concern due to the Free Navy crisis, but it also isn't ever mentioned again. It felt like there was something happening outside Sol in those novels, but it doesn't go anywhere (and I mentioned how the blurb for Babylon's Ashes feels like the description of a different novel.) I feel like the epilogue of Persepolis Rising also sets up something different. A more conventional conflict with the force that wiped out the protomolecule civilization, which may or may not even be a faction of the builders themselves. Could that have been a problem for the adaptation? Maybe. After all, big interstellar war scenes could be pretty expensive and time consuming CGI-wise. It's also the sort of thing that might make the Rocinante crew feel irrelevant. Additionally, I don't think the Corey enjoys writing space war so maybe they pivoted away just because of that. It could be that they wanted to have 'genuinely alien' aliens, which I feel like was a bit of a meme during the years the Expanse was conceptualized, and so figured they should keep them either obscure or incomprehensible or both. I think I can imagine versions of the late-game Expanse story that align more closely with the overall vibe of the novels. Say, humanity makes some kind of peace with the proto-killers with an act of trust and faith (like the ending of Abaddon's Gate, really) but I also don't think two novels is enough time to tell that story. Even now, I don't think the books have explicitly connected the dutchman phenomena to the entities that wiped out the Romans until this novel. The 'void bullets' were absolutely a weapon, yes, but I think the missing ships could have been the result of a different process. Basically, I'm not sure they knew where they were going with the Goths until this novel. There are these great ideas in the earlier novels (something is eating ships, finding the bullet that killed Ilus, finding that type of bullet getting shot at you) but I feel like they hadn't fitted them together as pieces of a larger puzzle. I believe on Twitter they addressed people's dissatisfaction with the exploration of the alien space opera elements as the books not being a story 'about that.' I think for the first four books, that's a fine defence. But I feel like that lack of groundwork is hurting the later novels, which is probably why they introduced things like the Goths earlier in the series' timeline. The later novels aren't just arranging the puzzle pieces into the shape, but cutting new ones to fit, and there's just not enough time. The magnetic gun being fired in the slow zone in the previous novel feels like it should've been a bigger deal given what we learn in the Tiamat's Wrath and the final novel. I know when I finished Tiamat's Wrath the first time, I was concerned about the final novel because it felt like they had a lot of ground to cover with the Goth plot and only one more novel to do it in. It wouldn't have surprised me at the time if we'd gotten a tenth novel. I just feel like the authors, even writing the ninth novel, weren't sure what the Goths represented until late in the process, and maybe not even then. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 10:34 on Dec 6, 2023 |
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Dec 6, 2023 01:20
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:Interesting. Would you mind expanding on this? I'm curious, although I think I agree with the general gist. I just feel like the Roman/Goth conflict, and the ensuring Human/Goth conflict never really ties back into the larger themes of the story. For example the Belters and their oppression, and the way humanity treats itself, is all but dropped in the later trilogy, despite the occupation being a good opportunity to explore that, and they do make nods towards it. I feel like the mystery of the Romans/Goth should've tied back into this, but as it's presented to us it's a pretty simple conflict of one force fighting another, no matter how hard to comprehend those forces might be. Unfortunately I'd kind of grown attached to my own fan fiction about what the background to all of that was, but that's on me. In terms of the TV show impacting the writing... I feel like the first trilogy has a very steady build up of showing us more and more amazing things, from the grounded start of the first novel to the dandelion sky. Further escalation is hinted at in the next trilogy, and Illus shows a lot of it, but it's all but abandoned for the last trilogy. I feel like by the time the last three books roll around anything amazing is easy to achieve on a TV budget, and the very ending being back on the ring station, as basically a repeat of the end of Season Three, really felt like it was written with the TV show in mind. (as was, in some ways, the return of Miller) Maybe the books were never going to keep escalating in the way I wanted, and maybe they never intended for the Roman/Goth backstory to thematically say something about humanity, but I'm disappointed they didn't.
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Dec 6, 2023 13:04
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From what we've seen in the thread, thematically I would like the story of Duarte being the actually intelligent but egotistical villain going full Ahab chasing the white whale of taking on a force he fundamentally doesn't understand while dragging all of humanity with him. I think there would have been space there to explore how humanity responds to a charismatic leader sending them on a course that could be viewed as noble but it's ultimately self destructive. I'd be almost disappointed if the Goths were in any way knowable. Hell from what we've seen, an interstellar war with forces outside understanding isn't really what these books have been about. That should be the backdrop to exploring what confronting this does to the people involved. How do people snap? Who is a true believer vs. who just aligns with their tribe? What does it take for people to defect? It would also set up an undoing of Duarte that I think could work without making him an idiot. If he truly believes that confronting and defeating the Goths is some absolute requirement for humanity to process and continue to exist, you've got narrative space for him to act in ways that obviously aren't in his interest and be aware of that. Him risking retaliation that wipes out humanity makes sense if he really believes it's guaranteed destruction later on. Of course you then need to find some way of saying how that's different from Drummer leading the fleet to try and stop the Laconians conquering Sol. But I think it's a much more interesting story to tell than pew pew action with extra planar aliens.
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Dec 6, 2023 16:15
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I think it's arguable that (spoilers for future events) taking Duarte out of the picture for much of the last three books was maybe the single worst decision in the whole series, it puts the last really interesting character off the page permanently. By the time he shows up again he's not even really the same guy.
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Dec 6, 2023 16:27
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General Battuta posted:I think it's arguable that (spoilers for future events) taking Duarte out of the picture for much of the last three books was maybe the single worst decision in the whole series, it puts the last really interesting character off the page permanently. By the time he shows up again he's not even really the same guy. For those curious, this happens in about two chapters. I think it's a really bad decision, too. Interesting posts, MrNemo and PriorMarcus! One thing you brought up, Nemo, is making me wonder about a certain plot point of the final novel, but we'll bring that up when we get there.
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Dec 6, 2023 22:14
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The show could have really fixed a lot of these issues too. What a shame.
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Dec 6, 2023 23:20
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Isn't he like, the main antagonist?
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Dec 6, 2023 23:48
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Kchama posted:Isn't he like, the main antagonist? He has to return some videotapes
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Dec 7, 2023 05:55
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Tiamat's Wrath, Chapters 21 - 24 Elvi's cute goth boyfriend makes an unannounced visit. Duarte storms out in disgust. Naomi and Bobbie twiddle their thumbs awkwardly. Chapter Twenty-One: Elvi Elvi's opposed to Sagale's report of Duarte's plan: another bomb ship. It's been three days since the gamma ray burst took our two rings. Elvi thinks Sagale hasn't even tried to push back against Duarte's plan. Sagale says it is their protocol: when a ship fails to transit, they send a bomb through the same gate. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 21 posted:“And then see if we can lose another gate or two?” Elvi says it was a trap. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 21 posted:“No. Be quiet. It’s my turn now. What we saw in Tecoma wasn’t even similar to the previous interactions. We were awake the whole time. It didn’t change our perceptions of anything. That was something different. And if you look at the logic of it? It’s not even hard to see.” Anyway, Elvi says that given they fired off "the largest gun that it's possible to make given the physical laws of the universe" then maybe they should stop throwing punches through the gates. Sagale says, okay, but what does that look like? They can't stop using the gates. And, more to the point, Sagale says that "once the trouble began last time", shutting down the gate network didn't save the beings who were using it. Sagale says that Duarte still thinks the tit-for-tat plan has merit, so, they're going to continue with it. Later, Elvi is sitting with Fayez. One of their crew says that the Thanjavur system had eighty thousand people in it. There's something going on outside the ring space, too. "Something's knocking around in the attic," Fayez says. Sagale comes up to the bridge to have a chat with Governor Song, and... Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 21 posted:If it had been a sound, it would have been deafening. Elvi put her hands over her ears just the same. A reflex. An approximation. Jen was screaming. Elvi tried to sink to the deck, but only managed to pull her legs up so that she was floating in a fetal position. The curve of the handhold before her was ornate and beautiful. The smudge of darkness where the oil from the crew’s skin hadn’t been cleaned away was like a map of a vast coastline, fractal and complex. She was aware of Fayez beside her, of the waves of pressure passing between them, touching, and reflecting away as they both screamed. The air was a fog of atoms. Sagale was a cloud of atoms. She was a cloud. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 21 posted:Something was moving through the clouds, dark and sinuous as a dancer slipping between raindrops. And then another. And then more. They were everywhere, sliding through the gas and liquid and solid, scattering the clouds with their passage. They were solid. Real in a way the clouds of matter were not. They were more real than anything she’d ever seen. Tendrils of darkness that had never known light. That could never know light. You’ve seen this absence of light before. A darkness like the eye of an angry god . . . You said that to someone. This seems to be enough to throw the Goths off. But the Falcon has taken massive damage, and maybe people are dead, including Sagale. Fayez lost his foot. Elvi's missing a chunk of her thigh. The Falcon had punched through the Laconia gate -- which is why the Goths didn't succeed at eating the entire ship. Elvi puts out a distress call. Chapter Twenty-Two: Teresa Teresa is talking with Amos. She's still shocked by how angry Elsa was. Amos like, what, you're the angriest person I know. Teresa says she isn't. Amos says she's angry because she's scared her dad isn't who she thinks he is. Amos, being the wise guy sociopath... Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 22 posted:“So you look at me,” Teresa said, derision in her voice, “and you think I’m scared and frustrated?” She's almost back home when Colonel Ilich arrives in a flier and tersely orders her to get aboard which shocks Teresa as he's always been so pleasant to her. Teresa wonders how they knew where she was, and Ilich says she has a tracking device in her jawbone, and her excursions outside the State Building have been permitted by Duarte himself. Might not be good news for ol' Amos! They go to see Duarte, who appears to be in a state of catatonia. Cortazar thinks it is a result of Duarte's protomolecule treatments: his mind was much more vulnerable to whatever it is the Goths do to consciousness. Cortazar has no idea when he'll get better. It could be in a moment, or the rest of his natural life -- however long that is. No one outside the people in the room -- Cortazar, Ilich, Teresa, and her father's personal valet -- know that something has happened to Duarte. Teresa is worried. Is she in charge now? No, Ilich says. The High Consul is still in charge. He's just... in deep consultation with Dr Cortazar and must not be disturbed under any circumstances. Kelly, Duarte's valet, reports that something has happened at the ring: the Falcon has come through the gate, and a relief ship is on its way. Ilich asks for a secure channel to Governor Song and Admiral Trejo. Because until Duarte is well again, the Laconian Empire is the four people in this room. So, yeah -- so long, gay Duarte! Not even halfway into Tiamat's Wrath, and Duarte is thrown out the door. Like General Battuta said, I think this is a really unfortunate decision. Duarte is a fun character, and one with a lot of potential. While Singh is probably my personal favorite of the series, Duarte is almost certainly the best overall bad guy the series has. And now he's just gone. We never got to see him and Holden interact! The moment the plot was getting complicated, he was yanked off-stage. I'm also somewhat confused about the mechanics. I get it: Duarte's protomolecule-infused mind is more vulnerable than regular humans, I get it. But I thought this only happened when a void bullet appeared, as we saw in Sol. Did they fire one into Laconia? It appears that whatever they did, they targeted the ring space... so, how did it catch Duarte in the crossfire? Or did the Goths reach out and, in the spirit of game theory, tit-for-tat the one guy responsible for the bomb ships? If that's the case, then they're pretty perceptive and fair! Chapter Twenty-Three: Naomi Naomi is looking at data from the ring gate. The San Salvador was annihilated on approach to the ring gate. I believe we have jumped back a few chapters in time to the gamma ray burst striking the ring station. Naomi's friend Emma wonders if it was a result of the resistance trying to take Medina. Naomi thinks surely Saba wouldn't have done it without her knowledge... Naomi goes looking for information from Medina, but there's nothing. There's only an automated message: Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 23 posted:MAJOR INCIDENT IN THE SLOW ZONE. SUSPEND ALL OPERATIONS AND SHELTER DOWN. NO IMMEDIATE THREAT TO THE ORGANIZATION, BUT ENEMY SURVEILLANCE HIGH. NO TRANSITS IN OR OUT OF ANY GATE BY ORDER OF LACONIA. TWO GATES LOST. UPDATE TO FOLLOW. Anyway, then they experience the altered consciousness event, too. They were out for three minutes. Naomi asks if there's a Magnetar-class in Auberon as it's the only thing that could be responsible. Naomi says they need to warn Saba. Chava points out that the repeater inside the ring space is down. A day later, they send a probe to the ring gate and find out that everything inside the ring space is gone. Medina Station, the Eye of the Typhoon, and every single ship in the ring space. The only thing that is left is the ring station, and it's glowing as bright as a tiny sun... I have to admit, I'm wondering why the ring station has been left unaffected. Chapter Twenty-Four: Bobbie Bobbie is watching a news feed in a bar, and we get some answers to the questions I had at the end of Chapter 22: the event mirrors what happened with the Tempest and Pallas Station, but somehow affected more than one system. Possibly all systems. The loss of Medina Station and the Typhoon is public knowledge. A professor comes on and says that it's a nonlocal event, one that matches the "previous tenants and their enemies." We abruptly flashback to when Bobbie learned about the attack. The Sol gate is closed. Bobbie thinks this means trying to hide from the Heart of the Tempest is like trying to hide from a tiger while you're locked in with it. She was asleep when the Goths did their magic which, apparently, means she experienced nothing. No dreams, no nightmares. Nothing. The professor continues talking and says that the only people endangered by these events are those doing dangerous or sensitive work at the time of the event. There is no sign of long-term damage. Alex isn't at the bar because he and Bobbie don't appear to be on speaking terms. Bobbie goes for a walk. She reflects that she has no idea what to do without the Martian dream of terraforming their planet. Whatever place she had dreamed of in her future is gone. Whatever Laconia might be able to offer her is something that she wants no part of. I understand why the Coreys didn't want to put any 'good guys' within Laconia (except Elvi, who constantly rails against them) but I really do think it was a missed opportunity to not put Bobbie in there. I feel like she could've filled the role of Tanaka, who was in Persepolis Rising and will feature in the final novel. Jillian sends Bobbie a message. It's a clip of Admiral Trejo saying that he's heading back to Laconia and, oh, he's been planning to do it for months, it is not related to recent events. Bobbie finds Alex, who is manufacturing new parts for his crash couch. She says Alex was right, that she had been reaching for something. But she says that now that the gates are closed, the calculus has changed, and the Heart of the Tempest is the only thing keeping the Sol system under Laconia's thumb. If they take out the Tempest, then Laconia will only have one battleship left, and Bobbie doubts they'll sortie it to Sol. So, it's no longer a symbolistic strike but a strategic and tactical one. Bobbie tells Alex that he has to be certain that he's with her. Alex says he'll be with her one hundred percent, but she needs to run the plan by Naomi first. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 08:40 on Dec 10, 2023 |
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Dec 10, 2023 08:35
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quote:The Tacoma star has collapsed into a black hole and, so doing, sent a burst of gamma radiation through the gate This part of the story is so cool. The Dark Gods are so sensitive to mass transiting the rings that they get pissed if a dozen space ships go through in an hour or so. They must have been super pissed off when like 50% of the mass of the Tecoma star was ejected straight through the ring. Also I like how the ring station tanked that blast like it was no big deal.
