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May I  that they actually pushed the allusion that hard, and then just had them outright talk about the allusion in the story itself, just to make it that much more obvious? Subtlety is not the authors' strong point.
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Oct 30, 2022 09:42
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Kchama posted:May I Yeah, it's a bit on the nose. Especially when Marco is such an uninteresting character. I've mentioned before that Naomi's chapters are the weakest part of Nemesis Games, and I stand by it. While I've said before that it's because the book has had to establish and develop a story based on facts that'd never even been foreshadowed, ones that arguably contradict the hints we've had of Naomi's background in the previous books, perhaps the real weakness stems from Marco. Were Marco Inaros an interesting character, you could forgive the authors their shoehorning him into Naomi's narrative. The problem is Marco just kind of sucks. He has no depth -- we see all the domestic abuser and none of the charismatic demagogue. It leaves you with this feeling of why does anyone follow this guy? Like, okay, he has some perceptive points about the fate of the Belters (leading to perhaps the darkest joke in the series in the final novel, surely unintentional) but there'd be others with the same ideas. Keon Alexander gives him some raw, cult leader-esque charisma in the TV series, and he's one of the series' stellar casting moments. In the books, though, he just comes across as this surly, jealous dumbass who lucked into becoming the biggest mass murderer in humanity's history. Admittedly, that's somewhat the point. Marco is being backed up by hardline elements of the Martian military -- it's likely he would not have gotten as far as he did without them. He's an idiot tiger that's been let loose to keep everyone distracted. But I think that's an example of 'hanging the lampshade.' I think we're very obviously supposed to know that Marco is one of the 'not Alexanders' yet wouldn't the story be more interesting if we weren't sure? Admittedly, there could be an element of wondering who the actual Alexander analogue is once you read Fred's little tale, but I'm not sure that really works. Sure, Duarte is a character, but he's been a one-and-done character. Maybe that's the point. It doesn't feel like "if Marco isn't Alexander, then who is?" as much as it's just "Marco isn't Alexander." Anyway, the nice thing about Marco compared to some of the other Expanse antagonists is that he is a fairly minimal presence. Like, he should be more of one, but if he's just going to be 'Naomi's abusive ex' every time he appears then, well, whatever. I feel like the Coreys wanted this idea of, like, Naomi being the only one who knows the dark truth behind Marco's charismatic, revolutionary veneer -- yet they just can't write it. But part of me feels that's being too generous, too. Maybe Marco is just another Expanse antagonist from the mould of all the others: an idiot who thinks he's smarter than he is. Perhaps the biggest difference between him and Dresden, Nguyen, Murtry, and Ashford is that he's actually gotten to have a few victories. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Nov 7, 2022 |
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Nov 7, 2022 08:57
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Nemesis Games, Chapters 37 - 39 Alex and Bobbie drive toward the Sun (but not like Icarus), Amos drives toward Baltimore and one last job with Erich, and Naomi drives herself to the edge. Chapter Thirty-Seven: Alex Alex and Bobbie are escaping from the battle. Four of the Martian ships attacking Captain Choudhary's unnamed Donnager-class have abandoned the attack to chase down the Razorback, leaving two ships to confront the main force. The Razorback has seventy-two missiles left in its defensive cloud. Alex is two days from safety. That is, if nothing goes wrong. The pursuing ships throw out some PDC fire at extreme range, seemingly in the hope of scoring a wild hit on the Razorback or its missile escorts than anything else. Alex notes that the drive plumes of their attackers are "as bright as seven Venuses in an Earth twilight" and, as I've said before, I feel it's an odd simile for Alex, born on Mars and a proud Martian, to make. Bobbie and Alex have a very Expansian chat: Nemesis Games, Chapter 37 posted:Bobbie sighed. “You know, a thousand of those stars out there are ours now. That’s like, what? Three ten-thousandths of a percent of our galaxy? That’s what we’re fighting over.” Bobbie and Alex talk about their family. Bobbie asks Alex if he ever worries about his kid. Alex says he doesn't have one. Bobbie is like, huh, I thought you did? Remember, Avasarala told her as much back in Caliban's War. Alex just goes 'nope' without anything like, 'Bobbie, tarnation, what're you talkin' about me having some whippersnapper for?' They change topics. Alex is concerned about Naomi. When the cavalry comes riding in, the Pella will come under attack with her still aboard. Avasarala calls up Bobbie and asks for all the data she has on the missing Martian ships because two dozen more Martian warships are burning hard for the Ring. Everything from a ship called the Barkeith (hasn't been mentioned before, presumably a battleship) to a resupply flotilla. She says Smith says he's looking into it, which means he knows what it's doing or he doesn't and is in the middle a coup. Avasarala wants to know if the ships are ones that were sold to Marco's forces, or if they're actual MCRN ships with actual MCRN crews. She asks the Martian Prime Minister to give Bobbie authority to reveal anything she might know, otherwise she'll have him "turning tricks out of a prefab shed on the side of the highway." Smith says the ships were not listed as missing and they're all Martian crewed. But that was what people said about the fake escort ships that attacked them. Until he can do a complete audit of the navy, he has no idea what's happening. Bobbie says she has the data from her investigation, a list of the people in charge of the missing material. Three hours later, the Pella sends out a transmission. It's Marco Inaros and he's basically laying out his manifesto. I won't quote the whole thing as it's sizable, so, in bullet points...
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Amos Amos and Clarissa are about a day out from the Baltimore arcology. The Earth is getting worse -- plants are starting to die and packs of dogs are roaming about and making trouble. Heading north, they come across a small group heading south. Nemesis Games, Chapter 38 posted:Amos smiled amiably, and it occurred to him this was exactly the kind of situation that had taught him how to smile like that. They reach the coast and, due to the mud, have to give up the bikes. People are watching them, but no one tries to stop them. The tsunami cleared up everything at two storeys and below. The arcology still has power, however. Clarissa asks Amos what they'll do if his friend isn't there. Amos doesn't know. Erich ends up letting Amos up. Nemesis Games, Chapter 38 posted:“Well. Amos. You’re looking more alive than I’d expected.” After a brief preamble, Amos tells Erich that he has a job -- well, Clariss has a job -- and they need assistance. There's a rich people's enclave with its own launching pad out on Rattlesnake Island and they're going to grab something that can get them to Luna. Erich asks what he gets out of it and Amos is like, uh, you get out of here. To Erich, it sounds like Russian roulette where, if he wins, he gets to keep his bullet. If he leaves Baltimore, he leaves everything behind, and his whole life has been about making something of himself. But, in the end, he's in. Chapter Thirty-Nine: Naomi Naomi thinks she only has hours or minutes to put her plan into action. Strangely enough, people are now wearing new Free Navy uniforms. And she's not almost-crew anymore but an actual prisoner. It's been "days" since the last chapter. She could get an EVA suit in a couple of minutes, providing she had a crowbar, get out the Pella's airlock, providing she had no escorts, and to the Chetzemoka before anyone figures out she's gone. Problem is, she doesn't have a crowbar and her escorts aren't letting her out of their sight anymore. Avasarala is talking on a screen. Secretary-General Gao is dead. A reporter calls them "casualties of the war" and Avasarala admonishes him -- they're murders. She doesn't consider Marco to be a fleet admiral anymore than she's the Buddha. Isn't it an act of war? No, Avasarala says. After all, war is between governments. Who does Marco represent? Who elected him? Who appointed him? He's only claimed to speak for the whole of the Belt after the attack. There'll be no war. Just an arrest, processing, and a trial. Cyn takes it about as well as you might expect, furiously claiming -- in Belter patois -- that Avasarala needs her throat cut and to learn a lesson. I don't really like the usage of Belter patois. While I don't think it's quite incomprehensible, I don't think it really adds anything. Naomi says killing Avasarala wouldn't make a difference -- someone else would sit in her chair and say what she's saying. Cyn disagrees, saying it's individuals who make history. The idea of big social movements is a retrospective argument. Cyn reveals that someone on Mars traded for the ships and told them where to find supplies, and he didn't do it caring about the economy, debt, or income inequality. He was just some guy making a deal. Cyn is upse that Naomi is abandoning Filip. He doesn't care much about what's between her and Marco, but he sees Naomi as taking the coward's way out. He suggests she join the Free Navy. Naomi wonders when it'll all end. Cyn says it won't, not if they do it right. Back in her cabin, Naomi tries to think up some way to get to the Chetzemoka. She tries to think how Alex, Amos, and Jim would do it, but nothing comes to her. She suspects she'll kill herself soon. Then, she meets with Filip. Filip thinks she betrayed them by warning her Earther boyfriend. Not only had she left him behind, she'd left him behind for an Earther, and betrayed her own kind. Naomi says it's not about Belters and inners, but about people who want more violence and those who want less. She suggests that while she'll never reconcile with his father, Filip can still redeem himself and reconcile with her. Filip promptly calls her "an Earth-loving whore" and a "camp follower" (wow, antiquated term... guess Marco taught him that from the Big Book of Alexander the Great) and that she'll sleep her way into anybody's bed who seems important. Nemesis Games, Chapter 39 posted:She folded her hands. Everything he said was so wrong it didn’t even sting. It was like he was calling her a terrier. All she could think of it was, These are the last words you’re going to say to your mother. You will regret them for the rest of your life. Now, admittedly, Naomi's in a pretty dark place in these chapters. But there's dark, and then there's dark. In fairness to the Coreys, I assume this line is more of a reference to Naomi's escape plan going off without much of a hitch and never seeing Filip again than it is what I outlined above. Still, I'd say that is the most shocking thing I've read in this series so far. Naomi just tells him he deserved better parents.
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Nov 8, 2022 05:16
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Nemesis Games, Chapters 40 - 42 Chapter Forty - Amos Amos and Peaches, along with Erich and ten of his people, head off toward Lake Winnipesaukee. They fly over New York City, where the seawall has been shattered, and a number of skyscrapers have come down. As they fly over Boston, someone shoots a missile at them. They land and make their way over to the rich enclave by rafts. It's night time and it is pitch black -- no stars, no moon, no light pollution. Kinda terrifying to think about. They hit up one of the boathouses, which Amos notes is as big as a basic housing block for a thousand people. A dog barks at them, a wolfhound that Amos figures is genetic engineers. He tells it not to start any trouble and Erich admonishes him as the dog doesn't talk. Amos thinks maybe the rich people put a translator in its brain. Erich is like. "They can't do that... Can they?" to Clarissa. She picked this one as it's part of an estate that she used to visit on sleep overs, so, she knows the lock codes to get in. Unfortunately, their hangar is empty. The next hangar is empty, too. And the third is filled with people. About fifty, and they shout at Amos and his people to stay back. Turns out they're employees of one of the families, the Quartermans, but Amos tells them they're not coming back for them. Clarissa recognizes one of them, a man named Stokes, and he tells her that there's one ship left, the Zhang Guo. Thing is, the security of the estate are still around, too, and the two of them show up and start threatening Erich. Pinkwater security guys, funnily enough, who've been mentioned off-handedly in a few novels and featured slightly in Caliban's War as the guys who help Holden out on Ganymede. Amos suggests they put their guns down because his people have more guns and bigger guns than they do. Tribes come up again. As Hat and his partner slowly lowered their guns to the pavement, Amos raised his voice again. “So Peaches, these guys? They go from being protectors of this big tribe with what’s-his-name and them inside the tribe to being protectors of their own little tribe, and those folks on the outside of it. It’s all about who’s in and who’s out.” Amos punches out the leader of the security team, then breaks his knee. Amos says that, ultimately, your tribe isn't any bigger than six or seven people. He loots the guy's pockets and tosses it all into the lake. Amos tells the second guy that he can go tell his other friends about how he only hosed up the guy who threatened his friend, and if no one fucks with him then he won't gently caress with them. Flat out tells him to not bring his "tribe" around here. Yeah, Coreys, we get it. When Amos gets back inside, he tells Clarissa that he figures they'll be off the planet by the time the security goes come back. But, Stokes says: about that, there's a problem... The problem is, the Zhang Guo can't fly. It's twice as big as the Rocinante and rather gaudy. An orbit shuttle and a confession of decadence all in one. Stokes and his people don't know how to fix it, but Amos thinks he can manage it. Amos hopes it's something minor like a bad coupler, but he won't know until he inspects it. Clarissa will help out. Erich will run diagnostics. Clarissa asks Amos if, when they leave, whether they'll take the people with them. Yep, Amos says. Clarissa is like, because they're our tribe? poo poo no, Amos says. His tribe is the crew of the Rocinante, maybe Clarissa and Erich, and a dead woman. He doesn't give a poo poo if Stokes and his people die. But saving them seems like something Holden would do. Chapter Forty-One - Naomi Naomi's in the gym and she's being watched by Sarta, one of Marco's people. She's come up with a plan to not just remove one EVA suit, which people would figure out, but corrupt the data about the suits in the inventory. But, wait, they'd quickly figure it out if it was only suit related. What if she filled the system with phantom suits? An alarm goes off-- Sorry, a Klaxon goes off. I haven't talked about this before, but I'm going to do it now because this is a Naomi chapter and there's often not much to talk about. Every single time an alarm goes off in these books, it's always a Klaxon -- yes, capital-K. It's odd because a. are people really using specific branded Klaxons with the awooga-awooga noise in the far future? and b. I'm fairly sure Klaxon has been a genericized trademark for some time. Either way, it's shown up in every single novel so far. The Pella is preparing to go zero gravity. Naomi says she's going to go to the bathroom but, when Sarta realizes she's going to run for it, and Naomi kicks him as the Pella goes zero-gee. She's only got a few minutes to get to the Chetzemoka and, for all of her thoughts and planning, there's absolutely no time to do anything fancy or even get a suit. Naomi gets into an airlock, finds the decompression kit. There's a suit in the airlock but she doesn't take it, reasoning that they'd know where she'd gone -- and it's only fifty meters, she can make it. She begins to hyperventilate, and braces to jump. Cyn, Sarta, and Filip show up and Naomi, still seeming maybe not far off being suicidal, thinks Good. Perfect. Let them see. Cyn, crying and barging into the airlock, begs Naomi not to do it. She does it and Cyn is sucked out and Naomi leaps for the Chetzemoka. She thinks she can make it fifteen seconds unaided. At ten seconds, she uses the kit to oxygenate her blood. At thirteen, she slams into the Chetzemoka and clambers into the airlock. She makes it in, if only barely, and as the Pella pulls away, Naomi passes out. She wakes up at some point later, and she's not doing so well. She's coughing up fluid and her hands are thick and swollen. Her skin feels sunburnt. All of her joints and vertebrae ache. The Chetzemoka is under way somewhere. She stumbles into the ship proper. There's EVA suits but no air bottles. There's a voice somewhere, but she isn't sure where or who. She tries to access various systems -- navigation, repair, comms -- but they're all locked out. And then she realizes that the voice she's hearing is her own. Nemesis Games, Chapter 41 posted:“This is Naomi Nagata of the Rocinante. If you get this message, please retransmit. Tell James Holden I am in distress. Comm is not responding. I have no nav control. Please retransmit.” Chapter Forty-two: Holden Holden is hanging out by the coffee machine with Foster, the other captain. Mister Mfume, the pilot who Holden notes isn't Alex, shows up and he offers him coffee and mildly reprimands him for being late for his shift. Foster asks for tea and Holden says he's never tried it because he always had access to coffee. For as much as Holden's one-note coffee joke/trait is overplayed, I really like this one -- it tells us a little bit about Holden's character. Either way, he's getting used to having the new crew aboard. He heads up to ops where Fred is listening to Marco Inaros. Holden asks Fred if he knows much about him. Fred says Inaros was on his short list of possible responsible parties when it came to the attack on Earth -- but only in the top five. Jeez, who are the other four? Fred says Inaros leads a "splinter group of high-poverty Belters." That's to say, the "kind of people who live in leaky ship and post screeds about taxation being theft." Like... poverty tourists, or something? They're poor by choice? I'm not sure what Fred (and the Coreys) are getting at here. Belters who are choosing to be poor and dressing it up as a political act? Either way, it brings to mind what I've said about Inaros previously -- he's not allowed to have a point. Likewise, Fred says he doesn't see Inaros' hand in it, not really. He's charismatic and smart (but is he, though?) and he certainly acts like he's in charge. Fred calls him a "first-rate narcissist and sadist" and someone who'd never share power... yet this level of organization and coordination seems beyond his capabilities. Inaros, Fred says, is happy to be the big fish in a small pond. This is beyond his usual scale. If he's taking credit for it, Fred says, then he has a handler. But Fred says it could just be sour grapes, that he got outplayed by someone who's smarter than him. Holden wonders why Naomi would be on his ship. Fred is like, well, she's a Belter and he knows she grew up with Inaros and his crew. He figures they may be friends or enemies. Fred tells Holden that Naomi was a grown woman when they met and she had a past. Holden, of course, doesn't bring up anything we've learned about Naomi in the first four books. I feel like this is a huge missed opportunity for some character development on Holden's part, especially given how he and Fred have been during this book -- was his relationship with Naomi built on a lie? Does it matter? But, as I've said, I don't think you can reconcile the two Naomis so I think the authors are probably right to avoid it. But still. Anyway, Holden just says that Naomi was on the Cant for a reason, but that he'd hoped if she was part of some terrorist cabal she would've told him. Fred tells Holden he's being entitled for knowing about his girlfriend's past but, hopefully, she'll be able to ask her soon. Fred thinks Inaros will negotiate soon as he's good at tactics, not strategy. Holden disagrees. Fred goes on to say that Marco's trying to stop people using the gates. Well, Mars and Earth have both failed at it. If Marco thinks he can do it with force, Fred thinks it'll fail. He's pretty sure Marco, being a Belter, doesn't understand fragility -- specifically, Earth fragility. To sum it up, Fred thinks Belters have faith in technology, that artificial ecosystems can be maintained indefinitely. If we can grow food on Ganymede, we don't ned Earth. But Ganymede needs a ton of work to make that happen, and a lot of the technology and bio-materials to do it came from Earth. Once he's got it wrong, Fred says... But he doesn't have it wrong, Holden counters. Maybe the ecological stuff, sure, but not the Belt. Ilus was a terrible place and people still went there. Everyone's abandoning Mars. There's too much pressure behind it for Marco to bottle up. Marco might be doomed, sure, but it doesn't mean he's wrong. Holden continues: okay, sure, you were doing something great with Medina Station, and he's sure the people living and working there will be fine, but what about everyone else? All the asteroid prospectors and water haulers, all the poor Belters who are barely surviving. That's who Marco is talking to, Holden figures, and he's right because no one, not even Fred, is pretending to care about these people. If there's no future for those people, then no wonder they support Marco, they have nothing to lose. That's... kinda interesting for the writers to have Holden say. More perceptive than I'd expect from the series so far. It does actually lead somewhere, kinda. Anyway, this makes Fred angry but luckily someone calls up to give Holden an update on the Razorback. The Free Navy ships have broken off now that the UN forces are about twelve hours away. The Pella is with the bulk of the Free Navy forces, but the Chetzemoka is turning away and will be within a million klicks of the Rocinante soon. And it's broadcasting a message, the distress call from Naomi. Holden orders Mfume to set a course for the Chetzemoka, over Fred's protests, who thinks it may be a trap. He'll be careful. He'll get Alex to go check out another mystery ship, since it went so well the last time... Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 10:55 on Nov 13, 2022 |
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Nov 13, 2022 05:30
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Nemesis Games, Chapters 43 - 49 Everything comes together at the Chetzemoka; Amos and pals escape from the dying Earth. Chapter Forty-Three: Alex Alex is catching up on, you guessed it, the news about Earth. Apparently, a lot of is contradictory. Four billion are dead, or maybe seven. The ash is beginning to thin and settle, or it won't do so for years. Flora and fauna will recover when humanity dies out, or the whole ecosystem will collapse. It's like that throughout the rest of the system, too. Three more colony ships had been boarded and turned back, or maybe seven had been and their crews were all spaced. Ceres Station is working with the Free Navy openly, or is too scared to resist. Meanwhile, the Pella and its attending flotilla are trying a new tactic -- using their comm lasers (isn't it always the comm lasers?) to target particular missiles and cause them to burn out. The Free Navy seems to have been hoping for a chain reaction to take them all out at once, but has settled for taking the missiles out one by one, but then they peel off and abandon the pursuit. The Martian Prime Minister is trying to figure out what's going on back on Mars -- no luck. Soon after, Alex gets the message from Holden to go check out the Chetzemoka. Bobbie says they have a mission to get the Prime Minister to Luna. Alex says they logged a distress call and are obligated to stop (again, I like how this story is repeating beats from Leviathan Wakes) and he has orders from his captain. Bobbie says it could be a trap -- anything from a railgun to a ship packed full of soldiers, hoping to get the Rocinante, Holden, and Fred. Don't think about the odds, Bobbie says, think about the stakes. Prime Minister Smith walks in and goes, here's another idea, we may very well be leaving the only witness to the stuff on the Pella behind. Smith tells Alex to change course and alert the UN ships. Alex calls up Holden and tells him he's on his way. Chapter Forty-Four: Naomi The Chetzemoka is heading along at one-gee but that's enough to put Naomi under a fair amount of stress and pain given her Belter physiology. Weird, wonder why she never got on those drugs that Cibola Burn seemed to imply were pretty widely available... She's tried to figure something out but the Chetzemoka is locked down and all the EVA suits have been stripped of air bottles. It's... interesting to me how the ship is described. It feels like instead of being a stripped-down decoy ship, it's described more like one intended to torture someone who climbed aboard. EVA suits? Still present, but the suit batteries and oxygen bottles are gone. Emergency rations, gone. Toolboxes are missing from the machine ship, and so are the racks and drawers and LEDs. Crash couches are still there, but been slashed open and rendered unusable. The air recycler still runs, but without filters. I don't know, I feel like the Free Navy would've taken more, especially the suits and such. Naomi figures the Chetzemoka isn't a ship anymore, but a bomb. She needs to figure out a way to warn people not to approach and then disable the bomb. She's able to salvage stuff from the EVA suits to make a tool kit and she's using the small amount of air the suits can store (five minutes) to get between the hulls and sabotage some of the systems. After thirty one sorties, she manages to sabotage the comm system. She turns the looped message into "This is Naomi Nagata of the Rocinante. If you get this message, please retransmit. Tell James Holden I am in control. Please retransmit." At seventy-one sorties, however, Naomi is dehydrated and pretty out of it. She's got the ship tumbling due to a bad maneuvering thruster and her altered message. But it's not enough, because Alex is hailing her from the Razorback. She has to stop them from getting close enough to get caught in the blast. She heads for the airlock. Chapter Forty-Five: Amos Back on Earth, Amos and Clarissa are working on the Zhang Guo. It's at about 89% power. Amos has got the Zhang Guo somewhat skyworthy (not spaceworthy?) but a lot of it has entailed fixing up the poor attempts from the servants to fix the ship. Amos goes to take a walk. Stokes, one of the servants, asks Amos whether one of his people can go to the Silas residence to find her husband. Amos is like, look, we're leaving in forty-five minutes, be here or get left behind. Amos says, genuinely, that he doesn't care if they live or die and Stokes interprets it as gallows humor. Erich reports the only thing wrong with the ship is the water recycler, which both agree isn't a problem because they won't be in the ship long enough to need it. One of Erich's people reports that three trucks are on the way and Erich will get the reactor running while the ship is loaded. Amos and his people will hold the perimeter against the Pinkwater mercenaries. And that one lady might need to rethink finding her husband. There's a brief gunfight. Surprisingly brief, in fact. They load up into the ship and take off. There's not nearly enough couches for everyone, so, pretty much everyone has to lie down on the deck as they take off. Amos is the only one still conscious as they reach orbit. Erich's settled into being a pilot, and Amos is like, hey, stop doing the movie talk. It's a nice little moment between the two. Nemesis Games, Chapter 45 posted:They were all silent for a moment, and then Erich switched the view, pulling it slowly down. Below them, Earth was a smear of white and of gray. Where the continents should have burned in the permanent fire of lights, there were only a scattering of dim, dull glowing points. The seas were hidden, and the land. A funeral shroud was over the planet, and they all knew what was happening beneath it. Nemesis Games, Chapter 45 posted:Amos opened the channel. “Hey there, Luna Base. Name’s Amos Burton. Didn’t mean to step on anybody’s toes. If you’ve got someone up there named Chrissie Avasarala, pretty sure she’ll vouch for me.” Chapter Forty-Six: Alex We hop over to Alex who has just finished hailing the Chetzemoka. He and Bobbie are wondering about the state of the ship -- with how badly it's spinning, can they even match course? He's not sure. Holden sends calls them up. Alex tells him that it's a very weird definition of being in control, like the ship is chasing its own tail. The Razorback can't actually dock airlock to airlock, but they can sit in the middle of the circle and send someone over in an EVA suit to see what's up. Not a great idea but maybe the only workable one. Holden thinks the message is weird. Well, Fred did. He had Holden check it out and Fred thinks the message may have been a fake one, yet one that was modified during the broadcast. Something's up, but Holden isn't sure what. Alex thinks the ship might not be filled with bad guys, but someone's trying to do something. There's a bit of an awkward bit where Holden mentions he's worried Naomi is crushed up against the wall and Alex explains to Holden, the former Earth navy officer and private frigate/corvette commanding officer, that things don't work like that. Then, Bobbie calls for Alex. Someone has jumped out of the ship. It's odd how both Bobbie and Alex immediately start calling her 'she' despite not knowing anything about them. But whoever they are, they're making hand signals: danger, do not approach, explosion hazard, low air, four minutes. Between that, and realizing they were both calling her she, they figure it's Naomi. Alex isn't sure they can reach Naomi before she runs out of air or runs into the path of the circling Chetzemoka. Bobbie has a plan though. She'll use her power armor to lock herself to one of the missiles, which Alex will fire off toward Naomi's location. Yeah, she's going to surf a missile in. Chapter Forty-Seven: Naomi Naomi's floating out in space and has pretty much accepted her death. It'd be nice to live longer, she thinks, but she only has four minutes of air left. Filip is still with Marco. Cyn is dead. What if she had stayed? Could it have been an okay life? Would Jim have set off the bomb? It isn't, according to Naomi, the first time she's thrown herself out of an airlock. There was a previous attempt, back on Ceres. She's not "just Knuckles" anymore, which makes me again think how odd it is that Sam used it as a nickname. Bobbie slams into Naomi. Naomi tries to fight against it but, of course, fails and realizes it's Bobbie. She tells Bobbie that the ship is a bomb and Bobbie begins to get them out of there. Nemesis Games, Chapter 47 posted:“Are you in immediate medical distress?” Nemesis Games, Chapter 47 posted:Because I tried to give it to my son instead of a childhood. Because I spent my own money to get it, and it turned into a trap for me and the people I love. Because everything about that ship was a mistake. Chapter Forty-Eight: Holden Naomi's in the medical bay with Holden. The Razorback is docked to the Rocinante. Holden realizes that the heady relief he's feeling, and the terrible gnawing anxiety and fear before, was just like how Naomi felt when he'd gone off and done all sorts of dumb poo poo -- the Agatha King, the Ring Station, heading down to Ilus. "Wow," he says. "I'm kind of an rear end in a top hat." Holden babbles about some of the stuff that happened on Tycho. Naomi thinks he had an affair with Monica, which Holden denies. He's curious about what happened with Naomi, but only if she's prepared to tell him. I feel like this moment would have more resonance if we'd seen them discuss this in some of the earlier novels. Holden heads down to the mess hall to get Naomi some tea. Everyone's there and Bobbie is wearing a... too-small jumpsuit with Tachi on the back. Holden tells Alex no more leave, and that this was the worst vacation ever. No word from Amos yet, and he's not on any dead lists. Up on the ops deck, Monica's giving an interview, talking about how the OPA and the Free Navy aren't aligned. In fact, it's a good thing the Free Navy exists -- now all the crazy radicals are in that and not in the OPA. Fred to Holden that Inaros and his ships haven't reached Saturn yet, but piracy in the outer planets is spiking. Lots of colony ships are being picked off. Fred's curious about anything Alex and Bobbie may have learned about Prime Minister Smith when they were on the Razorback but Holden says they weren't spying. Fred thinks that there's a breakdown in the naval command structure. At the very least, someone's been selling ordnance to Inaros. In return for the protomolecule. Fred's kept quiet on that but he'll have to tell Avasarala and Smith once they're on Luna. Still, he'd really like to know what's with those Martian ships burning for the gate. Whether they're Mars or Inaros or someone else. He wants to talk to Naomi but Holden says only when she's recovered a bit more. Holden's not sure what the Rocinante can do now. How much of the system still functions for a private corvette? Will anyone pay to take cargo out to Jupiter? Will any colony ships need an escort? Will he need to tangle with the Free Navy? Does Inaros really want to just stop the colonists, or is there something else going on? Then, Alex calls up. They've got some good news from Luna. Chapter Forty-Nine: Amos On Luna, Chrisjen Avasarala wants to know why the gently caress she can't board the Zhang Guo. Amos says she can't do it without a warrant. Avasarala is like, hey, that's not your loving ship. Amos attributes it to salvage. Avasarala says breaking into a private hangar and driving out in someone's ship is not salvage, but theft. Amos says it was looking pretty busted up, sooo... The issue is that Amos knows that the people remaining on the ship -- Erich, Clarissa, and the team from Baltimore -- are all criminals with fake identities or not in the UN system at all. Nemesis Games, Chapter 49 posted:“Here’s the thing,” Amos said. “If you did go in there, you might feel like you had to do something. And then I might feel like I had to do something. And then we’d all be doing things, and we’d all wind up having a worse day, just in general.” Nemesis Games, Chapter 49 posted:“You got it, Chrissie.” Erich is pretty impressed that Amos knows the leader of Earth so well that he can ask for favors from her, so to speak. Amos basically says they met each other when they got in over their head and she helped them out. Erich has no idea what to do now, how to run a criminal empire now that Baltimore's gone. Maybe he'll head somewhere and start a new niche. Or Amos can take the lead... Amos rejects it and heads down to the machine ship where he finds Clarissa sitting at one of the workbenches. She's managed to get a salvaged hand terminal working and she passes it to Amos. He tells her it's not salvage. Clarissa says she won't go back to the Pit. Amos says there's no Pit to back to. So, what can she do? She can't go on the Rocinante, on account of the 'attempted to kill Holden' thing. Amos figures they can talk it through, work it out. That, and there's nowhere else for her to go. Earth has much bigger problems than one murderer. Maybe she'd be right to worry if none of that had happened, yet it has. It's all a new game, the queen of all churns.