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Dec 13, 2023 18:20
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One chapter update today, because I feel like it's odd to include this chapter with the usual run of four. That, and I've been really busy! Interlude: The Dancing Bear I think Tiamat's Wrath is the most interesting of the Expanse novels in a structural sense. Holden is not a perspective character, but he features at three points: beginning, middle, and end. The end of this interlude marks the halfway mark for Tiamat's Wrath. The title is an obvious reference to Holden's status as Duarte's 'dancing bear.' Is it a sign of how Holden has depersonalized himself to survive his incarceration? Perhaps. Interludes are funny things. I don't tend to like them. It sometimes feels like an author realizing their story doesn't work unless we hop into another perspective for a bit. On the other hand, sometimes forcing an author to fit a whole miniature story into a chapter can be really effective: here's someone, here's their immediate issue, here's their personality. The web serial Worm used interludes a lot, and some were great and some were terrible. I feel like the idea of interludes in novels has been a growing trend in genre fiction, but that's neither here nor there. Holden wakes up in his cell. It's not a bad cell, all in all. Soft pillows, plush blanket, flowers in a vase. Holden reminds himself that it's a cell and he's in a prison. He smiles "contentedly because someone was watching." Tiamat's Wrath, Interlude posted:The last trails of a dream—something about crocodiles getting into a water recycler and him and Naomi trying to lure them out with a salt shaker—slipped away. Holden mentally recounts his recent history. He came to Laconia in a much more typical cell. He was beaten and threatened with "worse things than that." Torture, death? Duarte apparently tempted him with freedom and power, but evidently none of it worked. Seemingly, the only reason why Holden wasn't tortured for his information on the Underground was because his information on the protomolecule builders and the things that killed them was more important. The fact he's the one person to see the fate of the protomolecule builders first-hand makes him special. But something bugs me. From memory, the next and final novel makes Holden out as dealing with some pretty severe trauma because he was tortured for years. Like, on a scale that went beyond a few Laconian marines beating him in his prison cell, which is the vibe I get from what Holden details as the worst of his experience in this chapter. Yeah, some people beat him up, and they said they'd do worse, but they didn't. The interesting element about Laconia is that they're space authoritarians who don't randomly torture people or kill populations to prove a point. Like, the point is that Duarte says "Hi, Naomi, come and live with me on Laconia, it'll be swell, you and Jim can be together" -- and there's no trap, no torturers waiting in the wings. Naomi even reflects that she and Jim would get exactly what Duarte said, had she gone with them, and that's what made it so horrible. Anyway, Duarte tried to bribe Holden with power and freedom, but settled on making Holden his 'dancing bear' and Holden, for his part, had been telling him everything he knew about the protomolecule builders and the death of their civilization. Which Duarte may've already known. Let's talk a little about dancing bears, because I feel like it might explain the odd shift between novels. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 9 posted:“Old kings used to have dangerous animals in their courts. Lions. Panthers. Bears. They’d teach them to do tricks or at least not to eat too many of the guests. It’s a way to show power. Everyone knows a bear is a killer, but the king is so powerful that a bear’s just a plaything for him... Given the contrast between Holden's general attitude in Tiamat's Wrath, and what we'll see in Leviathan Falls, I feel like this is something the Coreys became aware of between novels. It wouldn't be the first time they've misremembered something or included something of questionable veracity. In Tiamat's Wrath, the idea of Holden as a tame circus animal (who was still, secretly, dangerous) was how they saw Holden and wanted to depict him. The tame dancing bear is a powerful player within Duarte's court, you see. When the God-Emperor falls, his honored mascot runs amok. In Leviathan Falls, they figured, well, actually, you don't make a bear tame via pleasant conditions and freedom to wander the grounds, do you? It's a shame, because if Holden has gone through such an ordeal, then I think it's pretty important to show it, and it would be a really shocking way to demonstrate what it's been like for him in Laconian captivity. But as it is, the fact that we don't see any of Holden's internal world beyond these three chapters, it just makes me think that it's exactly as it appears: Holden is Duarte's prisoner, he's in a nice gilded cage, but ultimately nothing of consequence is happening to him. if he had chats with Duarte, they weren't even important enough for him to think about (or for Duarte to bring up!) If he got tortured or almost killed, it's not come up. Holden doesn't, say, avoid looking in a mirror or brush his teeth while thinking, gee, I don't recognize my teeth anymore. Because I think in the next book, we'll learn that Holden has recurring trauma flashbacks of Laconian torturers breaking his teeth. Holden considers Duarte a "a thoughtful, educated, civilized man and a murderer", someone who is "completely unaware of his own monstrous ambition." Holden considers him akin to a religious fanatic. Holden exits his cell and goes for a walk. He heads down to the commissary and has fresh food and coffee. He spots Cortazar and goes to talk with him. Tiamat's Wrath, Interlude posted:“Things are fine,” Cortázar said, and the glimmer in his eyes meant that was true. Which probably meant they were terrible for someone who wasn’t Paolo Cortázar. “Very good.” Afterward, Holden goes off to chat with Fernand, one of his guards. A brief mention is made of a "Lieutenant Yao" and I wonder if that's a deliberate nod to the Yao who was the commanding officer of the Donnager back in the first novel -- a relative? Holden brings Fernand a coffee, which he won't drink due to his status as a prisoner, and that's fine because Holden is only doing it to ensure it might make it that much harder for Fernand to kill him. This is most interesting part of this chapter. Holden's playing this long game of doing little things to make people like him just so it might take them a second longer to pull the trigger if it comes down to it. It's a neat look into what we do with our social relationships normally, and also a fine sign of Holden's slide toward cynicism. On the one hand, I remember the machinations being more prominent than they are in this chapter, and it feels a little placid. Tiamat's Wrath, Interlude posted:It was like sitting and watching a termite hive until each insect stopped being itself and turned into an organ in a much larger, older consciousness. Holden hopes to run into Theresa, so, knowing her routine, deliberately places himself in her path. This is sort of the main thrust of this interlude: idealistic Holden is running Machiavellian plots in the heart of the Laconian Empire. While I like the idea, I don't know well it lands as a chapter in the story. In my memory, this chapter was much darker and more reflective of Holden's strategic mindset. On the one hand, I think reducing it to one chapter is better than trying to write a whole novel of this, but it's also a little irritating that we're not seeing more of Holden 's perspective when he might be at his most interesting. Theresa shows up. Holden immediately knows something is wrong and it looks like she's been crying. He asks why Cortazar was in such a hurry and Theresa says he has to attend to Dr Okoye so she can meet with her father in the State Building. Holden figures it's bullshit and tells Theresa it'll be okay. He goes to visit Avasarala's mausoleum and tries to figure out what's happening inside the State Building. When he puts the facts together--happy Cortazar, broken Theresa, the disrupted consciousness event, a supposed meeting between Elvi and Duarte... Holden knows something has happened to Duarte. Tiamat's Wrath, Interlude posted:If it was true, Cortázar’s hands were freer. Which meant his plans to vivisect and kill Duarte’s daughter would probably kick into high gear. Tiamat's Wrath, Interlude posted:And also Elvi was back from her missions in the other system, so Holden’s plans could move forward too. Tiamat's Wrath, Interlude posted:He had to find his next step. Maybe Elvi. Maybe her husband, Fayez. He’d always liked Fayez. Maybe Teresa. Maybe it was time to go to Duarte, if it wasn’t already too late. If only there had been more time . . . So, halfway into the penultimate novel of this series, and what am I thinking? It's fine? It's odd, but I have trouble getting excited about anything that's happening. The most interesting storyline is Teresa, I think -- the teenage daughter of the God-Emperor of Laconia, which feels a bit odd. Teresa is fine, we get to see Duarte and he's fun, and Amos is always entertaining. The Timmy reveal was really cool, and worked even better on a re-read. The palace intrigue is neat, but I feel a little bit like the 'Cortazar Wants To Vivisect The Princess!' element is... sudden. At the same time, there's this quiet feeling in the back of my mind, like, 'what is the point?' But I'm interested in seeing where it goes, even if I can remember most of it. Elvi takes second place. As always, the protomolecule empire and the things that killed it remain compelling. It's fun to see Elvi take on the Admiral and argue that maybe, just maybe, they should stop poking the extradimensional bear with a stick before it wakes up and mauls them to death. The problems at this point are two-fold, I think. The first is that the repeated scenes of 'weird phenomena when the Goths show up' are sadly losing their impact, and that we've got one and a half books left and it still feels like the authors don't really know where they're going with it or how they're going to thread the needle of the all-devouring Goths and the Expanse's character-focused storytelling. This leaves us with Alex and Bobbie in shared third because they're the same storyline. And it's... okay? But like a lot of Expansian storytelling, it feels like the Coreys work backwards from a cool idea in or near the climax (and boy, does something big happen in this plotline later) but not really end up with enough of a plot to make it worth following these two for 25% of a novel. Beyond the convoy raid, these two haven't really done anything except bicker and wait for the Heart of the Plot to wander over to them. The fact I've known Bobbie and Alex for seven and half books at this point can only go so far. I feel like a more interesting version of this plot would've had Alex and Bobbie running around Mars, trying to meet some source who carries vital information and, oh poo poo, the vital information is anti-matter charges. Like, it'd echo back their detective-y noir-y stuff that worked so well for Miller in Leviathan Wakes, and also their work together in Nemesis Games. Which means Naomi takes last place. No surprises here, I suppose. I'm just repeating myself, but it's a shame. She's such a neat character, and there's something to the idea of her forcing herself to continue a fight she isn't really set on, but she's doing even less than Alex and Bobbie are. While I wouldn't call her Expanse's leading lady (that has to be Avasarala), surely Naomi deserves better than what they've written her into. She's the most prominent lady in the cast! So, it doesn't feel great that there's three novels now -- Cibola Burn, Nemesis Games, Tiamat's Wrath -- where it's like Naomi's role is to be shoved in a box and left to her own devices. It also doesn't help at all that her Belterness has been filed down. I didn't even bring it up when Duarte offers her to come and live on Laconia! On the one hand, Laconia probably can make it easier on her body. On the other, why didn't Naomi reflect on that at all? She'd be living on a gravity well with Jim, which is something he always talked about wanting, in a way. I feel like the series never really knows what to do with Naomi, even going so far back to the first novel where she's just 'Jim's Exotic Love Interest' and while I'm generally okay with the 'Jim and Naomi' relationship, there's also a part of me that just... kind of shrugs at it. Maybe that's why the Naomi chapters just don't have much going on: that ship just never quite sailed for me. Or maybe it sailed for me before the retcon in Nemesis Games? I'm not sure. I know some might call it 'overly dramatic', but in a novel like this, when a character's beloved is in prison, I want to see their partner desire to move Heaven and Earth. I want to feel their anger and their heartbreak and their worry. But I feel like this comes back to the idea that runs through the Expanse, or feels like it does, where 'being dramatic' isn't 'realistic.' It's 'realistic' for Naomi to just be kind of miserable and to be wandering from place to place in a bit of a fugue. Bobbie and Alex at least have the looming threat of the Tempest, but Naomi shares their issue of just... not much is happening until whatever moment the plots come together.