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Nov 15, 2022 02:10
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Nemesis Games, Chapters 50 - Epilogue All's well that ends well -- but what did end up happening to those missing ships? Chapter Fifty: Alex Amos is telling Alex about how they used bicycles to get around on Earth. "You're looking for post-apocalyptic transportation, bikes are the way to go." I don't really like this line. It reads less like Amos talking about why he went with a bicycle in the immediate aftermath of an ELE and more like someone describing why you'd go with a bicycle in a hypothetical. But then again, if I have one issue with the Amos chapters, it's that he doesn't always sound like Amos. Anyway, the crew has been put up in a suite on Luna. There's this element that strikes me as utterly bizarre, though. Again, kinda like it's not actually something you'd see in the universe. Something the Coreys came up with as 'funny' without thinking 'but would you really see something like that here?' Nemesis Games, Chapter 50 posted:A wall screen bent around the curve of the room, set to an idealized lunar landscape that was more photogenic than the real one. Every now and then, an animated “alien” girl would pop out from behind a rock, look surprised, and dart away again. Once they're back on the Rocinante, the crate opens up and Alex is stunned to see "Clarissa Mao, psychopath and murderer." Amos claps her on the shoulder and says, see, told you it wouldn't be a problem. Later, Alex is telling Amos that he has to tell Holden. Amos says he's gonna. Alex says tell him now, she's on the ship. Amos is like, so? she was on our ship on the way back from the slow zone. Holden comes by but Amos says he'll tell him once the dog and pony show is done. The dog and pony show is a meeting with Avasarala. Earth is hosed. The Martian navy has "shattered into tiny little pieces" -- treason. Inaros is off playing pirate around the moons of Jupiter and he's set his narrative of wah wah wah oppression. Holden says Marco is not wrong and that they need to stop Belters from falling in with the Free Navy. Avasarala says that'd be a lot easier if they hadn't blown up the largest functioning ecosystem in the system. It'll make handing out food to Belters an impossible issue, both politically and practically. Amos says that they won't be satisfied with handouts. The United Nations is going to put together a task force to take on the Free Navy. She doesn't want Holden to lead, just his cooperation. Avasarala wants to know how Inaros "a third-rate gang leader" managed to beat them. Naomi appears and said he didn't. He didn't kill Fred. He didn't kill Smith. He didn't take Tycho (or destroy it.) And he didn't get the Rocinante or her. She says that Marco only counts his wins. Avasarala brings up that he got a protomolecule sample, which Naomi had no idea about. Naomi agrees to help them with immunity from prosecution -- for her, the crew of the Rocinante, and Filip. Nope, not for dropping rocks on Earth, Avasarala says, but otherwise agrees. The crew go off to get some drinks. Amos brings up the crew immunity thing. Naomi says it wasn't for him. Amos is like, yeah, but I was thinking of bringing on an apprentice. "That's a good idea," Holden says. "Did you have someone in mind?" It is funny, really. That Holden's anxiety about needing more crew ends up with this outcome. Chapter Fifty-One: Naomi Smash cut to: "Hell no," Jim says when they were alone in the suite. "Absolutely no." But, Naomi points out, he did tell Amos he'd think about it. Holden's not happy about it, but he didn't want to ruin the reunion moment. Speaking of, Alex, Amos and Bobbie are off getting Earth food, but Naomi is upset there won't be any red kibble (  ). Naomi mentions Amos isn't afraid of monsters, with the implication that Amos knew something of her past.Holden brings up that Clarissa killed a lot of people. Not just the bomb on the Seung Un, but she looked her technician friend in the eyes and killed him, too. Naomi likens this discussion to what she'd done: she'd killed people with a bomb on the Augustin Gamarra, she killed Cyn. She abandoned Filip and let him think she'd killed herself. Holden isn't saying Clarissa should die. Like, he gets Amos is joking about shooting her if she ever goes back to prison. Naomi says he's not joking. Still, Holden doesn't want her to die or be locked up, he just isn't sure he can trust her on their ship. Someone who did the things she did, Holden says, doesn't just change. Oof, laying it on a bit thick here, Coreys. I do appreciate the parallels between Naomi and Clarissa, but given the whole artificiality of Naomi's new backstory, I don't really like it. It's not so much 'Wow, Naomi and Clarissa are so similar' but more 'We turned Naomi into Clarissa so we could have a scene like this.' Nemesis Games, Chapter 51 posted:“So,” she said. “We need to talk.” Nemesis Games, Chapter 51 posted:She remembered the first time they’d met, lifetimes ago back on the Canterbury. How he’d radiated charm and certainty and how much she’d hated it at first. How much she’d hated him for being too much like Marco. And then how much she’d come to love him for not being like him at all. Naomi tells Jim everything. She'd been Marco's lover, had his son, had been involved in the unintentional sabotage of inner ships, had attempted suicide, and everything. She talks about killing Cyn and defying Marco. I like this scene, it's cute and nice and well-earned. Nemesis Games, Chapter 51 posted:She remembered saying that Jim was all the things he only pretended to be, wondered whether she should tell that part of the story, and then did. Jim looked horrified and then laughed. Nemesis Games, Chapter 51 posted:They lost track of their stories and spent ten minutes getting the timeline back: the Chetzemoka left the Pella after Jim and Fred had already departed from Tycho, or before? He’d told Alex to go investigate the Pau Kant before the rocks dropped on Earth? Oh right. Okay. She got it now. Naomi falls asleep before they can bring up Clarissa Mao. She wakes up at some point and Jim is asleep next to her. Cyn is still dead, Filip is still abandoned (for the second time), and Marco is still angry and hateful -- but she's more at peace with it now. She ends up studying the footage of the vanishing ring ships. Why had Marco done it? And why had he done it so far before his coup? Like, the sheer risk of doctoring the logs out of Medina would've been a massive risk. Was it something to do with the particular systems? Naomi goes through the data and isn't sure. She gets some coffee and discusses things with Bobbie and the crew. So, the missing ships come in two flavors: military ships from Mars that are now in Free Navy hands, and colony ships that went missing on the way out to their new systems. Seventy percent or so of the Free Navy ships match to Martian records, but not one of the colony ships has a match anywhere. There's no pattern in the systems they were heading to, nor what they were carrying them. So, Naomi says, something in the ring gates is eating ships. Epilogue: Sauveterre On that ominous note, we hit the epilogue. We're with Captain Sauveterre of the MCRN Barkeith, a -- you guessed it -- Donnager-class battleship in the vicinity of Medina Station. Sauveterre is listening to a freighter captain demanding a shipment from Medina Station and it reads to me, honestly, like a reference to Mass Effect's Refund Guy subplot. The Barkeith is part of "Duarte's fleet" and they're waiting for clearance to travel through the rings. They could just shoot their way through, but there's a risk with the Ring station and they are "not ready for that to awaken again. Not yet." Sauveterre is having Lieutenant Babbage listen to the dispute between the freighter captain and Medina Station to demonstrate what happens when there's a breakdown in discipline. Turns out Babbage was wearing a bracelet, a gift from her family, that was against regulation. Babbage says if they're going to bring up MCRN regulations, then perhaps there are bigger ones being broken -- such as being part of this mission at all. Sauveterre says: Nemesis Games, Epilogue posted:“We are in a time of flux, that’s true. With the elected government failing its obligations, Admiral Duarte has taken authority and responsibility for the fleet on himself. I, following the chain of command, am carrying out his orders. You, also following the chain of command, are expected to follow mine. This is an independent initiative of the fleet. It’s not a free-for-all.” Nemesis Games, Epilogue posted:He could see understanding beginning to dawn in her eyes. Only beginning to, though. Humanity was so flawed. Not just her, but everyone. Half the population was below average intelligence. Half below average dedication. Average adherence to duty. The cruel law of statistics. It was astounding that as a race they’d managed as much as they had. Sauveterre reports that they'll make the preparations. The Barkeith gets clearance from Medina to proceed through the rings. Sauveterre doesn't care what the Belters do -- by the time they realize they're fighting against history, Duarte will have everything in place. Interestingly, Sauveterre comments that war had long since stopped being about controlling territory, it'd been about police actions against the Belt. A sign that all my kvetching about Martian ships and their supposed superiority was an indication of this? I'm not sure, but maybe. Anyway, Sauveterre says that the Free Navy had been inevitable, but people like Duarte had prevented it from coalescing. Now, they've let it out. The Free Navy won't last long, it only needs to keep Mars and Earth busy for a little while. They head toward the "Laconia gate." A Klaxon sounds. And, as navigation officer Keller counts down the ring transit: three, two... Nemesis Games, Epilogue posted:Keller fell apart. No, that wasn’t right. Keller was where she had been, sitting as she had been sitting. But she was a cloud now. All of them were clouds. Sauveterre held up his hands. He could see them so perfectly: the ridges of his fingertips, the spaces between the molecules, the swirl and flow of his blood beneath them. He could see the molecules in the air – nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide all bouncing madly against each other, obscuring some more profound space between them. A vacuum that penetrated them all. Sauveterre orders to turn the ship about, and he can see the "waves of his words" and how they intersect with "the cries of fear and a blaring Klaxon." Then: Nemesis Games, Epilogue posted:He turned and saw something move. Something else, not another cloud like himself, like the others, like matter. Something solid but obscured by the emptiness of material like a shape in the fog. Many shapes, neither light nor dark, but some other thing, some third side of that coin, passing through the spaces between the spaces. Rushing toward them. Toward him.
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Nov 16, 2022 00:49
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I think the Nemesis Games ending scene is one of the best things in the whole series. We coulda used a lot more like it, but instead they just sort of…repeat it a bunch? It’s about the most we ever get from the Goths in terms of face to ‘face’ contact. It’s funny that this dipshit admiral Sauveterre bemoans how half of humanity is by definition below average intelligence when that transparently doesn’t have to be true. Below median, sure, but if I have 500 1 dollar bills and 1 500 dollar bills half of my population isn’t below average value, nearly 100% is. I guess this is clever foreshadowing that Laconia dumb.