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Jan 6, 2024 13:19
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Something occurred to me between updates. Remember the Falcon's cargo, the so-called Catalyst? It was shown in Chapter 1, but last mentioned in Chapter 5. That feels a bit odd, doesn't it? What happened to it during their flight to Laconia, or the Goth attack on the ring space? I cheated and ran a search through my Kindle copy of the text and it actually doesn't seem to get mentioned again in the novel beyond a line of dialogue later. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapters 25 - 28 Naomi decides she's a changed person. Trejo doubles down on bad ideas, proving himself as Duarte's worthy successor. Some bad poo poo goes down in Teresa's life, and Tiamat's Wrath starts getting intense. Chapter Twenty-Five: Naomi Naomi is thinking about how much things have changed. Belters went from being an underclass to the "de facto governing party" at the Transport Union's height. Sometimes history changes slowly like that, but other times it changes quickly, such as when the gates opened, when Eros moved, or when rocks fell on Earth. Is it just me, or does it feel like the protomolecule turning Eros into a physics-defying spaceship piloted by the gestalt mind of Julie Mao and some alien intelligence something that the series just kind of forgot? It felt like to me on my first read, and still does, like that the potential of the protomolecule is squandered. I know, the refrain of the series is practically 'monkeys playing with a microwave' but it felt like one of those things where it happened, but it never comes up again. Instead, the protomolecule is just this McGuffin that, honestly, you could be forgiven for not remembering what it does or why it's important. Oh,  tribe reference --Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 25 posted:The sudden changes, as different as they were, all followed the same pattern. After it happened—whatever it was—humanity went into a kind of shock. Not just her and the people around her, but the whole vast and varied tribe of people. Basically, Naomi is going to do the message in a bottle shell game thing on a larger scale. She needs to get the underground ready again before Laconia recovers. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 25 posted:There had been a moment in the neo-noir films that Alex always watched that happened so often it became a cliché. Naomi calls up her pal Emma and asks for all the information she has on the underground because, without Saba and Medina, they need to rebuild from the ground up. Someone has to take charge, Naomi says, and it's going to be her. Chapter Twenty-Six: Elvi Elvi wakes up on Laconia. She's been having night terrors. She remembers the incident -- Sagale is dead, the Falcon wrecked, and she lost a chunk of her leg. She thinks about the injuries she and the crew received: the matter is just gone, taken "elsewhere." Admiral Trejo returns from Sol. Elvi wants to talk to Duarte, but she's told she'll be meeting with Trejo. Trejo informs her what happened to the Consul, and how their little conspiracy is running the empire on his behalf until he recovers or until Teresa can take over. Elvi asks how old she is and Trejo ignores the question. He then continues to say that Elvi will be working with Cortazar to get Duarte back. Tempest is staying in Sol, with the forthcoming Voice of the Whirlwind to be defending Laconia. No ships are going back into the ring space yet. Trejo says that they have 280 "Pulsar-class Destroyers" to hold 1371 gates. Trejo says they'll be deploying their warships to high traffic systems, although there's a part of me that feels like trusting each ship to cover 5 gates or so isn't unfeasible given that not all of them would be inhabited and not all of them would have a manufacturing base, y'know? Oh, and that given that the tit-for-tat plan hasn't been working out, they're "going to gear up to fight this war for real." Elvi asks Trejo if he's loving crazy. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 26 posted:“I know what they did.” Trejo’s voice was harsh. It pushed her back into her seat. “And I know why they did it. Because they got hurt. That means they can be hurt, and unless they find some way to sue for peace, I intend to prepare our forces to hurt them again. Candidly, I don’t like it. We’re going up against something we don’t understand with unfamiliar tools on a battlefield whose constraints we’re working out as we go along. It’s a stupid war, but it’s ours. If it can be won, I intend to win it. You’re going to help me.” On the one hand, sure, it follows. On the other hand, just because you've caused someone pain doesn't mean you've wounded them. You may have just, essentially, made the Goths stub their toe! I understand that the idea is that Laconia is a bunch of evil jerks, and you can't have SF/F without war stuff like this, but an Admiral going "It's a stupid war, but it's our stupid war" is just... I don't know. Laconia was interesting in Persepolis Rising, but now they are -- to borrow from TvTropes -- just passing an idiot ball around. (The idiot ball has 'Game Theory' written on it in marker.) (And did the tit-for-tat strategy do anything given the idea that it was the gamma ray burst boobytrap that got them angry enough to take Medina, which means has this whole strategy been pointless from the beginning?) Trejo says if she doesn't like his plan, then she can just get Duarte back. Elvi says she'll try. She goes to find Fayez, who lost a foot in the incident. Holden is there, too, but he leaves as Elvi approaches. Elvi says she just had an interesting conversation. Fayez says he just had one, too -- their old friend Holden just says Cortazar's plotting a murder. A good beat to end the chapter on. Chapter Twenty-Seven: Teresa In the words of Commander Sinclair: nothing's the same anymore. Teresa tries to pretend that her father is only sick, but she knows he isn't. Ilich is spending more time away from her. Sometimes Teresa goes and sits with her father, and sometimes it's like he's responding to her. She goes to meet with Ilich who tells her it's normal to feel this way. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 27 posted:“I understand,” she said, and pictured what he would look like if she drowned him in the fountain. “I’ll be okay.”  That night, angry and unable to sleep, Teresa goes off to see Timmy. She figures if her father never stopped her, then Ilich won't either because he's surely too worried about what'll happen to him when Duarte comes back. She bursts into laughter at the site of Timmy and his very Amos casual way he carries his weapon. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 27 posted:“Yeah, okay,” Timothy said after a while. “Rough night. I get that. Come on back. You can . . . I don’t know what you can do, but I want to sit down, so let’s go back here.” They go back to his little cave and she tells him everything that's happened. The tit-for-tat plan, the destruction of Medina, and the conspiracy to pretend everything's fine. Timothy just listens, but then-- Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 27 posted:Timothy held up his hand, gesturing her to silence. Muskrat barked again, the bark she used when she saw a friend. And there were voices behind it. Timothy scooped up his gun, his eyes fixed on the entrance. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 27 posted:"Ah, Tiny. Didn’t see it coming down like this,” he said. She saw something in his face, and she couldn’t tell if it was sorrow or amusement or both. Resignation, maybe. “You should lie down on the floor there. Flat as you can. Put your hands over your ears, okay?” Holy poo poo. For a series that has so doggedly let character skim through without much consequence, and Amos especially, it's genuinely shocking that he just gets shot to bits the moment the Laconians stumble upon him. It is, in my opinion, a very fitting end for Amos. It's undeniably sad and tragic, but he was there to kill everyone in the State Building (including Teresa!) and I think Amos just going down in a pointless gunfight is perfect for his character. Sure, in another life, maybe he'd have a heroic sacrifice -- but that was before he went off on his own with a tactical nuke. It hurts to see him go down in this cave without anyone knowing about it, but that is precisely why it's so effective. it gives all the events in Persepolis Rising so much more weight! Amos' psychological issues, Holden's capture, the crew breaking up... When I read this the first time, I was floored. Heck, I still am. It's really short bit of violence that comes out of nowhere and just kills Amos in like two paragraphs. No heroic sacrifice, no cool last words, no epic displays to make you feel good -- he just loving dies. Okay! Who knows where we're going now? Which is why I'm kind of bitter that, later spoilers for this novel, it doesn't stick. On the one hand, it's not as if it isn't foreshadowed with the Laconian biological repair drones/'strange dogs' that have been mentioned now and again. It's also not as if Amos' revival doesn't feel really ominous and dramatic when it happens. But there are two issues. The first is, of course, that undoing the biggest thing to happen to a character in this series before the end of the same novel feels cheap. And, spoilers for the final novel, it doesn't even amount to much and he could've just stayed dead here. So, in that sense, it's a bit of a shame. The Laconians grab Teresa and take her back to the infirmary. Ilich got hit, but seems okay. Teresa is being dosed with sedatives. Admiral Trejo comes in and is like, Teresa, you need to tell us everything about that man. What he told you, what you told him. Teresa is like, huh, that was my best friend Timmy. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 27 posted:Trejo’s jaw went tight. “His name was Amos Burton. He was a terrorist and murderer and the mechanic on James Holden’s ship, and apparently he’s been sipping tea with the daughter of the high consul for months. Anything you told him, the underground may know. So begin at the beginning, go slow, be thorough, and tell me what you have loving done to us.” It's a good chapter! Chapter Twenty-Eight: Naomi So, of course, we swap back to Naomi. She's surprised how quickly she's putting the underground back together but then reminds herself that she's Naomi Nagata. She's set up repeaters and establishing the bottle network, with a focus on Sol and Bara Gaon. Naomi reflects that without Medina, Laconia can't hold the gates from either side. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 28 posted:There had to have been a moment when they could have refused. When she and Jim and maybe a handful of other people could have looked at the ring gates and the vastness beyond them, seen the danger, and tiptoed away. All the signs had been there. A civilization had built all this vast and unimaginable power and still been scattered like knucklebones. What had made them think it was safe for them? That it was worth the risk? Eventually, Naomi gets a message from Bobbie. It's the message from Chapter 24, about attacking the Heart of the Tempest. Naomi thinks a bit. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 28 posted:All it had taken was a handful of human interactions to show her that the Naomi who had fled into the container wasn’t the one who’d come out. Time had passed, and she had found what peace she was going to find. Grim. Especially given that Amos has just been killed.
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Jan 13, 2024 07:57
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Yeah, I have basically the exact same reaction/thoughts on Amos as you. Was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt but the next novel barely even uses him.
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Jan 13, 2024 20:48
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That Amos beat is genuinely very good yeah. It’s the right way to remind readers that you may all love the “amiable psychopath” but violence is actually a risky and ultimately fairly stupid way to live. It’s the right conclusion for the character.
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Jan 13, 2024 20:58
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My question has always been: what was Amos waiting for to complete his mission? He's been there a while, right?
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Jan 13, 2024 21:01
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pthighs posted:My question has always been: what was Amos waiting for to complete his mission? He's been there a while, right? From what we know, Amos's mission was from Saba to Amos via Naomi. In Naomi's mind, the mission was to get Jim back or to cut off Laconia's head. We don't know the specifics, so, we don't know if Saba was like 'Try getting Jim back but, if it's not possible, you detonate that nuke.' It seems like Amos went there to get Jim back, has realized it's probably impossible, and so has just been stuck in a holding pattern. Given the impossibility of breaking into the State Building, rescuing the highest profile prisoner Laconia has, and then escaping off-world, it does make me think the mission was to nuke the State Building with the prisoner rescue being a pretext. I think he's been there for a few years at this point. General Battuta posted:That Amos beat is genuinely very good yeah. It’s the right way to remind readers that you may all love the “amiable psychopath” but violence is actually a risky and ultimately fairly stupid way to live. It’s the right conclusion for the character. It also comes right at the time where it seems like Laconia is flailing about, doubling down on Duarte's doomed strategy. It reminds the reader, sure, these guys might be idiots when dealing with the Goths... but they're not so stupid when dealing with the good guys. We like Amos, he's tough, he's funny, he has an interesting internal world -- but he's also someone who will survive only up until he runs into a fight he can't win. When I read the series the first time, I could've sworn Amos had a mention in an earlier novel where he or someone else reflected that he'd probably die violently and suddenly. I think I just imagined it, however, because I haven't seen it pop up in this re-read. But at the time, this felt like delivering on that idea. It's like Amos said back in Caliban's War, however -- he's a talented amateur, someone like Bobbie is in a different league. And Duarte's elite guard or whoever Ilich represents are probably closer to Bobbie than to him. PriorMarcus posted:Yeah, I have basically the exact same reaction/thoughts on Amos as you. Was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt but the next novel barely even uses him. I feel like it was all for the final epilogue.
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Jan 14, 2024 02:56
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I always got the sense Amos didn’t pull the trigger because he didn’t want to kill Teresa. Is that ridiculous? Did I just make it up?
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Jan 14, 2024 18:06
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General Battuta posted:I always got the sense Amos didn’t pull the trigger because he didn’t want to kill Teresa. Is that ridiculous? Did I just make it up? I think this is the reason given later on. But it just brings to mind the discussion between Amos and Holden in Babylon's Ashes, where Amos questions the decision to not kill Marco just because Holden cared about Filip. "If we're not willing to win the fight," Amos says, "then what're we doing even in the cage?" I suppose Amos mellowed out in the thirty years, but while Amos does have a thing about protecting children, I'm not sure if that'd extend to Duarte's daughter.
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Jan 14, 2024 23:10
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It also seems kinda not very Amosy to just sit in a cave with no place to fall back to when he knows (armed) people will probably come looking for Theresa eventually. Did he learn nothing from Bobby tactics wise in 30+ years? Like he knows Laconian power armor is a thing too.