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Nov 16, 2022 02:09
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General Battuta posted:I think the Nemesis Games ending scene is one of the best things in the whole series. We coulda used a lot more like it, but instead they just sort of…repeat it a bunch? It’s about the most we ever get from the Goths in terms of face to ‘face’ contact. It really is. It's part of why Babylon's Ashes is seen as the worst (but not entirely, the book is just poor and boring) as it just doesn't build on it. It's probably the chapter that's stuck with me the most since first reading it across the whole series. It's also something that the TV series just botches and while I'd put some of that down to budget, the whole Martian plotline in Season 5 is virtually absent...Despite being foreshadowed much more in the earlier seasons than it ever was in the books.
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Nov 16, 2022 03:04
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Nemesis Games comes to a close and we are now halfway through the series. As I said at the start of the coverage of the novel, it's pretty much regarded as the best in the series and sometimes called the "Empire Strikes Back" of the series. While I don't think Nemesis Games is that astounding, I think it's fair to say that it's the best in the series -- it's definitely the best so far. The big reason for this is that the construction of the novel, with its four plotlines in very different locales, forces the Coreys to rein in their worst impulses. The previous novels have generally been hobbled by their multiple perspective character approach -- stories just kind of amble along before they stop to wait for another character to catch up or get in position or so on. Each character in Nemesis Games is basically doing their own thing in their own section of the universe, and this means the Coreys have to get to the point. That said, we probably could've done with less 'character watches the news' bits. There's a bit more confidence in the writing, too. The little bit with Amos on the freighter and the shakedown gang is basically a self-contained episode. Naomi's chapter with the disjointed time sequencing is a bit of a mess, but it's also an unusual step given how ho-hum the authors tend to be when it comes to playing with presentation. There's a definite attempt to give the characters some psychological depth, such as Holden recognizing he's an rear end in a top hat, Alex recognizing he's an rear end in a top hat, Amos recognizing he's a-- hang on, wait a second... And then there's Naomi's suicide stuff which, while I won't call it good, certainly isn't bad. I do like how the novel which feels like a filler episode ends up with the greatest terrorist attack in the history of all humanity, and I like that it's treated with the apocalyptic awe that it deserves. Earth is screwed. Potentially, the whole Solar system is screwed. A man with an ax to grind was given the mother of all nukes and he was stupid enough to use it, no matter how intentions. One of the more baffling decisions of the TV adaptation is the bizarre downplaying of the attack, turning it from the apocalypse into, well, a 9/11 metaphor. Unfortunately, the novel is dogged by two things. The first is Marco. We're told he's this canny, smart demagogue -- but all we see is a guy who feels like he's reciting lines from a Buzzfeed article entitled If Your Husband Says These Ten Things, Watch Out! Likewise, Naomi's angst with Filip just doesn't land that well because there's not a single moment where Filip is anything but a surly Marco devotee. There's certainly an element in Naomi's story where there's this sense of futility, that Filip (and Marco) were both too far gone, that she was stupid to even try, but it leaves Naomi's whole section of the story feeling pointless. Still, it's a credit to the adaptation what the actors did with the content. More on that in the next post. The second is, of course, Naomi's new backstory. I won't repeat myself because I've gone over it a few times, but it robs a lot of the moments in Nemesis Games of their impact. Had Naomi talked somewhat about Filip, then meeting him as this surly terrorist might've had some oomph to it and better sold the sense of futility. Had we heard about Marco in the wings as this great leader, then there might be some power to seeing the petulant man behind the mask. Instead, all we see of both are their bad sides and they're introduced so quickly and ham-fistedly that, in my opinion, the reader is unlikely to care much about them anyway. While the Alex stuff is not fantastic, I enjoyed the Martian planetside intrigue far more than the Razorback stuff. I kind of wish the novel spent more time on Mars itself, giving us a street-level view into what was going on there. Much like how Amos has to get off a dying Earth, can Alex and Bobbie escape a dying Mars? If Nemesis Games has a problem, it's that it all begins to run out of steam sometime around the Rocinante reactor hack getting fixed in Chapter 33, about 66% of the way into the novel. Alex and Bobbie's Razorback Time is just kind of meh and it feels like even the writers aren't very interested in it, just kind of re-hashing beats from Leviathan Wakes. Naomi's prisoner stuff on the Pella just isn't compelling, and her story was already the weakest part -- removing all of her agency makes it worse. Holden is reduced to being a passenger on his own taxi mission. Amos feels like he's the only guy to maintain his initial story with any sense of energy. Perhaps because his story is basically off in its own conceptual space, not needing to cross over with the big climax. Problem is, and I don't know if the Coreys have ever talked about their writing process, I get the impression that they start from the climax and work their way backwards. "Bobbie rides a missile to rescue Naomi from a flying bomb designed to use her as bait for Jim." On the one hand, this gives you a nice feeling of all the plots coming together at the end. On the other, it can feel really artificial. Like, how did Bobbie get there? On the Razorback. Who was driving? Alex. Well, Bobbie is on Mars, how'd they get there together? Alex was on Mars, too. Why was he on Mars? To see his ex-wife. Wait, hang on, the Razorback is unarmed, so, where does the missile come from? Well, the Martians gave it to them. Why? Because they're carrying the Martian Prime Minister off a battleship. How'd they end up there? The battleship rescued them. Why? Because Holden sent them out to go look at a strange rock. Why would the Martians give them a missile? Because they can use it to protect the Razorback. Why do they need to be protected? Because the battleship was attacked and boarded. Like, it's all okay, don't get me wrong. It's that narrative product that General Battuta mentioned. Z to Y to X. But I feel like if you constructed these stories from A to B to C, starting at their initial points, you'd end up with ones that're very different to the ones we got. Amos' story is, perhaps, the only one that feels organic like that. He goes to Earth because his maternal figure (and I might be being kind with that designation, if you've read The Churn) died. Someone throws a rock at Earth. Amos needs to get out of there before things get any worse. There's also some other Coreyian oddities. For all the words they put in, I don't think they ever tell us what mods Clarissa has, or why, or what they do. While we see what they do and can maybe remember from Book 3, it's still an interesting omission given how often they'll happily mention things that don't directly impact the plot or characters. There's a few times where a character thinks "like it should be a metaphor for something." The continual use of Klaxons. I also don't particularly like that after Book 4, where Naomi went off on a harebrained scheme and ended up in prison for most of the book, her big part of Book 5 is to... go off on a harebrained scheme and end up in prison for most of the book. I also don't particularly care for Clarissa although, as mentioned, the irony of Holden wanting more crew and ending up with Clarissa is fun. That said, I do wonder how this novel would've been received without the epilogue chapter. As mentioned, it's one of the best chapters in the whole series and helps sell the idea that this book has a point to it, even if it didn't directly involve the main characters. The biggest mass murder event in history was just a cover-up for whatever's happening in the Laconia system. Where will this story lead? Well, the big problem is, it leads into Babylon's Ashes. What's worse than a book full of set up and promise? One that fails to follow up on any of it and wraps up the events of its predecessor with something that I think we can rightfully consider not far from a deus ex machina. But first, we're going to talk about how and why Season 5 of the TV series did a first for this thread -- turned out a series of episodes that may just be worse than the work it's based on. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Nov 16, 2022 |
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Nov 16, 2022 06:57
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Nemesis Games, Season 5, and Compounding Issues The fifth season of The Expanse TV adaptation consists of ten episodes. It's the second last season of the series and, as far as I'm concerned, the reason it was cancelled. It is the only season to be, I think, worse than the book it was based on -- or, perhaps, simply too different to compare. Season 6 is also a marked step down in quality, but Babylon's Ashes is so bad that virtually anything is a step up from it. I mentioned that Season 4 is where the cracks started to appear. Season 5 is when someone decides to take a sledgehammer to the foundations. Going into Season 5, there are a few differences between the books and their adaptation. The most obvious is that we were introduced to Marco and Filip back in Season 4, where not only do we see some of Marco's charisma but also his plan of striking Earth with asteroids. He is also responsible for the death of Klaus Ashford, a beloved character based on the not-beloved book character. This adds a particular amount of tension to the first few episodes of the series -- will the Rocinante crew stop the rocks, are they in danger? Additionally, Season 4 had a side plot about Bobbie getting wrapped up in the Martian exodus and becoming aware that there were bad actors within the government profiting off it all. And, in fact, if we go all the way back to Season 1, the very first episode had Avasarala discovering a Belter who was stealing Martian stealth tech. A clever little thing that you think is related to Protogen but is actually related to Marco Inaros. Likewise, Naomi was written more with the revelations of Season 5 in mind, even asking for Fred Johnson to try and find Filip and Mars pointing out her OPA connections in Season 1. The big thing, however, that separates the series from Nemesis Games is that there are two additional viewpoints. Avasarala and Camina Drummer have been pretty steady presences in the TV series. Essentially, this brings the perspectives in Nemesis Games from four to six -- fifty percent more! Nemesis Games was always going to be tricky as adapting it would require grappling with the fact that the characters are engaging in four separate plotlines which can't be easily condensed or combined. Adding in two more, because they could hardly chuck aside fan favorites like Avasarala and Drummer for an entire season, leaves it overstuffed. You can't throw them out but you can't really afford to include them, either. This is what I mean by the show being a victim of its own success. It's not so much a problem to bench Avasarala for a novel, give her a few nice cameos. But when you have Shohreh Aghdashloo waiting in the wings? As far as the adaptation itself goes, this is really difficult to sum up without writing thousands of words on it, so, I'll try to be as brief as possible. Like the seasons before it, Season 5 makes a lot of changes for the better, both big and small. We meet Filip as he's helping to conceal Marco's stealth rocks by destroying a UN science ship, for example, but not before Avasarala is able to figure out there are stealth asteroids out there -- but, due to her loss in power and influence as a consequence of the season previous, she's not able to do anything before it happens in Episode 3. When it comes to how the story begins on Tycho, it's Fred who tells Naomi where Filip is (building on what she asked him about in Season 1) and Naomi tells Holden something of her past before she goes. The stuff on Tycho is very similar, although Bull (yes, Bull) is involved, Sakai is a woman, and Fred Johnson dies in the coup. The Rocinante gives chase to the Zmeya but isn't able to stop them from somehow ditching the protomolecule sample on the sly (and it's pretty clever how it's done, I suppose.) Before he dies, Holden is also much more open with Fred about the danger of whatever killed the protomolecule builders. Holden's stuff isn't really so much a better version of his plot in Nemesis Games as it is a wholesale rewrite. But I think it's better at establishing the threat of a coup and its true goals, while spending zero time on the 'Marco's missing ships' red herring which, while somewhat entertaining in that sense, is a waste of time. In this version, Monica is abducted because she's following up rumors of someone searching for the protomolecule which Holden, in a scene reminiscent of the one from Caliban's War, blames on Fred. Amos' stuff is basically as it is in the novels -- he beats up people on the ship, he meets the ex, meets Erich, goes to Clarissa's prison, wanders through the wasteland, and steals a ship from a rich person's garage to escape. Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that they cast someone with a bad arm like Erich is described as having. Unfortunately, the guy they cast is far too soft and meek to be a believable kingpin like Erich, who always made me think of someone closer to Brian Posehn (yes, really.) Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, that's not the worst part of it. The worst part of it is this scene of Clarissa saving Amos with her mods. It's just bad. I'm not sure how anyone didn't see how bad it was at any point in production. Just having Clarissa blur in and some meaty SFX and then having the guy all busted up on the ground would be better. Otherwise, there's some minor changes but Amos' story basically proceeds as it does in the novel. Or does it? See, the problem with Amos's story relates to the attack on Earth. Something happened to it during development because where the novel is quite good at establishing how obviously terrible it is, the TV series wavers. In fact, it ends up with the problem of a lot of sci-fi where the numbers don't match the SFX. Characters quote impacts in terms of megatons whereas the fireballs we see are vast and all-consuming, apocalyptic enough to be seen from orbit and swat craft out of the skies from miles away. Then, in all the important, classified meetings Avasarala has about the attack, people discuss it like it was 9/11. Terrifying, sure, but not apocalyptic. A lot of the dialogue in those scenes feels like it was repurposed from something else with characters acting like it's more important for the UN not to overreact to a slap to the face than actually grappling with the damage to Earth, the fact that the planet is dying. While I can't recall if casualty numbers are mentioned, I'm pretty sure it's not the 'billions dead' as the books indicate. A lot of the time, it feels like an overcast day. This actually caused a bit of a concern in The Expanse fan community, with people wondering whether the attack on Earth, maybe the most memorable single event in the books to that point and one of the biggest drivers for what comes next, had been deliberately downgraded in scale and harm and what that meant for the story going forward. When questioned about it, the James SA Corey Twitter account (run by Ty Franck, I believe) claimed they didn't want to write "disaster porn" and got into weirdly belligerent Twitter arguments about it. Thing is, the reason why people were confused is that the Amos scenes did demonstrate how bad it was. In one more memorable (and horrifying) scene, Amos and Clarissa come across a nursing home where all the residents have been euthanized and it's treated as people knowing pretty immediately what's about to happen to the planet. But then the Avasarala scenes, with their low yields and calls not to act too rashly. To the claim of disaster porn, I think the only thing that needs to be said is you wrote this in the first place, Coreys. That, and admonishing your fans is a bad look when their hashtag campaign is the only reason your show continued -- they care about it and want it to be good! We'll take a quick aside to discuss Naomi's stuff. It's much better, mainly because Keon Alexander (Marco) and Jasai Chase Owens (Filip) have great grips on their characters. Owens looks like he could be the son of Naomi and Marco -- it's perfect casting. And Alexander is able to give Marco a sense of cult leader charisma and a frenzied joy in victory that conceals his fragile ego. Tipper (Naomi) is able to really sell Naomi's desperation, despair, and toughness. But even so, there's only so much you can push the material. Otherwise, it's much the same. Naomi goes to find Filip, saves Jim from the Rocinante exploding, gets locked up, kills Cyn (who is much more sympathetic) and escapes to the Chetzemoka where she's saved by Alex and Bobbie. Perhaps notably, Filip doesn't call his mother a whore, and that it's more a spur of the moment decision to bring her back to Marco than a trap on Marco's part. Still, I think you can criticize it for maybe having too many scenes of Naomi crying. The Free Navy side of things is also tied up with Drummer. I won't say much about it because Drummer's stuff is all basically pointless setup for Season 6. Basically, Drummer and her polycule Belter crew have relationship drama and pointless disputes about Marco, sucking up time that could be better used elsewhere in a season that was already too cramped. Its inability to give the arguments any teeth robs it of any point; it's outright bad. I really like Cara Gee and the character of Drummer, but this is clearly a case of needing to give the fan favorite something to do without actually having anything for her to do. There's even a battle between Marco's forces and the Rocinante which involves Drummer and whether she'll side with Marco or not and I'd forgotten it was there until browsing a wiki while proof-reading this to make sure I hadn't missed anything. Which, at last, brings us to Alex. This is where the biggest changes are, and they're odd ones. Alex has taken the Razorback to Mars to go see his wife and son. As mentioned in the novels, it's strange that Bobbie had it and hadn't sold it -- the TV series simply never gave it to her. The confrontation between Alex and his wife goes about how it does in the novel, but he also tries to connect with his son which goes pretty poorly. He ends up crossing paths with Bobbie, who is kind of dealing with her own poo poo -- her personal life is in tatters, she's unemployed, and she's chasing down the whole Martian black market thing -- and she basically tells him to get lost. They end up making amends, though. Bobbie mentions that she's investigating the smuggling ring for Avasarala as she, being in the UN, is the only one she can trust to not be a part of it. What Bobbie is worried about is that someone's smuggling stealth missiles and other scary first-strike tech. She thinks Admiral Sauveterre is involved as he's been signing off on some of the orders, and Alex offers to go talk with him. Alex goes to see Sauveterre who has been given Fred's speech about only needing to control the inside of the ring gate network to control all of them -- which makes Fred seem less power-hungry -- and foreshadows the Laconia thing. Alex tries to talk to him but Sauveterre basically tells him to gently caress off given that he's piloting a stolen Martian ship for an Earther -- haha, great! And also great, Sauveterre's pretty aide, Lieutenant Babbage, is willing to talk! But she is, of course, working for Sauveterre to find out what Alex knows. Over a few bottles of wine, Alex ends up basically blabbing everything he knows to Babbage, much like he did to Duarte. As it turns out, Duarte is entirely absent from this season, which is one of the strange choices given how they place his role on a nothing character and his importance to the later novels and just how well the novels handled it (and then how they introduce him in Season 6.) At the time, people in fact wondered if Babbage was going to inherit the Duarte role, his absence was that conspicuous, just as she had inherited something of his scene with Alex. All of this leads to Alex, not Bobbie, being attacked in his room and Bobbie being the one to save the day. They decide they need to follow the Barkeith (a supply ship in the adaptation, not a Donnager-class) to see if they can catch Sauveterre doing anything on the sly. Yes, really. In the Razorback, Bobbie and Alex end up tracking the Barkeith and realizing that Sauveterre is passing MCRN warships to the Free Navy. This is Episode 5 of 10. For the rest of the season, after a brief gunfight that seems to exist only to give Bobbie a reason to get into her power armor, Alex and Bobbie just... hang out in the Razorback set. The whole Martian plotline just... stops. Then, they hear Naomi's distress call and go pick her up in Episode 10 and Alex... Alex dies. He has a massive stroke when matching the Chetzemoka's path. His death is delivered with a freeze frame and some awkward CGI blood and zero fanfare, consideration or concern. Bull, of all people, is implied to be Rocinante's pilot come Season 6, as he piloted it during the Zmeya chase. This was not an organic change. For those of you who are unaware, Cas Anvar -- the actor who played Alex -- was accused of dozens of allegations of harassment and sexual assault in 2020, during the production of Season 5. Alcon Entertainment conducted an investigation and, while I don't think the findings were ever announced, it's pretty clear that they were not good for Anvar as they did not bring him back for Season 6. While most of the behavior had happened at cons and fan events, there were rumors that Anvar's behavior also extended to members of the production team. So, they wrote Alex out. The producers and writers, including the Coreys, insisted that they made no changes to the season as a result of the investigation -- this is a bald-faced lie. It's obvious enough given how slapdash the nature of his death is but there's conclusive proof where behind-the-scenes footage revealed Anvar being present for some of the party/formal scenes on Luna. Scenes after the Razorback rescue. So, at the very least, those scenes were reshot. However, I think it goes further than that. I think the entire Martian plotline was basically dropped and reshot, with Anvar and Frankie Adams (Bobbie) hauled in to do a few days of shooting in the Razorback set to disguise it. It can't be stressed how odd the Alex portion of Season 5 is (and the strangely terse delivery of some of Adams' lines in those scenes.) The Martian plotline terminates in Episode 5, then Alex and Bobbie sit in chairs until the former dies in Episode 10. Duarte, a major antagonist, goes unmentioned and the attack on the Prime Minister is relegated to a dubbed-in news report. Perhaps I'm wrong, but then I feel like half of Anvar and Adams' scrips entailed just sitting in chairs for five episodes which strikes me as being a bit of bad luck were you to look at the other characters and the stuff they were shooting. The decision to kill off Alex was the wrong one. However, I can see why the producers did it. Presumably, they wanted to send a message and, really, could make the argument that Alex is a nothing character. And it's true -- Season 6 actually benefits from putting Holden in the pilot's chair (again, the absence of Bull indicates it was not particularly forward-thinking as far as decisions go.) There are two issues with this. The first is that it forever ties The Expanse to Anvar's allegations. Every time someone hits 05x10, they're going to go 'Wait, what's with Alex's bizarre, cheap-looking death?' and they'll look it up and read up on the allegations and the victims and, in that sense, keep it in the public consciousness. I don't think that's necessarily the best way to handle allegations of that nature. Not for Anvar, but for the victims (and the other people who worked on the show, too.) The second is that Alex actually gets things to do in the last few books, things that can't easily be given to other characters. Writing Alex out in Season 5 only hurts the stories that will come after, where the crew is split up again and Alex is witness to some pretty major moments. And, without spoilers, you can't work around Alex's absence without making more significant changes. The Expanse TV series, which had been very faithful and arguably better than the books it was based on, now faced the problem of being more like an alternate universe. I don't think it's a surprise that Amazon pulled the plug on it, and I do think a lot of that decision stemmed from realizing the corner they'd backed themselves into by killing Alex for the sins of Cas Anvar. Basically, Alex should've been recast. Would that have saved the show? I don't know. Had Season 6 been the same, I think it would've been dicey regardless. As you can probably guess from the epilogue of Nemesis Games, the rogue Martian plotline goes on to have some significant importance to the last couple of books. But in the season where it should be coming to a head, it just vanishes. Despite being foreshadowed much more than the books ever did it. While I won't get too much into Season 6, all I'll say at this point is the way it handles Laconia and Duarte is very strange (heh) and frankly disappointing. Speaking of the epilogue, it features as the final scene of Season 5 -- the Barkeith goes through the ring and just as Babbage holds over her bracelet, everything gets weird. It's... okay. I couldn't find a clip on Youtube because, since the end of Season 6, someone's been pulling everything down. Basically, they do the best with what they could on the TV budget, I think, but it lacks entirely the feeling of dread, fear and even awe that you get from the novel. In a lot of ways, Season 5 is better than Nemesis Games. Killing Fred is a good decision. Holden's plotline is better. Naomi's stuff is elevated by the three main actors involved. But the season is overstuffed, the Earth attack feels like someone got cold feet, and the awkward removal of Alex and the bizarre dropping of the Laconia plotline seemingly as a consequence really harm it, and set the stage for the problems with Season 6. Honestly, short of not writing out Alex, I don't know how you could've salvaged the show. It'd been shot in the gut, and all that was left was for it to bleed out.
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Nov 16, 2022 10:23
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The description of this is very funny quote:Amos Burton, quite possibly the most unique character in sci-fi, ever. With a complex and thoughtfully created back story (something you'd never see in modern Star Trek/Wars for example) Amos has played a massive role in attracting new fans to the show over the seasons and rightfully so. The most unique character in science fiction! He's a gangster with a heart of gold! Except his heart of gold is, I don't know, other people who tell him what to do. gently caress you science fiction
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Nov 16, 2022 16:41
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General Battuta posted:The description of this is very funny It's funny because Amos is just, like, a Jack Reacher type. He could fit into any number of airport action thrillers. The gruff man of violence with keen 'good ol' boy' wisdom and a heart of gold, even if it's a little scratched up. He feels unique because he's an archetype you don't usually see in sci-fi. But I think Amos Burton's status as this unique, inspired character is definitely overplayed by the fandom. He's a fun character and Wes Chatham, an avid reader of the books, is able to get across a fair amount of Amos' mental state... but I'm not sure I'd call him complex.
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Nov 16, 2022 23:13
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So maybe I didn't absorb much but it feels like... Holden was largely superfluous to the plot. Alex and Bobby too. They were just there for setup, I guess. Naomi and Amos seemed like they were the most relevant to everything.
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Nov 17, 2022 04:50
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Book 6: Babylon's Ashes Babylon's Ashes, sixth book of The Expanse series, will be the true test of this Let's Read. There's really no way for me to sugarcoat this, so, I'll just come out and say it: I do not like Babylon's Ashes. I think it is a bad book. I think it is one of the worst books in a major series I've ever read. Even when I first read it, my one takeaway from it wasn't anything to do with the plot or characters or worldbuilding -- it was that I was pretty glad there were only three more books coming. Luckily, the book is merely an aberration. As a novel, Babylon's Ashes has all kinds of problems. There are two I'll leave it at initially. The first comes back to something I read about stories and perspective characters once. To paraphrase, it was that a perfectly designed story told perfectly only needs a single viewpoint character. A perfect book has one, but good books can still have more. After all, The Expanse books can have somewhere between two to four perspective characters or so and be generally okay, even if the pacing can be pretty awkward at times. Babylon's Ashes has NINETEEN. Nineteen characters spread across fifty-five chapters. Partially, I'll attribute this to a desire on the Corey team's part to explore the ramifications of the attack on Earth and the rise of the Free Navy. We hop all across the system and visit old characters like Dawes and Prax and Bobbie, but also a host of new ones. The bulk of the novel, however, is concerned with new protagonist but returning character Michio Pa, recurring protagonist Jim Holden, and Filip Inaros. The other problem, however, is that Babylon's Ashes is just an extended prologue for the real story that unfolds in books seven, eight, and nine. It's a book-length transitory episode and, boy, it feels like it. I'll go so far as to say that, during my first reading, it didn't at all feel like the authors liked or cared about the story they'd started in Nemesis Games. What they wanted was to wrap it up as quickly as possible so they could get to the 'interesting' stuff. And the ending! Well, we'll get to that. As mentioned at the end of Nemesis Games: what's worse than a book full of set up and promise? One that fails to follow up on any of it and botches the ending. This comes back to something I mentioned at the end of Abaddon's Gate. Book 3 is where the series was supposed to end, where was the story supposed to go? By Book 5 and 6, the Coreys have an idea, but they need to get the series in position for it, and the setup is just not a story that deserves two novels in the telling. But you can't really skip over it either (and even the beginning of Book 7 draws some criticism for a particular choice they make.) This is why the book has nineteen different perspective characters, basically -- to extend the word count and disguise just how thinly the plot is stretched out. There's so much I want to say, just from reading this novel once years ago, but I'll restrain myself. For now. I'm sure we'll get to sift through the ashes in due time. I'm curious to see if I find anything I like about this novel on the re-read, because I absolutely had nothing good to say about it the first time through. Babylon's Ashes is the nadir of the series. It can only go up from here. Prologue: Namono Luckily, the prologue is fairly neat. It's been three months since the attack on Earth and Namono can see some blue in the sky again. Namono is a returning character -- first featured in Abaddon's Gate, she's Pastor Anna's wife. Namono has been leaving in Abuja in Nigeria, about 3500km from the impact site of the first rock strike. Even so far away, the city had pretty