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Jan 14, 2024 23:33
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Tiamat's Wrath, Chapters 29 - 33 What, five chapters? Intrigue continues on Laconia, and Bobbie and Alex launch their strike against the Heart of the Tempest. Chapter Twenty-Nine: Elvi Elvi is on her way to the Pen. When she arrives, she meets Dr Ochida who informs her that Cortazar is almost finished with his senescence project. She thinks back to her conversation with Fayez where Holden informed him, via riddles and references and double entendres, that Cortazar is planning to kill someone. They don't seem to realize it's Theresa just yet. Elvi figures she should go find Holden and get some straight answers. Unfortunately, that was about when Laconia found Amos and so Holden was thrown in a cell. Elvi meets with Cortazar. They chat briefly about Amos, and Cortazar says they may still get to interrogate him. In Cortazar's words, Ilich "hosed that whole thing up badly" by not having his people destroy Amos' body as, apparently, he did not know about the repair drones or he knew about them but did not know what they did. Cortazar takes Elvi to see what the repair drones do. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 29 posted:Two children were in the cage, a boy maybe seven or eight years old and a girl on the edge of adolescence. Their eyes were perfectly black, like the pupils had eaten iris and sclera alike. The girl stood up and walked toward the front face of the cage. Her skin was grayish. She moved almost normally, but when she stopped, there was a terrible stillness about her. Cortazar explains: these are Alexander and Cara Bisset, children of the initial scientific expedition that was on Laconia before Duarte's group arrived. Both of them died, and their stories are detailed in the novella Strange Dogs, and were "fixed" by the repair drones. Cortazar doesn't consider them alive or even people but "artifacts." They'll never age beyond this point. The Bissets formed Duarte's interest in personal immortality, and it was all working well until something turned his brain off. Elvi thinks Cortazar wants to be immortal. 297 highlights: Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 29 posted:Evolution was a paste-and-baling-wire process that came up with half-assed solutions like pushing teeth through babies’ gums and menstruation. Survival of the fittest was a technical term that covered a lot more close-enough-is-close-enough than actual design. I think of Blindsight again. Blindsight posted:"You have a naïve understanding of evolutionary processes. There's no such thing as survival of the fittest. Survival of the most adequate, maybe. It doesn't matter whether a solution's optimal. All that matters is whether it beats the alternatives." Elvi thinks Cortazar is jealous that Duarte is turning his daughter into a living test subject and not himself. She figures that the drones don't understand aging, which is why the rebuilt kids are in stasis, and supposes the Protomolecule builders only had "mature forms." Elvi asks the kids if they are conscious and self-aware, and the answer appears to be yes, which is another thing that brings to mind Blindsight. Cortazar seems to consider them as p-zombies. Chapter Thirty: Bobbie Bobbie can't sleep. She's worried that Laconia will find them. The Tempest is still en route (Trejo transferred out on a shuttle.) Bobbie hasn't heard back from Naomi yet. An hour or so later, she gets in contact with Jillian who reports that they have a message from Naomi, and it's the one telling her to go with the plan. They head to the Storm and Bobbie watches her crew return to the ship. She thinks that Alex Kamal is her "oldest friend" which feels a little like... maybe they meant oldest remaining, or oldest of this crew, but I feel someone like Bobbie -- big, sexy, beach babe Bobbie, muscle goddess, big family Islander culture Bobbie, whatever Bobbie -- would have a lot of friends. Bobbie tells her crew that they have a new mission: the Heart of the Tempest. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 30 posted:As strange as the Storm was in its particulars, its architecture was essentially the same design language that Martian ships had been for decades before the starving years. Is it, though? I wonder if there was some mismatch between the authors here. Singh said similar, but whenever people actually saw it, you had Holden talking about it looking like a crystal that was chipped into a knife. The Tempest is also apparently asymmetrical, which is odd, because I thought it was described as looking like a vertebra. Bobbie thinks selling her crew on turning into seagulls is easier than selling them on hitting the Tempest but, like, did Mars have seagulls? 'It'd be easier to sell them on scaling Olympus Mons without a suit.' Or something. Anyway, her crew don't need to be old on it. Bobbie says they have one shot at killing the Tempest with their load of antimatter. Apparently, the Tempest had a sensor array damaged during the fight for Sol and that it hasn't been repaired yet (what, years afterward? Theresa was a young child during that novel...) and so it has a blind spot. Caspar says the Tempest can still thrash them straight up, so, they're going to use a shuttle to fire a gas canister torpedo at the ship. The trick is luring it into position. The bait will be the Storm itself. Bobbie will be on the shuttle, Jillian will have command of the Storm. The Storm will have to keep the Tempest in the right spot. They move in four days. Bobbie tells Alex that he doesn't have to come with them, given he has a son and all. Alex will be piloting the Storm. After all that, Bobbie is able to sleep. Chapter Thirty-One: Teresa Teresa has gone to visit Holden and she's asking him if Timmy was ever her friend really. Holden says, yes, Amos wasn't a liar. Holden correctly figures out that Trejo has sent Teresa to interrogate him. Holden says he had no idea Amos was on the planet, no idea what his mission was, no idea how long he'd been there, and no idea why he had a nuke beyond that he probably wanted to blow something up. Had Holden known Amos was there, he would've told him not to do it. Holden asks her about Duarte, as he figures that they have "enough of a relationship" that Duarte would've come and had a chat with him by now, and he hasn't. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 31 posted:“So they’ve told me. He was a good . . . Well, he wasn’t really exactly a good person. He cared enough to try, anyway. But he was loyal as hell.” Holden paused. “He was my brother. I loved him.” "You were my brother, Teresa asks him what the underground is up to. Holden addresses the camera and asks them if they can just skip this stuff since it's hard on Teresa. I like Holden in this chapter. Mention is made that one of Holden's eyeteeth is missing, which is particularly interesting given what I said recently, but whether that was the product of being tortured for years or getting punched in the mouth by a guard a few days ago isn't mentioned. Trejo interrogated Teresa for days, and she's pretty broken up by both it, Timmy's death, and the fact that her father is still comatose. She finds Trejo and Cortazar analysing their readings on Holden: they're pretty sure he was telling the truth, but maybe they should bring in Elvi to see if he slips up. They still haven't found Amos, or Amos' body. Trejo thinks the most important thing is keeping the separatists under control, Ilich thinks the most important thing is that Duarte is unresponsive. Ilich is on thin ice with Trejo ever since the Admiral learned that he'd been letting Teresa sneak out to see Timmy. Ilich takes Teresa back to class while she wonders if she was Timmy's friend or his tool. Back with her classmates, Ilich tells them about a Martian painting, Icarus at Night, which almost got the artist deported to Earth. We actually learn something about Mars' early days: there was a heap of proxy conflict between the different colonies as they were founded by different nations. But the painting was about uniting all of humanity together, and that is why it is in the State Building. Teresa thinks it's stupid and dishonest given that they were torturing Holden and had killed Amos who had come to Laconia to kill them. Cortazar shows up to abruptly drag Teresa away for a "routine medical scan." Elvi is there in the medical suite and basically interrupts Cortazar, whom Teresa starts getting a really bad feeling about. Elvi says if something is up with Teresa then they need to inform Admiral Trejo. Cortazar lets Teresa go, and she realizes that something important and dangerous had just happened. The implication, of course, is that Cortazar was maybe about to kill Teresa. I still don't really 'get' the Cortazar plot. I suppose he's acting now because Duarte is out of the way and then it'll make him... the new High Consul? And not, say, Admiral Trejo? It all seems to rest on the idea that Cortazar is a slimy sociopath and is oh-so-crazy. Does he not think that Teresa going in for a routine medical test and ending up dead would not have him thrown in the Pen? Or is he that valuable? Chapter Thirty-Two: Bobbie Bobbie is taking the shuttle out to prepare for the mission against the Tempest. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 32 posted:The display had a hard lockout that let her overlay the path of the whole plan without fear of anything leaking back. Where the Tempest was, where the Storm would appear, and where she needed to be. Yeah, the whole meteorological naming thing is running real thin. Bobbie is wearing Laconian power armor, and she doesn't like the blue and black paint job. It feels like it should be a bigger moment. What happened to Betsy? Was this the armor she was wearing earlier? Is she wearing it to try and confound the Tempest somehow? Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 32 posted:“I’m about to pull the pin,” Bobbie said. “If you need a potty break, now’s the time.” And there's our odd little peeing reference for this novel. The Storm leaves Callisto, fires torpedoes, and the Tempest is close enough to immediately open up with PDCs. The Tempest doesn't immediately swat the Storm out of the sky. I don't like saying things like 'plot armor' but I didn't expect the Storm and Tempest to actually engage each other. The Tempest annihilated vast sections of the Earth/Mars/Union fleet without issue -- how is it not knocking the Storm down in its first volley? Bobbie's shuttle takes a hit. Rini is dead. The improvised antimatter torpedo is still intact, but the drive cone has been cracked. Bobbie calls up Jillian and asks them to bring the Tempest to a stop. Bobbie grabs the torpedo, cradles it in her arms, and launches herself out the airlock. Her aim is to manually launch the torpedo at the tempest, and does so. But now she's probably in range of the antimatter blast. In a fairly touching scene, Bobbie makes her peace with the universe, arms her suit weapons, and charges the Tempest. Chapter Thirty-Three: Alex We hop back in time to the launch of the Storm. When the Storm launches from Callisto, the Tempest comes after it. The battle feels... different, with the Tempest opening fire on the Storm, with the Storm running from the larger ship. Did the authors themselves confuse the ships? Alex wonders what their alternatives are. Potentially evading the Tempest by entering the atmosphere of Jupiter (ala Captain Sheridan destroying a Shadow vessel in Babylon 5?) or by... heading sunward and forcing the Tempest to overheat? That last strategy feels odd. It's never been mentioned as a strategy before. Wasn't it heading sunward the whole last novel, and engaging whole fleets? The Storm takes a hit. This is about when Bobbie's shuttle takes a hit because Bobbie calls up and gives the bad news. Alex turns the Storm's drives off, making it look like they're in a mutiny, and hoping this makes the Laconians want to recapture their ship. The Tempest turns off its drive. Good call, Alex! Or is it? Because the Laconians try to hail the Tempest, and no one responds, and so the Tempest just opens fire again. I like that. It's a pretty nice play. 'Is it really a mutiny? Let's call them up and see who answers.' Alex figures they must not want to destroy the Storm, because they surely could with a "massive strike" and instead want to slowly overwhelm the smaller ship. Caspar is like, what the gently caress, Bobbie is charging the Tempest. The Tempest is firing at her. Alex wants to get to her and rescue her, but Bobbie promptly takes a PDC round -- and that's it, Bobbie Draper is dead. Alex loses it. Everyone begins to panic, and then the Heart of the Tempest is vaporized. That's not to say the crew of the Storm did so hot. Without the Storm's weird armor and the medical bay, the antimatter detonation would've killed them all. The explosion was like a small sun visible from Earth. No one knows how the Storm managed to destroy the Tempest (jeez), and people figure it might be some factional conflict. Jillian gives Bobbie's stuff to Alex. She's going to take the Storm back to Freehold. She offers to make Alex her XO, but he says he already has a ship of his own. So, yeah, Bobbie's dead. Her death ride against the Tempest is one of those big popular moments. It's fine. Like I've said of a a lot of these novels, it feels like the bit the Coreys came up with and then built the story to get us there. It's dramatic and it's memorable and so I can't really fault it for anything, although there's a part of me that feels like it's a little over the top and 'space opera cool' for a series that's as po-faced as The Expanse can be at times. I feel like it would've been more appropriate if Bobbie sent the torpedo off on its way, made her peace, and then just got vaporized when it detonated. Last stands and death charges aren't cool. They're tragic and sad and often the result of those calling the shots not needing to be the ones to take the bullets. Persepolis Rising had the Sol powers engage in an utterly pointless conflict, which presumably killed thousands for the hope of maybe hurting the Tempest. Bobbie's big exit from the series being a pointless death charge against an actual battleship, where she eats a PDC round in a manner that feels not too dissimilar from Shed taking a railgun round in Leviathan Wakes... (And, no, I'm not a big fan of the waste of life seemingly being necessary because it wounded the Tempest and so set up its destruction because, what the heck, Laconia didn't repair it for so many years?) It's a very Bobbie thing to do, charging the Tempest. It feels like an appropriate end. Like I said, it's genuinely touching how she has her moment with the universe, Expansian even as it is, and then decides she'll do what she can to distract the Tempest for the sake of her people on the Storm. But at the same time, it feels me a bit of disquet. I'm not sure why. Sure, the fact it's utterly pointless is one thing. The fact that it's got that 'throwing yourself against an unstoppable enemy is heroic' vibe is another. But I think it's because, as much as they paint it as Bobbie doing it for her tribe and making peace with the universe, I can't throw off how depressed and argumentative she's been throughout the novel. That's to say, my brain keeps equating it to suicide. I think I've mentioned before that I work in veterans' counselling, so, maybe I'm just seeing patterns other people don't recognize. Yes, there's a thin line between suicide and a suicide mission. Yes, an argument can be made that if you're going to die then maybe it's better to go down swinging. Maybe it gets under my skin because Bobbie dies in such messy circumstances where Amos gets a fitting death which is then walked back. Not to get too Twitter-brained about it, but, yes, Bobbie is a masculine/unconventional woman of color whereas Amos is a sociopathic white guy. Avasarala is dead. Naomi is relegated to the background. And now Bobbie, the third member of the notable ladies in the cast, is dead. But I don't think that's it. I think it comes down to this. The moment Bobbie took a swing at the Tempest, it went from being a suicide mission to suicidal act. She had already thrown the torpedo -- it was going to hit its mark, or it wasn't. At this point, in my mind, it isn't about hastening your death, but accepting it. The moment Bobbie made the decision to charge the Tempest guns blazing and presumably singing her little song is the moment she made the decision to ensure her death, not just accept it. Yes, Bobbie would almost certainly have perished when the antimatter torpedo detonated. We'll even say it's a 99.999999% chance. But I think, to borrow a line from Babylon 5, 'when you're falling off a cliff you might as well try to fly, you've got nothing else to lose.' It's entirely possible that Bobbie charging the Tempest might've got the torpedo struck by PDC fire. It's possible that the torpedo might've missed, and then she'd be dead for nothing. It isn't heroic to throw your life away -- it's deeply stupid. That's to say, Bobbie accepting her death necessitates accepting that the torpedo managing to hit the Tempest is out of her hands from the moment she threw it -- her torpedo strike is, dare I say it, an act of faith. By charging the Tempest, I think Bobbie hadn't accepted her death at all. She needed to go out 'on her terms.' Perhaps, as I've mentioned before and something that showed up with Naomi in Nemesis Games, she needed to 'show them all.' The thing is, I think the issue is that the perspective illustrated by these novels is pretty dismissive of faith. I'm not religious, so, this isn't me advocating as a believer, just someone who understands how important faith is in the great human tapestry, but I don't think the Coreys can conceive of someone going 'okay, let it be, it's out of my hands now, it's with God/the universe/Zeus/karma/Allah etc.' The most significant religious element we've seen in these books were the Mormons in Leviathan Wakes, and they were basically jokes: lol they have money to build a ship, lol the promised land is in another star system, lol Miller is using the Nauvoo as a battering ram, lol the OPA is keeping it, lol it's a battleship now, lol it's a lovely battleship. Honestly, I'm willing to bet all the Mormon stuff was right out of the roleplaying web forum, it just has that energy about it. That and the vomit zombies. (I am somewhat disregarding Anna, but I feel like she fell into a similar area: yes, she was religious, but she was very much a 'God helps those who helps themselves' sort. But even then, I don't know if one woman balances the scales, and I think I'd argue that what Anna does through Abaddon's Gate isn't what I mean by acts of faith.) Anyway. There's a part of me that thinks this scene, and this novel, is why the TV series never made it past Season 6. Killing Alex instead of recasting seemed like an easy decision when you're looking at the events of the series until then, but creates issues in Persepolis Rising and Tiamat's Wrath. In Persepolis Rising, who is driving the Rocinante to escape the Storm? Well, that's easy, come up with a new character (or just re-write.) But that character isn't Alex. And here in Tiamat's Wrath, Alex is the audience's link to Bobbie's death. If Alex doesn't exist anymore, then what's the point? Alex is the emotional heft of this bit. Are you not going to include Bobbie's heroic death charge? It's probably the biggest moment in Tiamat's Wrath. Are you going to give the angst and aftershock to Jillian or, God forbid, Kit? Who'd give a poo poo? It'd be such a headache to work around, especially for an adaptation that'd otherwise ensured it hit all the big beats and moments. You can't slot any of the other Rocinante crew into Alex's spot unless you're doing big rewrites because they're all off doing things, such as being in prison or dead. I feel like I wouldn't have wanted to be in the writers' room when they were faced with, uh, so how are we handling Tiamat's Wrath without Alex?
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Jan 21, 2024 03:31
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:Tiamat's Wrath, Chapters 29 - 33 I guess you could keep Avasarala alive for another season and kill her off between season 8/9 instead of between 7/8. She's really the only other person close to Bobby. You'd lose the scene with Holden remembering her at the state building but like...so what.
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Jan 21, 2024 07:45
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A ‘death charge’ I always liked was the Last Ride of the Reinforce Jr from Victory Gundam. It definitely differs in that it actually succeeds in its goal. The old men who are in charge of the League Militaire throws off everyone from the Reinforce Jr. and charge the flagship at the enemy flagship because the Reinforce Jr. had already bad seriously damaged and nothing they had could get close enough to the enemy flagship to take it down. The remaining officers on board don’t even make it to the enemy flagship, as the bridge is blown off, but as the dying captain triumphantly declared “It’s too late!” right before he dies, the ship’s momentum still smashes it fatally into the enemy ship and destroyed it.
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Jan 21, 2024 19:00
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banned from Starbucks posted:I guess you could keep Avasarala alive for another season and kill her off between season 8/9 instead of between 7/8. She's really the only other person close to Bobby. You'd lose the scene with Holden remembering her at the state building but like...so what. God no. I'd much rather Avasarala die off-screen in the time jump rather than see them try to age up the actress for a cameo talking to Drummer. I always thought it was weird as poo poo they didn't use her death/funeral as the intro to the time jump. They really should of recast Alex. Who gives a poo poo? Keep the season Cas filmed as it was, recast him for the next. That said, in the show, I figure maybe they would keep Naomi with Alex and give Drummer her role in the shipping containers.
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Jan 22, 2024 10:36
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Do we even need a main character in the shipping container?