severe damage. For now, she's waiting in a relief line for her week's rations with many others. Babylon's Ashes, Prologue posted:The international district had large Norwegian and Vietnamese enclaves, but no matter the shade of their skin or the texture of their hair, ash and misery had made a single tribe of them all. Namono gets a single ration pack. She argues that she has a wife and a daughter but, well, oats and rice can only grow so fast. She begins the trek home, fantasizing about beating up thieves and then the relief food guy (as she thinks he was threatening her family) and then "forgets" to go check on Old Gino, despite promising Anna. As much as I like seeing Namono again, and I think it's a great concept to have someone like her be our look into how Earth is going, her prologue is bogged down by retrospective storytelling and introspection. And I like introspection! But this feels like someone went, hey, wouldn't that be a great idea -- and then had to stretch it out to a 3000 word prologue. When Namono gets home, she's greeted by her daughter, Nami, while Anna is recuperating in the bedroom, having been reading War and Peace. It's mentioned that Anna was injured in the attack, her right knee crushed. She's doing better but still can't stand. Anna mentions that while Namono was out, there was another alert about an incoming rock. So, Marco's still throwing asteroids, or maybe he threw a lot and they've taken a while to get to Earth. But this one, at least, the UN managed to intercept and shoot down. Anna asks Namono if she went to see Old Gino. Namono can't bring herself to lie and say she forgot. While Anna says it's important to pull together, Namono think it's pointless because another rock could be about to hit them. Or all the hydroponics might fail. Or the water recyclers. Babylon's Ashes, Prologue posted:But even that wouldn’t be failure for Anna. Not as long as they were all good and kind to each other. If they helped carry each other gently into the grave, Anna would feel she was following her calling. Wait, how old is Nami? Abaddon's Gate explicitly stated that she was almost two. Babylon's Ashes has put her in her "awkward adolescent" phase. So, maybe twelve, thirteen? But I got curious and a brief check of some of the people who've put together an Expanse timeline or otherwise tried to figure out how much time passes between books seem to indicate that she might be more like nine or eleven. It fits either way, I suppose. As an aside, it appears that -- based on The Expanse RPG -- these books start in 2350. It's somewhat interesting that despite what Amos said about people turning on each other very quickly (and, honestly, a general suspicion that it'd be the case in the wake of such a calamity), that the streets of Abuja don't really have any sign of violence or crime. Sure, Namono thinks it's dangerous for a child to be out, but she brings her with her regardless. As they walk, Nami spies a shooting star through the debris in the atmosphere. Namono knows it's probably the debris of the rock the UN military managed to intercept. Namono reflects that: Babylon's Ashes, Prologue posted:Either way, shooting stars had been something beautiful once. Something innocent. They would not be again. Not for her. Not for anyone on Earth. Every bright smear was a whisper of death. The hiss of a bullet. A reminder as clear as a voice. All of this can end, and you cannot stop it. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 04:49 on Nov 22, 2022 |
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Nov 20, 2022 12:20
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Babylon's Ashes, Chapters 1 - 4 The first four chapters of Babylon's Ashes introduce us to our three 'primary' perspective characters (Michio Pa, Filip Inaros, Jim Holden) and our first of the minor ones, a Belter worker on Medina Station named Salis. Chapter One: Pa Michio Pa, captain of the Free Navy ship Connaught, is currently in a dispute with the captain of the Hornblower. Still not a fan of these ship names. I think calling a ship the Hornblower is only a step removed from calling it the Kirk or Picard -- the reference is just too obvious. And Connaught is an odd, old Anglicisation of the Irish word Connacht. Connaught hasn't been in general use for ages, and The Expanse is some three hundred years further on! Maybe something will come up about, or some aspect of Pa's character will inform us to, the usage of this specific term for her ship, but it's odd. Pa is taking control of the Hornblower and its cargo for the Free Navy. The Hornblower's captain calls them thieves and pirates. Pa's XO, Evan, grunts and acts hurt. Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 1 posted:Evans pointed a thumb toward the console. “So angry,” he said. “Like to hurt a poor coyo’s feelings, he goes on like that.” We get some info on the Connaught. Turns out it's one of the MCRN ships that's been gifted to the Free Navy, and that's about all we get. No idea what kind of ship it is, but I'm assuming it's a small frigate-corvette. Still not sure why a Martian navy ship was named for something Irish. It's got a "wide variety of military and technical expert systems" but no indication of what those are. We're told that Pa and her people have been on the ship for a year, but it feels like they don't know the ship very well at all. In the end, the Hornblower has a bit of a mutiny and ends up with an acting captain, one Sergio Plant, who offers to surrender. We get one of the more definitive quotes from The Expanse, and probably the one that's stuck in my mind since reading it: Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 1 posted:History, Michio believed, was a long series of surprises that seemed inevitable in retrospect. Then, backstory on the Hornblower: it was a colony ship that, when Marco blockaded the rings, decided it'd go dark and wait for the political situation to cool down. But the Free Navy spotted them and sent Pa out to intercept. Pa's people take control of the ship, and we get the backstory on recent events. The Belt has thrown off the inner planets and taken control of Medina Station, supported by millions of Belters. However, there's an issue of food and supplies, which is why Pa is out there taking control of civilian vessels for the Free Navy. Oksana, another member of Pa's marriage group, tells Pa she's got a message from Inaros. Pa thinks Marco is a handsome, charismatic bastard. Inaros wants her to bring the Hornblower to Ceres, where he's calling a meeting of his inner circle: himself, Pa, Dawes, Rosenfeld, and Sanjrani. Inaros ends the call with "a sharp Free Navy salute. The one he'd come up with." And, I'm sorry, but it brings to mind nothing but Red Dwarf's Arnold Rimmer and the ludicrous salutes he came up with because he thought the Space Corps salute was too bland. Pa tells her crew they're off to Ceres. Evans brings up the survival of the Martian prime minister, Fred Johnson, and Jim Holden and wonders if maybe Marco isn't as infallible as he thinks he is. Pa and Evans agree not to think about it much more than that. Chapter Two: Filip There is no one who Filip Inaros hates more than James Holden. Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 2 posted:Holden, the peacemaker who’d never made peace. Holden, the champion of justice who’d never sacrificed anything for justice. James Holden, who crewed up with Martians and Belters – with one Belter – and moved through the system as if it made him better than everyone else. Neutral and above the fray while the inner planets shoved humanity’s resources out to the thirteen hundred–odd new planets and left the Belters to die. Filip considers Fred Johnson a close second, given that he's an Earther who started speaking for the Belt and had only become who he was after slaughtering Belters at Anderson Station. But Filip's mother hadn't died because of Johnson, so, second place. It's been months since Naomi had spaced herself and Cyn. As mentioned, Filip believes she's dead because of Holden's "cultlike presence." To Filip, Naomi had picked death in the void over a life with her people, a victim of Holden's brainwashing. Filip's been having dreams about it but has been quashing the trauma and angst so as not to appear weak. The Free Navy has stopped at Pallas Station, the so-called forge of the Belt. Interestingly, we get some details about the Pallas harbormaster that I think a lot of people overlooked, especially when it came to the TV adaptation -- not all Belters are created equal. Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 2 posted:His head was larger compared to his body than Filip’s or Marco’s or Karal’s. The harbormaster’s left eye was milky and blind where even the pharmaceutical cocktail that made human life in freefall possible had been insufficient to keep the capillaries from dying. He was the kind of man who would never be able to tolerate living on a planetary surface, even for a short period of time. The most extreme end of the Belter physiological spectrum. Marco, whom Filip considers an Admiral, is asking the harbormaster to take all of Pallas' supplies and... fire them off in containers. That way, Pallas will be less of a target for the Inners and only the Free Navy will know the vectors of the containers, so, they can resupply from them as necessary. Filip says they'll be paid in Free Navy scrip. Which can't be used to buy things from Earth, so, the harbormaster will only be able to buy what he considers sub-standard parts from the Belt. Marco and Filip shuttle back to the Pella to meet with Rosenfeld Guoliang, and we get some infodumps about the OPA: the OPA is a number of different cells and groups that vary from big things like Tycho and Ceres to small cabals and mutual interest groups. What unites them is the economic and military oppression of Earth and Mars. The Free Navy is not the OPA, but more of a vanguard party. Rosenfeld is an old friend of Marco's and he's already got his personal guard on the Pella, which makes some of Marco's crew wary. Rosenfeld says it is too bad they didn't get Johnson and Smith but Marco says Earth was the only one that mattered, the primary target, and they did get Secretary-General Gao. Marco considers Avasarala nothing more than a bureaucrat. Rosenfeld says Marco has a habit of underestimating women, but then apologizes. They're heading to Ceres for the "gathering of the tribes." Coreys... But Filip gets confused about the comment. Karal tells him it's nothing to worry about, and then Karal mentions that how things went with the attack on Johnson and Smith and Filip Inaros learns that his mother was still alive. And everyone on the Pella, if not the whole of the Free Navy, knew it before he did. Later, waking from a nightmare, Filip is certain that there's someone out there he hates more than James Holden. Chapter Three: Holden Even since arriving on Luna, Holden and his crew have been interrogated by the United Nations. I don't know how I feel about this because, like, we get all of Holden's history here. They even namedrop Dmitri Havelock, of all people. The whole interrogation section is just kind of... odd. It's got that Franck-ian aspect of exposition, exposition, exposition. What we do get, however, are some hard facts about Earth. Earth had a population of thirty billion people -- one-third of them are already dead. Ten billion people gone in a few months. It's so extensive Western Europe is measuring the dead by the changes in atmospheric gases. But, of course, all of Holden's parents are alive. In fact, they're so self-sufficient that they're able to help out with the relief efforts. Seems like the only casualty we know of so far is Arjun, Avasarala's husband. One-third of the population of the planet is dead, but only one person we know about. I wonder, did Lydia's ex survive? It's not going so well on Luna, either. The station is at its absolute limits and the crew are living on the Rocinante in dock. That, and Holden is still a bit upset about Clarissa Mao being part of the crew as she killed a bunch of people. Naomi says "that was a different her" and Holden is like, well, how'd that happen, how'd we agree on that? Holden tells Naomi she's not like Clarissa. Naomi says but Amos is. Holden says Amos is Amos. Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 3 posted:He’s like a pit bull. You know he could tear your throat out, but he’s loyal to a fault and you just want to hug him. Naomi mentions she has to get back on the missing ships mystery, something she's doing to help distract herself from the interrogation she's getting from the UN, too. Holden goes for walk through the Rocinante, elects not to intrude on Amos and Clarissa, and goes up to see Alex. News from Mars: twenty percent of the Martian military has vanished through the ring gates with, apparently, all the stuff they didn't trade to the Free Navy. No one has any clue where they've gone. Then, Chrisjen Avasarala calls them up and says she needs to meet with Holden and his crew -- at once. Holden notes that she didn't say anything obscene or offensive and therefore thinks it must be pretty bad. Avasarala is there with Fred Johnson and Prime Minister Smith and... Like, what's with these names? I recall General Battuta brought up the bland NPC name of Fred Johnson back during the first novel, but Prime Minister Smith? Smith? It was bothering me all throughout Nemesis Games. The Free Navy has a ship spotting for the asteroid attacks, the Azure Dragon. It's guiding the rocks in and there's a part of me that's like, wait, you need to guide the space rocks to the planet? It's just orbital mechanics, point and throw, and I assume they've been thrown months or weeks in advance. Maybe it's passing data on the orbital installations or the UN navy or something, but that isn't told to us. Still, by capturing or destroying the Azure Dragon, they think they'll be able to reduce the enemy assaults against Earth. They can't spare any ships from the combined UN/MCRN fleet, but they can send the Rocinante under a mission commander. Holden refuses. They'll take the job but not under any commander because the Rocinante is their home. Bobbie clears her throat and mentions that she's the mission commander. Holden immediately changes his mind and asks Bobbie how she wants to play it. Chapter Four: Salis As mentioned, Babylon's Ashes features a big cast of perspective characters, many of them showing up for just one chapter. The first of these is Salis, a Belter who is working on installing a few massive railguns to the Ring Station. He's working with his pal Jakulski, both of them workers from Medina. The railguns are courtesy of Duarte through the Laconia gate, made of technology that Salis thinks is "bleeding-edge" but is reminiscent to the reader of the protomolecule. They strap railguns to the top and bottom of all three axes and Salis thinks it looks like "a macrovirus" or a "minimalist streptococcus" and I guess he was a virologist or something. Each gate is covered by two of the railguns, and most gates will have a third. They test-fire the guns and the Ring Station glows a little but otherwise, nothing happens. One of Salis' people thinks that the Ring Station moves with the shots, and the slow zone/ring space moves with it. Spooky. Afterwards, Salis and his team are having white kibble at an open-air bar in Medina Station. They ruminate about kids these days being young and stupid and how being young and stupid is something you got to do on a place like Earth, Mars, or Medina. I'm pretty sure Miller had similar thoughts back in Leviathan Wakes. A brief chat about how showers aren't working because Medina was designed for full gee. Talk about how Medina is the Belter home for Belters that's their homeland now. One thing I find a bit irritating about Babylon's Ashes is the use of Belter creole -- it's a bit heavier and a bit less obvious in meaning than the previous books. With the railguns defending Medina, Salis thinks the Belters finally have place of their own. But his friend Vandercust shrugs and says yeah, but if they lose control of Medina, they'll absolutely never get it back.
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Nov 22, 2022 04:48
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The UN can't spare ships to get rid of a ship that is more or less one of the asteroid launchers massacring billions of people?