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Jan 22, 2024 11:25
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No we don't. Those chapters were beyond tedious
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Jan 22, 2024 16:21
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Those chapters should have been THE Naomi chapters of the whole series. She's going back to her Marco days, blowing up ships and organizing insurgency! She shoulda been an absolute firebrand. But instead she's incredibly depressed and all her work sounds like low level data entry. She's no fun to read about and I think that does the character a huge disservice. This should've been her time to blow up, really finish her arc and be more than "Jim's girlfriend/Marco's ex". You read about these French Resistance fighters and by god they had daring and esprit and a real commitment to the fight. And she's a Belter, and the Belters are the ones who know how to fight the technologically superior state, this was IT man, this not just her moment but the Belter moment! But instead it's 
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Jan 22, 2024 17:33
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General Battuta posted:Those chapters should have been THE Naomi chapters of the whole series. She's going back to her Marco days, blowing up ships and organizing insurgency! She shoulda been an absolute firebrand. But instead she's incredibly depressed and all her work sounds like low level data entry. She's no fun to read about and I think that does the character a huge disservice. This should've been her time to blow up, really finish her arc and be more than "Jim's girlfriend/Marco's ex". You read about these French Resistance fighters and by god they had daring and esprit and a real commitment to the fight. And she's a Belter, and the Belters are the ones who know how to fight the technologically superior state, this was IT man, this not just her moment but the Belter moment! I've been thinking about Tiamat's Wrath today, mainly because I've read through to the end now because work was slow. But this is, I think, the issue I have with the novel as a whole. I feel like Tiamat's Wrath is the most obvious example of execution falling short of potential in the series. The first three novels basically do things well enough. Cibola Burn doesn't quite get there, sure. Nemesis Games is solid. Babylon's Ashes is a mess. Persepolis Rising does about the best it can for where it falls in the series timeline. But Tiamat's Wrath? It promises so much and delivers so little! 'It's a few years after Laconia took control of known space. The Rocinante crew is split up and facing down the prospect of an unwinnable struggle. Holden is Duarte's captive, and the only evidence he's alive come from messages that might be a trap. Amos has stolen a nuke and vanished. Naomi struggles with organizing the fight, and whether she's capable of leading the nascent resistance to its death when the majority of people appear to accept Laconian rule. Alex and Bobbie are conducting guerrilla operations right under the enemy's nose at the helm of a starship they don't understand. 'Meanwhile, Laconia itself faces enemies within and without. Elvi Okoye attempts to piece together the mysteries of the Builders and their destroyers before Duarte kicks off a war he can't possibly win. And Teresa Duarte, young heir to the empire, finds herself wrapped up in palatial intrigue surrounding one James Holden. Because he's alive, and he has a message for her: someone is planning to kill you.' Like, that's all there in the novel. That's an exciting summary of the story. But I also think that makes the whole novel sound way more exciting than it actually is. Alex and Bobbie launch a raid, and then mill around, and Bobbie dies. Naomi hangs out in a container. Elvi opens up expanse_worldbuilding_book9_SECRET.txt in an attempt to hastily lay a foundation for the last book. Teresa feels a little like she stumbled in from a different genre. Unlike the other novels, my brain wants to rewrite Tiamat's Wrath because the ideas are so interesting and the end is so close. Instead, it's just boring and it feels like the Coreys are running through to the end of the series, a feeling that is especially pronounced in the next and final novel. Like, I'm envisioning a novel where Holden is obviously tortured and abused but Naomi gets bright and happy messages from him. Are Holden's warnings to Teresa genuine, or has he broken in captivity and wants to punch Duarte in what humanity he has left by going after his daughter? Is Timmy involved? What if Holden actually gets through to Duarte, and he agrees his tit-for-tat strategy is bogus, but Trejo figures they have to keep going and is working with Cortazar on a nefarious plot? And if Bobbie's going to die, then play it up a little. Maybe her first chapter is she's stripping back Betsy or something, but Betsy is finally busted beyond repair, and this throws Bobbie for a bit of a spin, and then she's lashing out at Naomi and Alex because not only is her suit of power armor dead, and now she has to wear a Laconian suit and, goddamn, it's so much better and they have whole armies of this... We've known these characters for seven books. There's so much stuff they could draw on. But I feel a little like you run into that odd idea that these novels seem to have that drama isn't realistic. But it's not as if these novels are realistic either. It's just like the writers decided watercolors are for hacks and realism is when you only use 2B pencil. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Jan 23, 2024 |
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Jan 23, 2024 14:38
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Tiamat's Wrath, Chapters 34 - 37 Elvi tries to blow the whistle on Cortazar, and that's about it. Chapter Thirty-Four: Elvi Elvi wakes up from a bad dream. Despite Fayez's protests, she gets out of bed and heads down to the university. She's having trouble eating, too, apparently. She doesn't want to hang out with Cara and Xan, or see Cortazar, nor tell Trejo about Cortazar's evil machinations. She hasn't found any smoking guns that indicate he's going to vivisect Teresa. She goes to talk with Trejo. She says she doesn't have proof but thinks Cortazar is going to kill Teresa. Trejo doesn't really care: Cortazar is the only guy who might be able to bring back Duarte. Trejo wonders if they can just regrow Duarte's brain. Teresa thinks Cortazar used Duarte as a guinea pig for his own hope for immortality, and that Teresa is his second generation of experiments. Trejo tells Elvi that the Tempest has been destroyed, and they're unable to stop the resistance from knocking down their repeaters about as fast as they set them up. Unfortunately, Trejo views Cortazar as indispensable, but he'll keep guards on Teresa and do his best to prevent Cortazar from being alone with her. But if Cortazar thinks fixing Duarte requires the death of Teresa, Trejo will happily let him do it. Elvi thinks about resigning, then doesn't. Elvi reflects that nature is beautiful and cruel and the rules that apply to mountain lions also apply to her. "In the Bible, even angels murdered humanity's babies when God asked them to." So, Elvi goes to find Cortazar and tells him they should get to work. Chapter Thirty-Five: Naomi The Tempest is dead. Bobbie's plan worked, although Naomi hasn't heard from her. She's discussing things with Chava, missing shipping records and such. The resistance is emboldened. Naomi wants to go home, before Laconia figures out Auberon is the newest hub of resistance activity. She grabs a skiff and heads out to Bara Gaon. There's a small thing here, and I'm not sure if it's a goof but it'll also come up in a later chapter, but Naomi takes a ship designed for in-system trips out through the rings. Does it have an Epstein? Because there used to be a divide between Epstein ships and non-Epstein ships, and I feel like a journey out of a system in a ship that doesn't have one ("intended for in-system trips, usually between plants in similar orbits") would take a long time. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 35 posted:There had been a time when the Transport Union and the governments of Mars and Earth had expected Laconia to be like any other colony world: struggling for base survival and aiming for self-sustaining agriculture sometime in a generation or so. Anyway, Naomi thinks they need to break Laconia's manufacturing capacity. Break it down and reintegrate it into wider community just like... the OPA and the Transport Union? Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 35 posted:Wars never ended because one side was defeated. They ended because the enemies were reconciled. Anything else was just a postponement of the next round of violence. Naomi's shocked to see so many ships going through the gates given the danger of going Dutchman, but it's not like she isn't doing the exact same thing. There's another Laconian destroyer we hear about and it's called the Monsoon. Can we even come up with enough weather-themed names for a hundred warships? It hails Naomi and tells her to clear out of the slow zone. But instead of going to Bara Goan, she heads to Freehold. Chapter Thirty-Six: Teresa Teresa has bad dreams! I'm tired of dreams! Dream sequences are almost always boring. They're a cheap way to tell us a character's anxieties and internal tensions! I don't know which writer of the pair loves kicking off chapters with 'a character has a weird/bad/confusing dream' but I wish they'd stop. I'm going to assume it's Franck because, if I recall correctly, it showed up first in his characters. And similar to Elvi, she's having trouble eating. And mention is being made of "sweet rice" which hasn't been mentioned before Chapter 34 but now Elvi and Teresa are like, dang, I'd love some sweet rice. Is it better or worse than the red kibble? She doesn't end up eating anything -- riveting. Am I being unfair? I don't know. We're 71% into this novel and we're getting a chapter like this. I understand the point of it -- Timmy just got blown to bits, her dad is practically comatose, we should have some time on Teresa's mindset -- but it's just not interesting. Elvi is leading a class, taking over for Ilich. Elvi is discussing parallel evolution. See, there are Laconian frogs and Earth frogs and they're kind of similar. They're going to dissect them. Connor shows up and Teresa is like, wow, he kinda sucks now. Connor is like, hey, my mom is worried about everything, and Teresa is like, it's fine, we have top men working on it, everyone knew there was going to be setbacks. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 36 posted:So she’d lied. That was interesting. She’d told him what he wanted to hear, and it wasn’t even because she wanted to protect him or keep him safe. It was just easier. She understood now why adults lied to children. It wasn’t love. It was exhaustion. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 36 posted:Elvi took a deep breath and spoke softly. “I think to give a well-known subject to the repair drones and see what they do. He has two others, but he didn’t have the kind of scans and prep work that he has with you. That and . . . he wants what you and your father were going to have. He wants to live forever too.” Teresa says they have to tell Trejo. Elvi says they have, but Cortazar is important. And both of them are in over their heads. Chapter Thirty-Seven: Alex The Storm has managed to elude Laconia's forces because no one dared chase them. That's lucky. I would've just shot missiles at them. They're also particularly lucky because the Storm is pretty much beat up and Alex is working hard to keep the ship together. Alex has a lot of angst. Not just for Bobbie but also for Kit, Talissa, Giselle, Amos, and Holden. They reach Freehold. Alex says his goodbyes to Caspar and Jillian and heads off to find the Rocinante. He finds the Rocinante, and she seems fine. He puts a week of work into getting the ship ready to fly. Then Naomi shows up and says "Hey." And that's it, that's the chapter. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 11:26 on Feb 7, 2024 |
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Feb 2, 2024 02:36
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Tiamat's Wrath, Chapters 38 - 41 418 is half of 237. And that's the power of math. Chapter Thirty-Eight: Naomi We swap immediately to Naomi. She and Alex talk. Naomi mentions that she had other plans, but would rather come back to the Roci. She mentions that her ship has an Epstein drive (which feels like a hasty addition from an editor's feedback) and also that her knees are already hurting after being on Freehold for what is presumably a very short time... which just makes it worse than had they entirely forgotten this aspect of Belterhood, and also feels like a hasty addition from an editor's feedback. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 38 posted:“You should have seen her, XO,” Alex said, and he did something between a laugh and a sob. “Like a fuckin’ Valkyrie, you know? Flying at that big-rear end ship like she could take it down by herself.” They get the Rocinante ready to fly. Naomi goes through her cabinets and inspects her various knick-knacks. They spend a week on the surface and Naomi's condition doesn't worsen. Which you feel like it would, especially given that she's thirty years past her prime, and this very chapter mentioned the physiological aspects. Naomi thinks the key to Laconia's dreams is the ability to make Magnetar-class battleships. "The dream of empire could only die if the ancient Martian dream of independence through better technology was put to rest." But Naomi thinks she's about 33% of the way to creating a strategy to hit Laconia. They take the Rocinante into space. Naomi reflects about things that 'Old Rokku' has told her, which is a little odd because, as usual, this has never come up before this novel, and what little we know of Rokku from Nemesis Games made it seem like he was the guy who radicalized Marco and Naomi herself which makes it a little odd that she's like, ah yes, Old Rokku, that guy knew his space wisdom. Alex mentions that he's sad that Bobbie is dead but sadder that he doesn't know how to tell Kit that his Aunt Bobbie is dead. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 38 posted:Alex was quiet for a few seconds, then sniffed. “I miss her every minute of every day, but god drat, it was just so fuckin’ right.” Feels a little bit like there was another version where Bobbie landed on the Tempest and jammed the anti-matter against the hull directly or something. Naomi says that she wants see a real peace where "people can be angry with each other and hate each other and no one has to die over it." It's an odd thing for someone like her to say -- you think she'd understand Mark Twain's quote about the two terrors, the short one that kills thousands and the longer, vaster Terror that kills millions over centuries. Like, that's basically what happened to Marco! Just how many Belters were dying quietly and unknown under the economic auspices of Earth and Mars? People die outside war. As Alex asks about Amos, there's another missing time event but this one is different, more intense -- and lasted for much longer, twenty minutes. Naomi figures it was Duarte and Laconia, one of their tests. What have they done this time? Chapter Thirty-Nine: Elvi Elvi is chatting with Cara and Xan. They refer to something known as 'the library' which refers to all the Builder information they carry in them ever since they were 'repaired' by the drones. It's why Cortazar doesn't consider them human children, but Elvi thinks he believes that just so he can keep them in a cage for decades. But, for all his work, it doesn't seem like Duarte has access to 'the library' and whatever had happened to Duarte to knock him into his weird comatose state hadn't affected Cara and Xan. Elvi reflects that the only time she'd been under greater stress was during the Great Slug War back on Ilus. She goes to see Trejo. The inner circle is all there. Ilich says that the latest event happened seemingly everywhere, although no one knows what happened in the ring space. Some are saying some ships got eaten. Elvi says it's a consciousness issue, and, hell, here comes the exposition. In summary, Elvi says that the Gate Builders had a very different kind of brain than humanity does ("unobservable matter"), and Elvi's thesis is that humanity's form of consciousness is a "field combat version" that can take a lot of punishment and keep on going. What James Holden saw on the ring station (oh, so they do all know about it...) is that something was killing their consciousness step by step, but nothing the Builders did in response did anything to help, including supernovas and closing the gates. The bullets collapse consciousness on a planetary or system wide scale. In the end, the enemy figured out how to turn off the Builder mind/s all at once. They've tried the same weapon on humanity but it only resulted in missing time. So, they're getting better, with the most recent attack showing their getting closer to something truly effective. And there was no trigger this time -- the bad guys have shifted from reactive to proactive. (Wouldn't twenty minutes of missing time across the whole of the empire result in all kinds of catastrophes and incidents?) Trejo asks about progress in healing Duarte. Cortazar says he'd like to examine Amos, but they don't know where he is. Elvi says there is no path to healing him. Cortazar agrees, but that they can perhaps move him forward to a "new state." Elvi thinks Trejo is realizing that he's been letting Cortazar play with a corpse. Ilich suggests they put out a statement mentioning that the weird event was a new test. Elvi says they should tell the truth. Trejo is like, yeah, we'll tell everyone we're engaged in cosmic war against dark gods, that'll go down well. Elvi suggests surrendering to the underground instead. Chapter Forty: Teresa Teresa goes up to see Duarte. He appears to react to her, and also that he's seeing wondrous things that no one else can see. Teresa tells him that Cortazar is going to kill her. Duarte looks at her and she holds his hand, and flinches when she calls his name. Perhaps something of Duarte is still in there. Teresa leaves and returns to her room. Ilich mentions she missed her morning classes. They have an argument: Ilich shouts at her to do her part and project stability. Teresa is like, oh, I have to do that, but you get to go around looking for Timmy? Ilich mentions he had a pocket nuke and his cave was a shelter for when he set it off. The mountain would allow his extraction team to find him. Teresa can't believe it. Ilich takes her down to a storage room and shows her Timmy's things. Ilich has her go through Timmy's files. Turns out, Amos had been watching the guard routines and tracking Jim Holden, noting every time he saw him form the mountain. There are projections for the tactical nuke: what if he set it off in the city, at the wall, within the state building itself. Despite all of it, Teresa can't see him as anything but a friend because Holden said so. Ilich returns her to her room and watches her as she eats a meal (sweet rice included.) Teresa considers the prisoner's dilemma. She thinks that no matter what she does, it's better for others to defect. When she refused to defect, too, they all tried to make her defect. Teresa thinks she needs to leave. Chapter Forty-One: Naomi The Rocinante is holding position near the Freehold gate. Naomi is setting up a transmitter. She returns to the Rocinante and goes through the data on the other side of the ring. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 41 posted:Nothing had the comm signal or drive signature of a Storm-class destroyer... Goof: They are Pulsar-class destroyers. Naomi puts out a call-to-arms to the resistance and hears back from fifty-three systems. "Fifty-three systems with their full supply of ready warships." Hundreds of ships. Mention is made of "rock hoppers with rail guns mounted on 'em" and, poo poo, here we go again. I know, I know, space warfare stuff. Back in the earlier novels, it was remarkable that the Protogen stealth ships had railguns. It appears that general military theory has destroyer-size ships being the smallest to mount railguns. The Rocinante only has a railgun because they basically ran it down the whole keel of the ship, and firing it too much can break the ship. The Rocinante is (or was, at the time) a cutting-edge military warship with an Epstein drive. This is important as I presume the rail gun draws down considerable power from the Epstein. If we use the TV series as canon, then the Protogen stealth ships are larger than the Rocinante, too (the novel doesn't really tell us either way.) A rock hopper, on the other hand, is one of those small Belter ships that basically hop around small distances and lack Epstein drives. We know they can mount one, as mentioned in Nemesis Games, but it basically requires gutting the whole ship to fit it in. I think this is something the series has kind of forgotten, that not every ship has an Epstein. Rock hoppers are ships for local travel -- they're the kind of ships mentioned earlier in Tiamat's Wrath that basically exist to fly around the Jovian system. They don't need Epsteins because they're not going to leave their local area. Basically, the series indicated that in order to have an Epstein drive your ship needed to be military or you needed to be rich. In fact, mention is made there there are "fusion drives" that aren't Epsteins and are way less efficient. Back in the first novel, the Rocinante is mentioned as being one of the smallest ships to mount an Epstein. Epstein drive ships were so rare that Miller could whittle things down to locate the Rocinante across all the ports in the Solar system. And this makes sense. All ship drives are also weapons, so, why would the powers-that-be want everyone and their dog able to get their hands on one? So, my question is, how are we getting rock hoppers mounted with railguns? They probably lack the size to fit the weapon itself, and almost certainly lack the power plant to fire it. It feels like an Expanse space opera mad-lib. 'Okay, we need something to show up here... Uh, 'rock hopper' is a ship type, and 'rail guns' are a weapon... There we go.' It turns out Naomi's also got eight "ships" with "old-style stealth composites." Naomi calls them old "kings of space" but we have no idea what they are. And the ships just keep coming. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 41 posted:The next group had a Donnager-class battleship they were pulling out of mothballs. A quarter million tons of pieces smuggled to an empty moon and welded back together like a child’s model kit with a one-to-one scale. If she was lucky, there would be three or four more like it. All in all, it turns out Naomi gathers four hundred and eighteen ships with five "Transport Union supply ships" and three Donnager-class battleships. Naomi notes it isn't "half the size of the force the Tempest had killed in Sol." Well, that's not good news... But wait. Persepolis Rising, Chapter 42 posted:The combined fleet of the EMC and her union hadn’t played coy. They had burned and braked to reach this position. Two hundred and thirty-seven ships, ranging from the void cities to traffic-control skiffs... So, uh, good on Naomi for gathering what might just be the biggest fleet in the history of the Sol powers? And three Donnagers? The height of the Martian navy had about, what nine or ten? And Naomi's gathered all of these in, geez, a few hours? Turns out it's not half the size at all, but almost double! Naomi, you cad! On the one hand, none of this is important. On the other hand, this feels like the Coreys realizing that the few numbers they've pinned down have gotten in the way of their story. 237 seemed like a reasonable figure for the majority of the Sol fleet, especially when we learn that Laconia's fleet of advanced Pulsar-class destroyers numbered about 280. Persepolis Rising ends with the Laconian Empire having crushed all resistance. But here's the problem. Tiamat's Wrath needs the Laconian Empire to be fragile. I would argue that at the end of Persepolis Rising, and even throughout Tiamat's Wrath, there isn't really anything to indicate they should be worried. Yes, they have 280 destroyers to try and cover 1371 gates -- yes, that's a strategic problem, an impossible task. But perhaps Laconia needs to look at it from another angle: just how many of those gates lead to a system that can support warships and their required industry and logistics chains? Could you not just blockade the major colonies (Auberon, Bara Goan, whatever else?) with a small flotilla each? Does Laconia not have records indicating known military-grade ships and possible resistance fleet assets? See, to me, Persepolis Rising presented a world where there weren't that many warships outside Sol. The Transport Union had no dedicated fleet assets, relying on hiring out mercenary gunships as necessary (eg. the Rocinante). Given that the Transport Union controlled and monitored all gate travel, it's unlikely piracy was much of a threat to shipping. Maybe in single systems, but you could shut that down by just restricting travel -- if no one goes in, the pirates are forced to play ball or starve. This is precisely the inciting incident of the novel, after all. Seemingly the only fleet worth crushing is in Sol. There are no other campaigns mentioned as being necessary. No risk of the Auberon system defense fleet, for example, rushing in to break the siege of Medina. Most of the colonies are barely self-sufficient, and some not even that, so where are these colonies getting the ability to build and supply hundreds of warships? After thirty years, the Sol fleets are mentioned as only just recovering to pre-war readiness, and that's presuming with the bulk of the shipyard infrastructure behind them. And here's Naomi gathering up what has to be the largest collection of ships ever mentioned in the series in what feels like hours. It might very well be larger than the entire military push at the end of Babylon's Ashes. It's a really awkward plot contrivance. A popular uprising with a massive fleet battle despite the fact their story and worldbuilding don't really enable it. It's not as if this couldn't be the meat of the story -- Naomi gathering up a small fleet on the sly to strike into the heart of Laconia. That'd be interesting! But then you run into the rotating perspective problem, and just the general idea that I don't think the Corey team is good at this aspect of their space opera. It's much more their style to just have over four hundred ships show up when required. It also isn't great because we haven't seen, nor heard, of Laconia really doing much to engender this immediate response. They took Medina, they swatted down the Sol navies, and then they seem to have just... let people do what they were doing, providing they agree Duarte is a swell guy. Maybe Laconia has been conducting terrible things around the place, but our perspective characters aren't affected by it and certainly don't seem to care. Laconia is bad because they're the evil space empire, and everyone is really excited to go back to the arms of the Transport Union which, y'know, sentenced colonies to starvation because single ships ran the gate. ANYWAY. Naomi tells Alex that she doesn't want people to get hurt or die, but that winning the conflict is better than losing it -- if they win, they can be gracious to Laconia. The idea is to open up space to allow them to find a different way forward. There needs to be a Saba, so she'll be that. There's a lot of talk of Saba in this novel, but I genuinely have trouble remembering him as anything more than 'Drummer's boyfriend, resistance guy' from Persepolis Rising and so this idea of Naomi having to be Saba and not Holden and not Naomi is just flat. The Storm shows up and docks with the Rocinante. The crew of the Storm see Naomi as this legend. Naomi gives the order to move out.
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Feb 5, 2024 04:48
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quote:In summary, Elvi says that the Gate Builders had a very different kind of brain than humanity does ("unobservable matter"), and Elvi's thesis is that humanity's form of consciousness is a "field combat version" that can take a lot of punishment and keep on going. What James Holden saw on the ring station (oh, so they do all know about it...) is that something was killing their consciousness step by step, but nothing the Builders did in response did anything to help, including supernovas and closing the gates. The bullets collapse consciousness on a planetary or system wide scale. In the end, the enemy figured out how to turn off the Builder mind/s all at once. They've tried the same weapon on humanity but it only resulted in missing time. So, they're getting better, with the most recent attack showing their getting closer to something truly effective. And there was no trigger this time -- the bad guys have shifted from reactive to proactive. I think this is genuinely pretty good, threatening, chilling, etc. It's a real ticking clock that Are Heroes don't seem to have any way to stop. Imagine how much better this book would've been if it were a heist to blow up the Laconia construction platform. Maybe not much better, but I think at least a little. All the plots could've come together much more neatly — everyone has a reason to end up on Laconia, Naomi can be a belter smuggler resistance engineer terrorist, we can see more of Holden and Duarte, Theresa could help with the heist, Amos' nuke could be involved...
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Feb 5, 2024 05:01
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General Battuta posted:I think this is genuinely pretty good, threatening, chilling, etc. It's a real ticking clock that Are Heroes don't seem to have any way to stop. It really is, and I like the epilogue of Tiamat's Wrath because it hits that nail home. I even think the last novel has a bit of an atmosphere where maybe they won't be able to stop it... until about halfway through. General Battuta posted:Imagine how much better this book would've been if it were a heist to blow up the Laconia construction platform. Maybe not much better, but I think at least a little. All the plots could've come together much more neatly — everyone has a reason to end up on Laconia, Naomi can be a belter smuggler resistance engineer terrorist, we can see more of Holden and Duarte, Theresa could help with the heist, Amos' nuke could be involved... I feel like the fixed rotating perspective is the biggest flaw in the series' structure. Every plot is given equal time when they don't have equal importance/relevance, and because every chapter has to make itself feel like it matters, I think it's why you end up with a lot of the internal monologuing or bad dreams, trouble sleeping, whatever else. Otherwise, yeah, I agree -- streamlining it down to a heist to blow the construction platform would boost it a bit. It feels like Tiamat's Wrath is doing a lot, but also feels like it isn't doing much at all. Beyond returning things back to the status quo (arguably, knocking Bobbie off the crew roster is a step in that process, too.) Naomi drafting up a plan to take out Laconia's construction capabilities (and maybe to secretly rescue Jim, ssshhh) could be a great plot to hang a bunch of stuff off. Bobbie gets upset because risking the mission to rescue Jim is a bad idea, Amos is a key part of the plan but Teresa inadvertently got him killed (but maybe she takes his role in the operation...) edit: Basically, it's not so much the rotating perspective, either -- it's that it feels like every plot exists in its own silo. Just look at the antimatter-blow-up-the-Tempest plot. It's basically doing its own thing in its own bubble. Alex walks back into the Rocinante and it almost has this feeling 'Well, that was crazy -- now, where were we?' Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 05:42 on Feb 5, 2024 |
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Feb 5, 2024 05:36
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Something's been stuck in the back of my mind since seeing it in Chapter 4. This is the table for the prisoner's dilemma that Ilich (Jason) uses to teach Teresa. I couldn't figure out what was bothering me about it, until I went back and looked at it again a few hours ago. Can you? The problem is this: the table is wrong. What we've got here is a prisoner's dilemma where each party can betray themselves. No wonder Duarte was having trouble with the Goths! What this is, and confirmed by Daniel Abraham's comments on Reddit, is a misprint/error that it seems like the publisher, Orbit, either didn't get around to fixing or didn't fix in certain editions. But it's also fascinating as an inadvertent look into the mindset of Duarte and Laconia, isn't it? Your options are "betray them" or "betray yourself." And the enemy benefits if you betray yourself. The right person is in charge, or you wait for your enemies to ruin themselves. It's a shame it's a misprint. It even feels like you could apply it to Singh. Isn't that basically what Overstreet said to him prior to executing him for the good of Laconia's goals?
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Feb 7, 2024 15:37
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A way to make game theory even more psychotic than it already is! Have you considered a career with the CIA?
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Feb 7, 2024 15:43
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Tiamat's Wrath, Chapters 42 - 45 The Siege of Laconia begins... You know what that means!! Chapter Forty-Two: Alex The thing that bothers me most about the climax of Tiamat's Wrath is that it starts bending the rules to favor the good guys while pretending that it's not doing anything of the sort. Chapter Forty-Two kicks off with Alex ruminating on the planned attack on Laconia. If the Whirlwind is guarding the gate, they're all dead. As it is, they have to bring through their ships in small groups "as quickly as they could" while avoiding any Dutchman events. Remember, that's four-hundred ships to bring through. It took, what, a loaded-up freighter with a particularly overloaded reactor to kickstart a Dutchman event back in Babylon's Ashes? See, keeping everything up in the air allows the series the freedom to do anything. But it also makes it hard to build drama around those elements, I think. We don't really know much about the Dutchman stuff. It's reasonable, given that it's a pretty mysterious occurrence. But is it? By now, Naomi has cracked the code and society had managed to coordinate transits through the gates to prevent it from happening. The issue that my mind sticks to is that what we've seen is inconsistent. Back in Nemesis Games, it seems like even five or six ships going through a particular gate in a short amount of time might trigger it. Babylon's Ashes suggests that a single freighter with a full cargo hold and an overloaded reactor can do it. What it triggers, specifically, is not quite clear. We know a Dutchman event doesn't seem to last long -- even when multiple ships go through quickly during an event, only one seems to vanish. This lines up with the idea of a deliberate tit-for-tat response from the Goths: you push things too far, and they eat precisely one ship. The notable exception to this is Marco Inaros' flotilla, where all fifteen ships vanish. What I think is unclear is whether the Dutchman threshold for a ship to vanish is per-gate or across the whole network. I've always thought it was the latter, and bits of Chapter 42 appear to back that up, but I also feel like it's indicated as more of a per-gate thing. What I'm getting at, is that all these bits and pieces have ramifications for Naomi's ability to muster four hundred ships through the gate network, and then get them to Laconia before Laconia realizes what is happening. The series treats the phenomenon fine when it's a fun bogeyman to have in the background, but it's less fine when it's suddenly a strategic issue. Alex thinks they need the trickle their forces into the slow zone, bunch up before transiting to Laconia, and then going through with groups that won't trigger an event. Given what we know of the travel times in the Expanse, this could take days or weeks or months. Which should give Laconia time to notice it. We just saw a few chapters back that they have a ship in the slow zone. They have two-hundred and something ships scattered across the empire -- where are they all? It's the other bit that bothers me about this whole set piece: Laconia doesn't put up much of a fight. I understand that fights are won before they're fought, that the Coreys have laid out their groundwork for the loss: Duarte is gone, communications are spotty, their ships are spread thin. But that's the bare minimum to make the attack plausible. Laconia is so paralyzed that these issues have been dogging them for some time (weeks, months?) and Laconia's sole response has been to keep trying to put up comm buoys that the resistance keeps knocking down virtually immediately. I understand that it's much more difficult to write antagonists who react and counterplay the protagonists. I get that this novel has eight chapters left to wrap everything up. But the forthcoming Siege of Laconia is so boring and perfunctory that, even of my first reading of this series, it really left me thinking the authors just wanted to skip past it. Arguably, the Siege of Laconia should've been a whole novel in and of itself. Anyway, we'll get to that when the siege kicks off in Chapter 44. So, two-hundred ships are already en route to Laconia. The ring station has begun to dim, seemingly putting us "days and weeks" since the gamma ray burst back in Chapter 19. I've seen some people around the Internet say that Tiamat's Wrath takes place over a whole year, but I don't really agree with their reasoning, especially if it's only been "days or weeks" between Chapters 19 and 42. Alex discusses things with Ian, their new comms guy, and something about Ian makes me think I should recognize him. He just feels off. The kind of character I'd expect to show up if the Coreys had auctioned off a 'get your name in the Expanse' event and someone named Ian had won it. Alex thinks about sending a message to Kit, a big ol' apology for being a bad dad, and then, interestingly, deletes it without sending because one message can't make up for a lifetime of decisions. Cool moment, actually. I'm going to bang this drum again and again, but I genuinely think these are the best parts of the series, these really human moments concerning family and other little human things like that. Which makes it a shame it's billed as cinematic space opera the way it's supposed to be. Naomi calls up Alex. He calls her Admiral which she doesn't like. Alex throws his half-finished tea in the recycler. We get a physical description of Naomi or, at least, a small one. She's wearing "formal blacks" and has grey-white hair. Naomi gives a speech: they're going into the heart of the enemy, they all saw what the Tempest did in Sol, but the goal isn't to confront the Whirlwind but to move it away from Laconia. If they can get it away from Laconia, they can sweep in and blow up Laconia's construction platforms which means they can't make Magnetars or, uh, Storm-class destroyers. I don't know why she's singling Pulsars out. As noted earlier, beyond the repair tech it's just not much better than a Corvette-class. Oh, and it's where they generate antimatter. Naomi has five ships, including the Rocinante, set aside to strike the platforms, and they're also going in first.(I'm guessing the "new" Protector-class destroyers mentioned in Persepolis Rising aren't worth noting...) The Rocinante and its strike group pass through the gate. No one is guarding it, which strikes me as a bad idea when you've lost comms throughout your empire and some anti-matter weapons. We get our first description of the Laconian system. It's rather sparsely populated. Beyond Laconia, the only two notable locations are a science station around a gas giant and a inner planet for mining titanium. The Whirlwind is sitting at Laconia, but two Pulsar-class ships are burning toward the gate. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 42 posted:NO GUARDS AT THE GATE. THEY DIDN’T SEE US COMING. I've seen some people say that the Coreys changed the rules on how ring orbits work to make the siege work for Naomi better, but I don't remember how gate orbits were described initially. Either way, by not having anyone at the gate, Laconia has about three hours before they know their home system has been infiltrated. And like, seriously, they didn't even have an automated probe sitting there? Nothing? Not after they lost their battleships and there could be antimatter bombs floating around? No legacy infrastructure from when they were playing possum? Sure, the speed of light is the speed of light, but surely you'd want to hold any invaders at the gate and not give them multiple hours to muster and move out. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 42 posted:If it had been football, Laconia would have had a world-class goalie and a couple of professional strikers against Naomi’s team of four hundred grade school children and three Donnager-class football hooligans. Any head-to-head battle was a win for Duarte. So it was better that there not be any. Not until Naomi could pick them. Chapter Forty-Three: Elvi Elvi asks Cara and Xan about the giant space diamond. Cara says its like a recording or a memory, like a film that has all its frames all at once. She is interrupted by Trejo who calls an emergency meeting. En route, Cortazar tells Elvi not to treat Cara and Xan like people. He says they're mechanisms created from the corpses of children, no different to how Eros co-opted biomass to create things. Cara and Alexander, he says, are dead and the drones just made something out of what was left. There's a part of me that wonders why the Romans would have drones whose job appears to be to rebuild organic matter into some walking-talking exposition repositories. Especially if what we've heard throughout this novel was true, that they were some kind of galaxy-spanning hive mind whose consciousness was storied on unobservable matter. I think Cibola Burn said that the various Roman planets were clean of life, except for what evolved since the empire collapsed. Could something evolve that could hook organic lifeforms into this 'library?' There is, of course, the theory that it's all a trap on the part of the Romans but I think that's dumb and uninteresting. When they arrive at the State Building, Trejo informs them that the underground has launched a "full-scale invasion." Ilich is concerned what the resistance knows that they don't. Cortazar says that all lost antimatter has been accounted for with the destruction of the Tempest. Trejo says, oddly, that they haven't heard about any antimatter being lost since the loss of the Typhoon... "but we haven't heard of any that have gone missing." Is their comms infrastructure reliable or not? Ilich thinks the underground fleet has to be up to something, because otherwise why send in four hundred ships? Trejo isn't concerned, the Whirlwind is more than capable of defeating the resistance ships. What he is concerned about, however, is that Laconia is under attack and Duarte is silent. Trejo's plan is to basically deepfake a message from Duarte using Elvi's science equipment. Cortazar points out that people will be able to determine it's faked, and they need to be prepared to discredit those who point it out. Elvi can see Durte's skull under his skin -- seriously, what does this dude look like and why is everyone on Laconia just, like, not bothered by it? Kelly implies that Duarte is aware of the people around him. Elvi takes his hand and says they need to scan him -- Duarte smiles "with an unspeakable love" and squeezes her hand. Then, he stands up. He walks over and stares at Cortazar. Cortazar smiles and nods and then-- Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 43 posted:He moved his hand in a soft gesture, like he was fanning away smoke, and Cortázar’s chest bloomed out at the back. It was so slow, so gentle, that Elvi couldn’t understand what she was seeing. Not at first. Elvi says it had to be about Teresa, but none of them know about Teresa telling Duarte about Cortazar's threat. Trejo decides he shall do the announcement without Duarte, and he's obviously very rattled. Ilich suggests shooting Duarte, arguing he's no longer the high consul. Trejo gives him his sidearm but is like, yeah, if you think it'll work. Ilich doesn't go through with it. Trejo gives Elvi full access to Cortazar's stuff -- essentially, she is Cortazar now. But if she says one more word about surrendering, he will have her shot. Elvi returns to Cortazar's lab and finds out that he's concealed 118 sets of lab notes from her... Chapter Forty-Four: Naomi Chapter Forty-Four opens by reminding us that Naomi is vulnerable to high-gee forces. We get some further details on the Laconia system: nine planets, one habitable, one gas giant, a transfer station (perhaps the aforementioned science station, perhaps not), and the alien construction platforms. The Laconian defence fleet is made up of the Voice of the Whirlwind (at Laconia) and six Pulsar-class destroyers which are, again, called Storm-classes. (I'm also going to finally mention that I'm sure the Coreys are going for, like, a NATO codename thing for why the Underground calls the Pulsar-class the Storm-class, but I'm not sure I want to go why I don't think it has the desired effect. Ultimately, though, I still think it was just an error they managed to patch into something. Remember, they couldn't keep the Rocinante's class name straight.) This chapter is an odd one. Basically, Naomi imagines the battle being described to her by Bobbie in big italicised sections. I have a few thoughts about this. The immediate one is that it's oddly adventurous for these novels, bringing to mind the flashback chapter of Naomi's back in Nemesis Games. The next is that it's awkward to phrase the campaign in this passive, Wikipedia-esque fashion. And lastly, Bobbie was an infantry grunt. Would she know that much about prosecuting a system-wide fleet action? The first section concerns teaching the Laconians that they can't rely on reinforcements. A Pulsar-class destroyer, the Mammatus (yes, it's a type of cloud), comes through the gate for resupply and is immediately destroyed. Turns out, six ships can hold the gate and blind anyone coming through it with radio signals and light. It's a little odd because this is essentially what Laconia did, apparently, to stop anyone from looking in back in Persepolis Rising and I guess they didn't just deactivate the system they had there but dismantled it. As a result, it appears that no one outside Laconia has any idea the system is under attack. But neither does anyone on Laconia appear concerned about this? Naomi is on the burn for "days" with no ill effects beyond achey knees. Naomi splits her ships and her Donnagers. The Whirlwind holds position; the Pulsars give chase to the orbit of the gas giant and no further. The second section concerns teaching the Laconians that... they have one system to resupply from whereas the rebels have 1300. The rebels seem to have no issue replacing their torpedoes and supplies, able to essentially waste hundreds of torpedoes just to show that they can. It's a bit of an over simplification (what, can all those systems build torpedoes? Can you effortlessly bring transports in through the gates?) and also, I think, forgets that Laconia is an industrial powerhouse. They might only need the one. You might not actually be able to harm their logistics. No mention is made of interdicting ships carrying imports, you know? What I'm saying is, given that Laconia has appeared to be entirely self-sufficient, and I don't think Duarte suddenly had them rely on imports in the past few years given the talk about Laconia being planned to be the capital world of the future, I'm not sure if it'd even be possible to starve them. This also plays into what's been noted (twice now) about the Laconian system. There are only four real points of interest. The gate, Laconia itself, a mining facility and a science post. We can assume those latter two aren't of strategic importance, so, all Laconia needs to worry about defending is the planet itself. If you can't starve them, and you can't force them to move out of their defensive posture, then what can you do? It turns out the Laconians really hate the Gathering Storm and won't risk moving the Whirlwind while it's part of Naomi's core group. So, Jillian takes the Storm out. The third paragraph is where the resistance starts throwing things at Laconia. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 44 posted:Not just long-range missiles, but rocks. Cheap, deadly. Every ship in the group sending nukes and accelerated titanium rods and holds full of gravel into intersecting orbits. Some moved fast, some would take months to arrive at Laconia—which was a message in itself about how long the underground was prepared to draw out the fight. Nothing targeted major population centers, but there was no way for Laconia to know that for sure. (And if you're throwing rocks designed to land months away, what do you do when Laconia surrenders the next day?) The other thing is... why on Earth would you pull this tactic when your goal is to make the Whirlwind abandon Laconia? It's the best asset they have. If you're throwing rocks and God-rods and nukes at the planet, then there's no way they'd pull their fleet-killing-dozens-of-railguns-and hundreds-of-launchers flagship away. It's also our first mention of casualties on the resistance side, "a handful", including a "private security company stealth ship two generations out of date" which is one of those brief mentions that feels like it complicates the worldbuilding. The Laconians destroy a ship when it tries to surrender and, poo poo, why wouldn't they? They think you're trying to kill their planet and everyone on it! There's bringing Laconia to the table, and then there's putting them into an existential conflict mindset. Somehow, I don't think the Coreys are arguing that the best way to end a war is to prosecute it as ruthlessly and atrocitiously as possible. And over what scale of time is this? The way its set out makes me think its only days long, I don't think a timeframe is set for the siege, but the longer it goes on raises the question of why none of the hundreds of Laconian warships notice. I've seen some people say it goes for months. Naomi's goal is to set a trap using one of her Donnagers, the Bellerophon. It fakes engine trouble, and "a quarter" of Naomi's forces move in to make it seem legitimate, including the Storm. Honestly, one thing I'm feeling about this chapter is that it in no way feels like Naomi has mustered four-hundred ships. The same names keep coming up. It feels more like, I don't know, a few dozen. Which would be fine, wouldn't require any changes beyond adjusting some numbers. The trap is so the Rocinante and its escort vessels, which are hiding close to the sun and spraying water over their hulls to keep them from baking alive, can sweep in and take out the platforms when the Whirlwind takes the bait. It's a bit odd that the Laconians don't appear to be monitoring the Rocinante. Surely you'd keep one eye on the last-known position of the resistance's most well-known ship. Couldn't they pick up on all the transmissions going in and out from Naomi to the rest of the fleet? Would they not notice that it went and hid near the sun and never emerged? The water thing can work in theory, by the way, but my understanding is that it'd require a lot of water (and, presumably, the resistance isn't sending big water tankers toward the sun.) Anyway, because the book needs to wrap up soon, the Whirlwind heads out to snap up the Donnager-class bait. Another few groups distract the Laconian destroyers, and then Naomi sends in the Rocinante with her personal flotilla, burning hard for the construction platforms, timing it so the Whirlwind is too far away to turn back and stop them before they reach Laconia. Again, Naomi goes under a "punishing" burn for hours. The four ships are able to shoot down all the incoming Laconian torpedoes without issue. The Whirlwind turns back, but it's too far to do much other than fling torpedoes that are hours away. Naomi tells her entire fleet to flee for the gate -- last one there gets Dutchman'd, I guess? (I also have no idea of the distances and speeds. How long would it take the Rocinante to burn from the Laconian star to Laconia itself? Things like that. The books have basically trained me to keep these things in mind, but here's it's honestly no different to 'Naomi plots a dangerous subspace jump into Laconia's atmosphere.') The Laconian railguns open up, and the Roci and escorts dodge them. Remember how in Babylon's Ashes, the Laconian railgun tech was well in advance of anything anyone else had? Firing further and faster and the only way to beat it was basically saturate it with chaff? It doesn't feel like it here. The Rocinante doesn't even take a hit (nor does its companion vessels) and, like, you kind of know it won't. I feel like tension needs degrees of failure. It can't just be 'one hit, game over.' Like, you've got four-hundred ships involved with this fleet. Bolster Naomi's numbers to something more like twenty, and have a bunch of them get knocked out as they close in. It feels strange that the Laconian defense network can't bring down four ships. That said, an interesting development punctuates the end of this chapter. Ian picks up a transmission from the surface of Laconia. It's... Amos' coded evacuation message. Chapter Forty-Five: Teresa Oddly, my Kindle skipped this chapter when I read through to the end of Tiamat's Wrath a few days ago. Which makes it kind of funny that you can go from 44 to 46 without really noticing a problem. In fact, I think it's better to do so. Without this chapter, 46 has a degree of tension. When we hit 46, I think I'll talk about how multi-POV stories can complicate storytelling without necessarily improving it. The Mammatus died two days before Teresa's birthday. Her birthday is more a political event than a celebration for her. Teresa gives a speech where she mentions that her mother died when she was young. I wonder -- have we seen or heard from many mothers in these novels? There's Anna and her wife, Holden's parents... but I feel like a fair few characters have dead (or just not mentioned) moms and/or absent/divorced wives. Miller had a wife we know nothing about. Prax's wife was mean. We heard a lot about Bobbie's dad but not much about her mom (if anything.) Clarissa's dad was Jules-Pierre Mao, but I don't think we heard about her mom at all... During the party, Teresa asks Elvi if the Falcon is flyable. Elvi says, no, it got basically destroyed during the slow zone incident. Besides, it's not as if any of the resistance fleet will get close to the planet. Teresa does not seem to know why Cortazar has disappeared, but she knows she can't use Elvi and the Falcon to escape Laconia. Days pass, then weeks. Over a sweet rice breakfast, Ilich mentions that "that great huge ship of theirs" like it isn't one of three, like it isn't a thirty year-old battleship, is suffering technical issues and they'll send the Whirlwind to kill it. No one really wonders why the resistance is concentrating the bulk of their forces, including all three battleships, in one spot for the Whirlwind to sweep the table. Ilich says it's an emotional response, not a tactical one.Trejo calls Ilich in for a tactical meeting. When he's gone, Teresa goes through the tactical reports: that's odd, the battleship has repaired itself, and the enemy fleet is running for the gate. Except for the four ships heading straight for Laconia. Teresa thinks they're coming to hit the State Building. Teresa formulates a plan. She leaves Muskrat behind and then goes to speak with Holden. The guards aren't sure about it. Teresa says she's here to question him about the assault under Trejo's orders. Teresa orders one of the guards out of the cell, and then takes the shock prod from the other. Holden's like, whoa, you don't need that, and Teresa promptly shocks the guard. Teresa begins stripping off his uniform while Holden's all what the gently caress. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 45 posted:“Your people are coming. Your old ship. The whole invasion was a ruse get them close.”