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Nov 22, 2022 08:55
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Kchama posted:The UN can't spare ships to get rid of a ship that is more or less one of the asteroid launchers massacring billions of people? Pretty much. Avasarala says that while there's a threat of incoming rocks, no ships "dare move" from their defensive posture. Smith says that the first operation of the combined fleet will be to capture or destroy the Azure Dragon. The argument for using the Rocinante specifically is that it won't leave a hole in the defensive lines (and that it has a railgun.) But the Azure Dragon is noted as being a prospecting ship, so, I don't think the railgun was swinging the decision. There is also mention that the mission commander (Bobbie) asked for the Rocinante specifically. It's all a little odd. Like, there's a lot of questions I have about the setup and situation. Earth and Mars really can't spare a single small ship to go take out a prospecting ship of vital importance to the Free Navy? What is the Azure Dragon doing exactly to spot for the rocks? Why is it necessary? Why will taking it out allow the allied fleet to move out of a defensive posture? If the Azure Dragon's transponder is off and it's running dark, how did they locate it? Did Marco perhaps want them to spot it? Why doesn't Holden, the former naval officer, ask any of these questions? It's just a thing to get the Rocinante crew back into the plot. I'm not a physicist, just a sci-fi nerd who spent too much time on Spacebattles years and years ago, but I don't think there'd be any reason in a 'hard-ish' sci-fi setting like The Expanse why you'd need a prospecting ship to spot for your giant rocks. Once the rocks are thrown at Earth, they're thrown, and you're going to throw them well in advance. The danger of more rocks incoming is the threat, not the ship spotting for them. I think there was even a Star Wars novel where one of Admiral Thrawn's crazy tricks was to make Coruscant think there were hundreds of rocks incoming when there was only a few. Even if you bring in the Azure Dragon, you have no idea how many more rocks Inaros has thrown. And they're not easy to spot, not only does The Expanse like to stress how hard it is to spot anything in space, but Nemesis Games mentions that the rocks are coated in stealth stuff and only showed up on instruments when they hit Earth's atmosphere. I think the TV series changes it up slightly, making the Azure Dragon a ship that is basically triggering each rock on its flight to Earth and contains a list of each rock that Marco has rigged with stealth paint and ignition thrusters, caught because it had to send off each transmission. And it's discovered in a different way, too. edit: And while I'm here, it bothers me that Smith calls the people who found the ship "Chrisjen's intelligence service." I'm sure that service would have a name, Coreys, one that people like Holden would even know of! Like, who phrases things like that? And he says "If they're right" -- what a great show of confidence, Prime Minister Smith! Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 12:01 on Nov 22, 2022 |
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Nov 22, 2022 11:41
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Babylon's Ashes, Chapters 5 - 8 The Free Navy inner circle appear to realize that Marco is maybe a little bit of a bad horse to back sometimes possibly. Meanwhile, Holden and co. dismantle the Free Navy's whole sunward strategy in an operation that continues to be somewhat confounding. Chapter Five: Pa Michio Pa has just finished "coupling" with one of her husbands and chief engineer Josep. Pa grumbles about how she doesn't trust this meeting Marco is calling and doesn't much trust the man either. Pa takes a little bit to reflect on a few things: her marriage group is seven people and it was written up in a ketubah -- that is, a traditional Jewish marriage certificate. Those seven people make up the core of the Connaught's crew, which is something we were told last Pa chapter, and how everyone else on the crew is basically an outsider but treated fairly, which is also something we were told last Pa chapter. This is apparently something that separates Belters and inners -- the Doctrine of the One Ship. The ship is all that matters, crew are just basically to the ship what cells are to a body. No division between crew, that you didn't separate crew from family. I'm honestly unsure if I misread it or if the Coreys aren't sure what they're writing because the previous paragraph is all about Pa drawing divisions, even if only in her head, between her crew. Pa thinks the Free Navy isn't coordinating well. Josep says it's still new. Pa says that they're like puppets on Marco's strings. Josep says that Marco has done everything he said he'd do so far. Pa says that Marco hasn't actually done much of what he said: Johnson and Smith are alive, they didn't flip Ganymede, no one has surrendered even if they're still throwing rocks at Earth. His promises don't match his words. Josep says, well, then he's just like any other politician. They head down to the galley to get some tea, which is deserted save for Oksana and Laura, two members of the core seven. Just family, Pa thinks. And I'm going to break from the synopsis here to talk about something that irritates me: the found family trope. I didn't think about it much when I first started reading The Expanse but over the years, I've really come to dislike it. Partially because of how ubiquitous it is these days because if you want to get published, you better include it. But also because I think it's cheap writing that undersells that there are rich, deep relationships that don't depend on characters talking about things like they're Vin Diesel, that family isn't the only relationship one should aspire to. Why aren't the Roci crew open to outsiders, why do they work so well together? Because they're a family. Why is Pa's crew the same? Family. But to be stupidly literal in my usual way, that's not how family works. You don't get to choose your family -- family is a reality of your birth, and you can either choose to get along with them or not. But you can have strong, deep relationships with people who aren't family and weak, shallow relationships with people who are. You can move out of your home and never see your family again, never think about them. Or you can be close and tightly knit like something out of a soap opera. See, I think the found family trope cheapens the reality of human relationships. Friendships can be deeper than family. People you choose to be in proximity with or are only close to via circumstance -- colleagues, subordinates, allies. Those can be deep and fulfilling do-or-die relationships, too! But you don't need to basically go, hey, you're my real family now. Besides, isn't it convenient for the crew of the Rocinante that only Holden is the one with any actual family? These characters have a found family because all but one of them need replacement families. To be really cynical and a little bit mean, sometimes I think this found family phenomenon is because a lot of people don't have good relationships with their family and think they can find solace in replacing them with a facsimile that has all the good parts of a family (unconditional love and respect) without the messy bits (the fact that sometimes that love and respect is actually conditional and messy; the gap between parents and children.) Pa and co. arrive at Ceres Station and we get a rather heavy amount of exposition about it. The rise of Ceres Station as an OPA installation came about because a water hauler got blown up, set Earth and Mars against each other, and the OPA picked it up on the sly. But Mars and Earth never came back for it, because things like the collapse of Ganymede, the ring rising out of Venus, and so on kept them distracted. By the time the gates beyond the gate were opened, Anderson Dawes had gone from being a rebel to a politician, and then signed on with the Free Navy. Dawes takes Pa up to the meeting, held up on a garden in the admin level. The five leaders of the Free Navy are there: Dawes and Pa, chief economist Nico Sanjrani, industrial czar Rosenfeld Guoliang, and Marco Inaros. Filip is also there and Pa considers him to be crazy-eyed and unsettling. Marco says he's brought them there as they've "broken Earth and beaten Mars" and shown up Johnson's OPA as a sham. Everything they set out to do, they've done. Pa, of course, thinks that they didn't kill Smith or Johnson. Now, Marco says, it's time to begin the third phase of their plan. Dawes said he didn't know there was a third phase. Now, Marco says, you do. Chapter Six: Holden The Rocinante is closing in on the Azure Dragon. They're 'on the float' -- that is, not under thrust. This is to avoid them being picked up by the Azure Dragon. We're reminded that the Azure Dragon is not a gunship but a geological surveyor and is running dark -- passive sensors and tightbeam only. Somehow, this half-blind ship has enough capability to coordinate the rocks being thrown at Earth. What's confusing is what we learn next. Having laid in a course that'd put them close to the Azure Dragon, they've arranged for a "shifting of the combined fleet" in order to conceal the Rocinante's approach. So, what, has the combined fleet moved out from Earth? I thought Avasarala said no ships could move on the offensive. The Rocinante, running dark itself, will only be vulnerable to visual spotting from the Azure Dragon. But if that is the only way you can spot a ship that's running dark, then how did they find the Azure Dragon in the first place? This is funny to me. The Coreys didn't cover information that felt really important in the last Holden chapter, and now they're throwing out information that just feels like it makes me more confused as to how everything works. The Azure Dragon doesn't spot them. When they're about three hours out, Amos says they could shoot the ship from this range and prevent it from running, if not destroying them. He even adds that there's so much ammo from previous engagements flying around the system, all of it moving at the same speed it was fired (hello, Mass Effect 2), that it could even just be a quirk of fate. Naomi says that if they shoot them, they'll look for who did it, and I don't know if she means the crew of the Azure Dragon (and if so, who cares?) or the Free Navy (who would, you assume, find out something's happened to their ship pretty quickly.) They begin the retro-burn and the Azure Dragon begins cycling up its drive. Holden orders them to surrender in the words of Rothfuss' Kvothe: "This is the Rocinante. You may have heard of us." Bobbie puts a railgun round into the Azure Dragon and they dump their reactor core. So, you couldn't shoot them from the dark three hours out, but you could do it from about two hours fifty out after you advised them to surrender? They shed velocity and match orbit with the Azure Dragon. Bobbie puts her powered armor together and gets ready to go out. The Azure Dragon isn't responding to hails. Holden and Naomi don't think the crew is dead, but something's up. Holden wonders what it must be like for Naomi to hear the crew of the Roci about to attack and possibly kill people who'd grown up like she had. I flashback to Caliban's War and Naomi's eager, flippant desire to shoot at space pirates. Holden says that the people on that ship just think they're doing the right thing, trying to protect their children on ships that might fall apart or because they lost people due to UN laws. Naomi counters with maybe they just think it's fun to kill people. Oh, okay. Bobbie heads out into the airlock, but the crew of the Azure Dragon have boobytrapped their airlock. Bobbie is stuck between ships. She goes to bust her way through the door but Naomi is like, no, you could bust both of our airlocks (?????) And then the Rocinante starts losing things -- a sensor array, a PDC. The Azure Dragon has dispatched three construction mechs, and they've started dismantling the Rocinante from the outside in. Convenient that they'd planned for that, I guess. Alex offers to get the Rocinante burning and throw them off, but Holden says it'll crush Bobbie to death. What if Bobbie breaks the docking tube? Naomi thinks it could be fine, or it's rigged to blow up and kills Bobbie anyway. Like, we're getting all these reasons why characters can't do anything or why things have to go a certain way, but none of it feels like it makes sense to me. I don't understand why Bobbie can't just punch her way into the Azure Dragon and then Alex throws off the mechs and the problem is solved. Or why Bobbie can't just return to the Rocinante? Why did they even need the airlock tube in the first place? Bobbie's armor is fully-sealed and she could take the ship all by herself, something we saw in Caliban's War. All this drama feels weird and artificial given what we know of the setting, which extends back to the setup of it, I suppose. Amos says they can head out the cargo bay airlock. They can hop out, kill the bad guys, patch the damage up, and be done with it. Holden says he's on his way but Amos is like, it's fine, Clarissa and I will get a head start. Chapter Seven: Clarissa It's one of those Expansian beginnings where Clarissa is thinking about her second year in prison and the poetry course she attended. She thinks it was a failure because only she and the chaplain had been to university and also the inmates sucked at poetry. In the end, she came up with something between a poem and a prayer: I have killed but I am not a killer because a killer is a monster and monsters aren't afraid. Amos and Clarissa head out of the Rocinante, Amos leading. They find the three mechs. Clarissa headshots one of them and the mechs... shoot back? Turns out there are not just three mechs but five boarders, and Clarisa gets hit in the leg, but Amos is working his way through them. One of the mechs moves in front of a PDC and Alex blasts it to bits. Clarissa gets ambushed by two of the boarders and Amos orders her to retreat, and she takes another hit. She figures she's going to die from the third and final mech, making peace with it, before Holden comes out of nowhere, pops the third mech, and saves her. Clarissa wakes up later in the medbay. Turns out, of course, that the crew of the Rocinante won -- they've got two prisoners and the Azure Dragon's data core. The crew tried to scrub it but Naomi got the data. Holden shows up after Amos leaves and he tells Clarissa they should've spoken earlier: he's not happy having her on the ship. But he's less happy that she almost died under his watch. So, he considers her crew now. And his first order is that she can't go out into battle in a vac suit without training. Understood sir, Clarissa says. Later, she has a dream. She's digging through poo poo trying to find someone buried, and she's running out of air. She's disgusted and afraid and knows she won't make it in time. It's been a while since we've had a "cryptic" Expanse character dream and, like the others, I'm not really sure what this one means or what it reflects. Chapter Eight: Dawes Back to Dawes, Pa having just arrived for the meeting. It's been three days, each meeting lasting for thirteen hours. Marco's outlining his vision of a grand, system-wide Belter civilization. Free spin stations! Wide-scale automation! Power stations near the sun that beam energy out to the system! Everything stripped from the corpse of Earth! Sanjrani would like to know the manpower required for this vision. Marco doesn't care. Pa brings up the issue of food and supplies, already something of a problem. Marco says she's just afraid. On the fifth day, Rosenfeld says that Marco's having a bit of a manic phase. Rosenfeld thinks a bit of madness is a job requirement for someone like Inaros. He's killed billions of people and reshaped human civilization. Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 8 posted:He may be a god or he may be a devil, but he can’t stomach the idea of being just an unreasonably pretty man who stumbled into the right combination of charisma and opportunity. A bunch of exposition about Dawes' past. Basically, he's always been a negotiator and a people person. He's comfortable with violence and comfortable with doing what needed to be done as the situations change. When Marco had made his deal with Mars, he'd had two choices: embrace the new reality or die with the past. Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 8 posted:Still, there was part of him that wished this Winston Duarte had chosen to raise someone else up with his Mephistophelean arms deal. Dawes is confused. How is Laconia pumping out all these weapons and such when other colonies can't support themselves? Rosenfeld attributes it to planning and supplies but the conversation is interrupted by Captain Shaddid. Dang, still not promoted in all these years after assisting in the coup, Shaddid? Ouch. One of her people is in the hospital, probably on his way out via the morgue. But she has the shooter in custody, and the shooter is Filip Inaros. Dawes heads down to see him. Shaddid mentions that people are looking to kill Filip for what he did. To Dawes, he looks like he has rage and vulnerability where Marco has charm and confidence. Another break here. What bothers me about this novel is its depiction of Marco. It's hard not to see it as backward. After a novel where Marco showed up only to be Naomi's insane, childish ex, it's extremely difficult to take any character assigning confidence and charisma to him. Nemesis Games gives you this feeling of, like, why does anyone follow this guy? I don't think you can make us dislike a character and see how he is at his worst and then expect us to find him interesting when we're being told how cool he is, actually. Consider Darth Vader. Imagine meeting him as the petulant but gifted child slave turned Jedi Anakin. Could you have the same fear and interest in him in the original trilogy, would he project the same power? And I like the prequels. I like how it recontextualizes Darth Vader. But that's the key thing -- we're seeing the man behind the mask. Here, we're just getting the mask, and it makes everyone around Marco seem like a bit of an idiot, even as they all seem to acknowledge that he's a psycho with delusions of grandeur. Some of this should've been in Nemesis Games, or otherwise alluded to in earlier novels. Scenes where his allies are privately wondering this stuff about Marco would have more of an effect if we'd seen them supporting him. Anyway, the shooting -- the security guard told Filip to move on and Filip immediately shot him. He'd been looking for a fight. Were he anyone else, Shaddid would've fed him to the recyclers already. Dawes calls for Marco to come find him and reflects on his thoughts about power. He likes reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Dawes thinks: Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 8 posted:All through human history, being a moral person and not being pulled into the dramatics and misbehavior of others had caused intelligent people grief. Marco shows up and says that it's embarrassing but he'll make sure it doesn't happen again. A scuffle that got out of hand -- come on Dawes, it must happen all the time. Dawes says it's never happened before. Marco gets a bit testy: is this going to be a problem, don't you know that Earth just got the Azure Dragon? And, yep, turns out that taking out that ship means their whole sunward strategy is toast. Dawes tells Marco that Filip can't stay on the station. As a favor to Marco, he'll let him take Filip away. He may have killed a security agent, Dawes says, but Marco just says that they've killed a whole world. Shaddid will let Marco take Filip but, tomorrow, they're going to discuss the next steps about Earth in the wake of the loss of the Azure Dragon.