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Feb 12, 2024 03:42
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I had a lot of spare time today. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapters 46 - Epilogue On the surface of Laconia, many truths are revealed. Chapter Forty-Six: Elvi Over some days, Elvi goes through Cortazar's files. It appears that Cortazar has been up to no good, underplaying risk and operating off best-guess understandings. She thinks Cortazar was jealous of all the things Duarte was experiencing directly, such as not needing to sleep. His decision to kill Teresa is there in his notes, but something astounds Elvi. It appears that Holden put him up to it. She discovers this prior to Teresa's birthday party, and can't understand why. 'Holden's argument correct?' Cortazar has written. Elvi discusses it with Fayez: if Cortazar killed Teresa, it might destabilize the empire. But then why did Holden warn them about his own plot? Perhaps, Elvi thinks, he had second thoughts. Fayez and Elvi discuss leaving aboard the Falcon, but figure they'd get shot down before getting far. This leads us to Theresa's birthday party, and it feels like the start of a trend that becomes really overbearing in the final novel: the authors showing us a scene that has already happened without really adding anything new to it. That said, this one is reasonable: it establishes that the Falcon is, in fact, operable and they lied as they thought that Theresa was testing them for Trejo. It's partially why I didn't notice that I'd somehow skipped over Chapter 45. See, there's this thing about plotting and tension and pacing. It isn't just what you show, but what you don't show. And I think Chapter 45 is, overall, a chapter that hurts Chapter 46. By showing us Holden in one story (Teresa), it hurts the tension of him in the other (Elvi). It's weeks after the birthday party. Holden has escaped. The Rocinante is approaching the planet. Ilich is in a panic and Trejo is busy coordinating the defense. Fayez thinks Holden is off to kill Teresa, so, they go off to find her and stop him. Teresa's rooms are empty, but they free Muskrat, and then follow the dog into the wilderness. They find Holden and Teresa. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 46 posted:“Holden,” Elvi gasped. Now that she was slowing down, her side hurt like someone was stabbing her. “Holden, stop. Don’t do this. You don’t have to do this.” Elvi tells Holden to let her go. Holden's like, uh, what, she's the one who has to let me go. Teresa tells everyone to shut up and that they have to leave. She explains that she's leaving Laconia -- she's using Holden to get aboard his ship and then they're flying away. Elvi says Holden tried to get her killed. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 46 posted:“No,” Holden said. “That wasn’t about Teresa. That was about you. Hey, Fayez.” Holden explains his plan. Tiamat's Wrath, chapter 46 posted:“This has all been about you,” Holden said. “Literally from the minute I found out about the alien rip-in-space thing that showed up on the Tempest, I’ve been trying to get Cortázar out and you in his place. All this?” He gestured at the now-quiet sky. “I don’t know anything about it. I haven’t been in touch with anybody. None of it’s been me.” That said, I like it as a demonstration of how much Holden has changed since the first few novels. But I genuinely think it would've been better had it come down on one side of the fence: Holden actually wants to kill Teresa, or Holden genuinely wants to save her from Cortazar. I think either of those would say more about Holden, and be a bit more bold, than this half-and-half puppetmaster situation. Does it go back to the writers not wanting to impugn Holden? Maybe. Elvi thinks Holden betrayed her and is responsible for all the bad things that've happened to her. Elvi thinks about leaving aboard the Rocinante, but figures she has to stay behind to go through the data. She tells him to go. Chapter Forty-Seven: Naomi Naomi orders Alex to ignore the beacon and take out the platforms first. The Rocinante and its escorts begin to slow down. Laconia is defended by five weapon platforms and, much like the slow zone, any approach to the planet is covered by three of them. The platforms are basically invisible, which means Naomi can't return fire on them. Not that the platforms do much with all these advantages, anyway. Naomi's escorts break off to strike the construction platforms, splitting up to hit them all in one pass. Naomi locks on the platforms, too. Hitting those platforms is all that matters. One of the escorts, the Cassius, gets taken out. The Roci keeps dodging the railguns and shooting down torpedoes. The Rocinante puts a railgun shot into one of the construction platforms, and blows it apart. Well, that was easy. I vaguely recall something about these protomolecule builder structures being built to last anything time and space could throw at them. Railguns start firing from the surface, weapons that Naomi had no idea about, but they can't hit the Rocinante either. The Rocinante knocks out the final construction platform with one shot, but this is the one which makes antimatter so it erupts in a massive explosion. There's a part of me that feels like there was a desire to avoid a Death Star situation where the plucky rebels hit the weak spot for massive damage, although that'd probably make more sense than just having these ancient structures built by ageless intelligences fall victim to a metal rod accelerated at sufficient velocity. Also, didn't the antimatter explosion earlier give everyone horrific radiation sickness that only kept them alive because the Storm had great new armor and they all got into the medbay immediately, and even then they burnt through all their meds? Anyway, they knock out all the orbital defences nearby so they have a thirty minute window. The Rocinante got clipped by some debris but is still able to go into atmosphere. They descend toward Laconia's surface. Chapter Forty-Eight: Teresa Teresa and Holden trek through the wilderness. Teresa mentions it was where she met Amos. She wonders if she or Holden will catch hypothermia. Holden apologizes for pushing Cortazar into trying to kill her and tells her it wasn't personal -- that it wasn't supposed to get her hurt. He had to push a wedge between Duarte and Cortazar and she was the only thing that he could use to do it. Holden implies he learned to do what he did by watching Avasarala. He says he's sorry for what he did, but not repentant. It's a nice character moment. A cart shows up carrying Ilich and two guards. Ilich orders Holden to put his hands up and Teresa to get in the cart. Holden complies, Teresa does not. Ilich flips out. Oh, you'll get in the cart he says, after a brief rant, or he'll shoot Muskrat. A shot rings out, and one of Ilich's guards drops. Amos burts out of the shadows, looking much like one of the repaired children. Ilich shoots him but accomplishes nothing. Amos kills Ilich. "Hey, Cap," he says. "You look like poo poo." Amos has been tracking Ilich and finally got a chance to kill him which, as he puts it, is just evening the score. Heh. The Rocinante lands. Teresa recognizes it as a "fast-attack frigate" with patchwork armor. Alex greets them and everyone boards the ship, including Muskrat whom Amos carries aboard. Teresa doesn't even bother reciting her 'I give you the prisoner, you give me passage out of here' spiel. When she sees Naomi, she only mentions her as a "beautiful older woman with curly white hair" which is odd because has Teresa ever seen a Belter before? The Rocinante lifts off. But, as they leave the atmosphere, an alarm goes off -- they've taken too long, and the Voice of the Whirlwind has them painted. Chapter Forty-Nine: Naomi Interesting, while we've been told Muskrat is a Labrador, this is our first indication of what color Muskrat is -- black. It threw me for a moment because I figured Muskrat was a yellow Lab. Well, I'd actually forgotten Muskrat was a Labrador and was picturing something closer to a Golden Retriever. Still! The Rocinante leaves Laconia behind, and the Whirlwind is in range. It's more than capable of wiping the Rocinante out. Admiral Gujarat tells them to drop core, deactivate their weapons, and stand by for boarding. They can do it in thirty seconds or be destroyed. Teresa answers for the crew of the Rocinante, telling Admiral Gujarat to stand down. She says she's aboard the Rocinante at the request of her father. Naomi silently asks Holden if that's true and he just shrugs Belterishly. Teresa says she's not giving out the pass phrase to indicate she's under duress, so, she's fine. Gujurat says she has orders from Trejo and Teresa is like, yeah, his last name is Trejo, and mine is Duarte. The Whirlwind lets them go, and Jim just says it's been a very weird day. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 49 posted:“We thought you were dead,” Naomi said as she stepped into the lift. The Rocinante heads for the gate. Someone figures out Teresa must not be on the Rocinante at her father's request because the Whirlwind fires torpedoes, but they all get shot down. Naomi isn't sure what will replace the Laconian system of rule. There won't be a second Medina, but maybe there'll be a network of comm relays that will, uh, tell people the chances of going Dutchman before they decide to make their transit. In an echo of the first novel, Naomi thinks that if you give people the right information, they'll be able to make the right decisions on their own. (Now, what if you told them that using the gates were provoking the Goths...) Naomi has a meal of white kibble and chats with Teresa. Naomi likes her but Teresa wants to go somewhere else, she doesn't want to be aboard the Roci. Tiamat's Wrath, Chapter 49 posted:She didn’t put her uneaten bowl in the recycler, so when Naomi was finished with her own meal, she cleaned up after both of them, then walked down the corridor to her cabin. Naomi catches up with Jim who is recovering from a workout. They discuss Teresa -- she doesn't want to say, but they can't really let her go. Maybe they can find a relative of Duarte's to take her in. Holden is like, hey, I think I was listening to a little version of Avasarala in my head and Naomi's like, hey, I know the feeling. Naomi asks Holden if he'll be okay. Holden says he played a long, lovely game but won. And since that means he gets to wake up next to her, he's feeling perfect. Chapter Fifty: Elvi Elvi is working through the propaganda. Laconia says they drove back the separatists and had saved the construction platforms, rebuilding them in a secret location, even though it's obvious they're just a bunch of junk in orbit. I always find these bald-faced lies evil empires tell in sci-fi to be kind of interesting. Because they never feel real, they're this over simplification. Elvi goes to see Admiral Trejo. Trejo says that Ilich is dead. Elvi doesn't care -- she's consumed with resentment for Duarte, Trejo, and Holden. "Too bad," she says. Trejo mentions that the construction platforms were what drew Duarte to Laconia in the first place. There was even a ship built in one of them, which would confirm the Proteus as being alien-made, I think. Trejo is like, hey, without those platforms, we can't project any power outside this system. Figuring out how to rebuild them is Elvi's new priority. Elvi is like, what, over figuring out what happened to Duarte, to what's going on with the Goths? Elvi refuses, and says her first priority is figuring out what's going on with the space diamond in the Adro system. Trejo reminds her they're in a war. Elvi advises him to stop being in a war because they have bigger problems. He can arrest her if she wants, or he can let her go solve their biggest problem. Elvi heads out and heads down to the labs. She orders them to shut down the Pen -- the creepy place where the Laconians harvest protomolecule from living subjects. They'll refuse to accept any more prisoners and only take people who consent to it. This feels like a big moment, yet we've seen nothing of the Pen in this novel. Sure, the Catalyst was mentioned back in Chapter One, but it never entered Elvi's thoughts again and it feels like it was forgotten for the rest of the novel. Then, Elvi opens Cara and Xan's cage and asks them to help her. Epilogue: Holden Holden's in the autodoc. He's getting a bunch of meds. The only thing he's missing from his time on Laconia is a single tooth but it's already growing back in. Naomi mentions they'll need crew members to replace Bobbie and Clarissa. Holden says he's going to go head for the flight deck. Before that, he goes to find Amos. He talks with him. Amos looks like Amos, ignoring the grey skin and black eyes, and he sounds like Amos. We get a great little exchange. Tiamat's Wrath, Epilogue posted:“Yeah,” Holden said. “About that.” He hesitated. He didn’t know how to ask if the thing in front of him was really Amos anymore. Tiamat's Wrath, Epilogue posted:“Those things that Duarte pissed off? The ones that ate Medina?” And on that ominous note, Tiamat's Wrath comes to a close. And while it's amusing to see Amos' true to form response to philosophical enquiry, it does leave one wondering... Is that Amos, or an alien construct made from his corpse running Amos.exe? The dark gods are awakening, Laconia is in shambles... The stage is set for the final novel.
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Feb 13, 2024 10:20
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