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Nov 27, 2022 03:31
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Babylon's Ashes, Chapters 9 - 12 Group hugs for everyone but Avasarala; Michio Pa's reservations lead to outright defection and it is as obvious as toothache. Chapter Nine: Holden Bobbie's beating the crap out of one of the heavy bags in the Rocinante's gym. Interestingly, this is the first mention of the Rocinante having a gym. It wasn't mentioned at all when Holden gave a little mental ship tour in Leviathan Wakes, nor in Cibola Burn when you might've expected Naomi be using it. It also doesn't appear to be on the Rocinante schematics from the roleplaying game. The crew of the Rocinante are putting off talking to her. Holden figures it's up to him, and drops his half-eaten meal into the recycler. Holden goes to talk to her, and it goes about this well:Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 9 posted:“Hey,” she said, not looking at him. Thud. Reset. drop his half-finished meal into the recycler. I've been wondering where this little Coreyism was hiding, since it didn't show up as much as I thought it would in the first few books, but it's certainly showing up now. I'm pretty sure we'll see it a lot in the last three books. Even on my first read-through, it was getting pretty commonplace.Alex and Naomi basically tell Holden he has to give Bobbie some room. Holden wonders what's bothering her, and I'm kind of in the same boat, but it's pretty obvious and Alex spells it out: Bobbie's been looking for a fight since Io, and then she missed out on the first one she'd got. I feel like this ignores the whole bit in Nemesis Games where she got in a fight, got shot, did some boarding action stuff in her power armor, and so on. Like, since Io? Not since the bombing of Earth? Amos calls in and says he thinks he's patched up the last leak in the hull. Holden reflects that they no longer have the support of Tycho's teams to fix the ship, and Luna's putting all its resources into the Earth navy. So, a thought. Holden is drafted into a mission, basically, by Earth. He, his crew, and ship are sent to intercept an enemy craft of vital importance. They do not anticipate any repair support when they return. And yet they didn't pop the Azure Dragon with their railgun from long range? Man, the Rocinante crew got screwed. Holden and Naomi have a brief chat. He's a bit disturbed by everything that's happened and Naomi wants to know it's not because of Marco and Filip -- of course, it isn't. As captain of the Rocinante, Holden says he could marry them right now, but they change topics. According to Holden, the Free Navy can't win. Okay, they did a lot of damage and killed a lot of people, but the gates are still there and will be there. Eventually, the pressure will be too much for Marco to control. He's on the wrong side of history. Naomi says she grew up in the Belt and wouldn't want to -- stressing this, wouldn't want to -- live on a planet. Not impossible, not can't, but would prefer not to. If the gates don't go away, she thinks, then the Belters will, even equating it to a genocide. So, what, Marco is... right? As mentioned previously: yes. Either way, Naomi says Marco will never admit defeat and even in the face of the apocalypse, he'll claim it's necessary and that he's the victor. I feel like this is very odd stuff for Naomi to be saying. Eventually, the Rocinante drags the Azure Dragon back to Luna. Luna is filling up with refugees from Earth. According to Holden's inner monologue, half the world's population is "dead already." Fifteen billion impossible to save. Of the rest, 66% are in vulnerable positions, ten billion people need food, water or shelter. Luna and orbital stations can support maybe 250,000. This is essentially a repeat of the information we got in Chapter 3. They go to meet Avasarala and -- surprise -- Holden's whole famly is there. It bothers me a little that he recognizes Mother Sophie before Mother Elise, who the story has told us several times was his closest mother and favorite. It also feels a little cheap that all of Holden's parents survived the cataclysm. Anyway, everyone's hugging and crying and it's all a bit whatever. Holden introduces them to Naomi, worried that they'll think she's one of them, but, of course, no one has any issue with her. Apparently, this is Avasarala's payment to Holden for the Azure Dragon mission, and that's about it. Chapter Ten: Avasarala We swap over to Avasarala, some time after the big family reunion. She's hanging by a thread. She's talking to someone on her hand terminal, or perhaps herself, mentioning how Bobbie managed to keep Holden from screwing up the Azure Dragon mission. How once the Free Navy is under control, she might go retire. How Mars is dead and its Prime Minister is a hospice nurse for a republic. As implied at the end of Nemesis Games, Arjun -- Avasarala's kindly husband -- perished in the attack. It creates a wicked sense of contrast between Holden's utterly saccharine reunion and this sombre opening. They haven't even found Arjun's body, and she's recording messages for him on the off chance that he isn't. My mind flashes back to Filip's invective about how Holden never suffered and floated through the system without a care. Well, there's another data point to plot. I really do like this opening. While I've criticized, and will criticize, Babylon's Ashes for its myriad of perspective characters, Avasarala's opening here is one that I think really works. Then her aid, Said, comes in and it's back to business. Avasarala goes to meet with a gentleman named Gorman Le. Le reports that the ships that go missing through the gate tend to be larger ships, but not all of them. The UN knows that the Martian ships went to the Laconia Gate but, for whatever reason, Mars itself is refusing to confirm that. Avasarala goes to see Smith. She wants the info on the missing ships. Unfortunately, Smith has just been ousted with a vote of no confidence and she'll have to take it up with the new Prime Minister. Emily Richards, apparently. What is with these politician names? Why is Mars so whitebread when it was, from memory, South and East Asian? Avasarala tells him to get the date to him before it's too late. After all, they can't do anything worse to him than this. He agrees. Then, a meeting with her Strategy and Response Committee. Most of the Belt has sided with the Free Navy, although apparently a lot of that is contingent on the Free Navy delivering food and supplies. Souther mentions they've taken apart the Azure Dragon's comm logs, and apparently they've discovered there's a high-level Free Navy meeting on Ceres right now. So, not only was it guiding in the rocks, but also getting to-the-minute top level intel? Wow, the Azure Dragon seems like a ship you really wouldn't want to lose, doesn't it? This doesn't make me think, wow, what a lucky break, what a stroke of genius, what a relief. It just makes me think Marco Inaros is a moron. Admiral Souther says there's no evidence of a second "shepherd vessel" though. Avasarala thinks this is enough to go on the offensive. And if Marco and his people are on Ceres, then they'll go take back Ceres. Chapter Eleven: Pa Apparently, the OPA was formed seventy years before Pa was born, and in response to new tariff regulations on Belt ore mining that bankrupted many Belters. When Pa was twenty-two, she signed on with Fred at Tycho Station. On the Behemoth, she'd been Ashford's second and thought that Bull was there to take over from her, and she'd personally gone after him to show him up. She didn't take Sam siding with Bull over her very well. I'm not sure what incident she's referring to, and a brief flick through Abaddon's Gate didn't seem to inform me. Apparently, Ashford's general Ashfordness was a "brain injury" and she hadn't made peace with Sam before Ashford killed her. Honestly, the whole Pa/Sam thing is a whole pile of nothing. It feels like a cheap way to try and make me feel for Pa, but -- unless I'm misremembering something from Abaddon's Gate, and I doubt I am, if only because the Coreys didn't plan this far ahead -- there was nothing in that novel that made me think Pa and Sam were lovers. Anyway, Pa resigned from the OPA once she was back on Tycho. She did a whole bunch of blah blah backstory blah blah bad stuff. The whole big marriage thing happened. She signed up with Marco, although it first started with small favors, but then she found herself seduced by him. We are at around 1158 words of exposition in this chapter. On their way to another meeting, Marco tells Pa that she needs to send her ships away from Ceres, although he doesn't say why. At the meeting, Marco unveils this image: Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 11 posted:The man was dark-skinned with an ornate mustache and beard, a turban, a long, flowing white robe, a crimson sash with three swords tucked in it, and an ancient rifle cradled in one arm. Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 11 posted:“Consider the Afghan,” Marco said. “Lords of the Graveyard of Empires. Even Alexander the Great couldn’t conquer these people. Every great power who attempted it exhausted themselves and failed.” Marco's plan is to abandon Ceres. To take all soldiers and material off the station before the UN arrives. Rosenfeld asks about the people of Ceres, and Marco says they're to be left behind -- because Earth will be forced to feed six million people or let them die. That way, the UN will overextend and collapse. Dawes accuses Marco of doing this because of their confrontation about Filip. He says it isn't about Filip but it's about (oh my God) Philip of Macedon. Later, Michio misses the following about Earthers: Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 11 posted:They couldn’t let go of the idea that life involved rock and soil. It was what made them smaller. She goes to meet up with her big marriage group and she cries and they do this big group hug and, oops, turns out that Marco is another Ashford and another Johnson and he's abandoning Ceres and I just don't like any of these characters, they'll too twee and perfect, and it's a big reason why I don't like Pa's whole part of this novel. Well, turns out Michio Pa is going to break away from Marco and become a pirate queen. The big chunk of Pa's opening exposition backstory is about as long as this moment between her and her crew. If you're wondering why there's so much exposition in this chapter, and why I'm pointing it out -- well, without it, the chapter would be about 2000 words long. Chapter Twelve: Holden Holden's overseeing the Rocinante's repairs. As part of the repairs, the Rocinante is being given replacement sections of state-of-the-art carbon-silicate lace. It's tech derived from studies related to the protomolecule. Holden feels like they should hold out for regular armor, but they've got a new mission to take Fred out to Tycho. Holden muses that one day carbon-silicate lace will be as common as titanium or glass and that it's a collaboration between humanity and "ghosts of a massive and alien intelligence." It's kind of MMO-ish, isn't it? Carbon-Silicate Hull Plating: +500 HULL POINTS. Anyway, Holden doesn't want to leave because his parents are nearby. Bobbie's coming with them, too. Holden's wondering if it means she's a full part of the Rocinante crew, stake in the ship and all, and if they do that for Bobbie then they might need to do it for Clarissa. He goes off to see his parents and tell them he's leaving, and Father Cesar tells him to "give those loving skinnies hell." Outside, Holden is apologetic and how he would've defended Naomi, but Naomi says that had she said anything they'd have said, oh, they respect Belters and he didn't mean her. It's all a bit on the nose, Coreys. I know this novel was written during the height of #blacklivesmatter, and I know you have basically done 'Prax Discovers Kickstarter' (and, in this novel, will do Holden Discovers Livestreaming) but, like, I get it. As someone in a mixed-race marriage with racists on both side of the family tree, a segment like this doesn't make me feel seen or heard -- it makes me feel condescended to. We end on the following: Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 12 posted:“We’re not people,” he said. “We’re the stories that people tell each other about us. Belters are crazy terrorists. Earthers are lazy gluttons. Martians are cogs in a great big machine.”
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Dec 3, 2022 05:53
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Babylon's Ashes, Chapters 13 - 16 Amid pages and pages of exposition, Alex gets laid, Pa commits mutiny, Filip meanders, and Prax returns. Chapter Thirteen: Prax Remember Praxidike Meng? We're finding out what he's up to. He's still on Ganymede and still just as much of an oblivious, obsessive scientist as ever: when he heard Ganymede was going neutral, he had no idea it was about a war. For the most part, it appears that Ganymede has managed to keep doing whatever it was doing before the attack on Earth. The Free Navy is present and their scrip is accepted, so, neutrality is apparently accepted only in so much as that Marco's people are allowed to enforce it. Prax notes that he had never heard of Marco Inaros before the rocks fell which is, okay, a nice bit of characterization for Prax but... One, Prax isn't exactly known for caring about things (indeed, this opening chapter says he missed the whole main event) and two, neither had the readership. Prax is talking with two of his associates, Khana and Karvonides. Karvonides wants to skip animal testing on a certain strain of yeast they're cultivating in the name of saving lives on Earth. Khana disagrees with breaking protocol. The yeast -- Hy1810 -- might have adverse effects, but Karvonides thinks that's a risk when put against mass starvation. After the meeting, he locks down the data so no one can access it. Prax heads home. He's remarried to someone named Djuna and Mei has a stepsister now, Natalia. Overnight, he's woken up by someone at his front door: Ganymede security. They take him down to the morgue -- someone's killed Karvonides, presumably because she was making noise about getting the Hy1810 to Earth. While Prax thinks the Free Navy was behind it, he doesn't tell Ganymede security that. Because the Free Navy will kill him if he makes trouble, and probably the security people, too. Chapter Fourteen: Filip Marco has banned Filip from Ceres Station -- for life. As people are working on retreating from Ceres, stripping it to the studs, Filip is confined to the Pella. He shot the security officer because he's been hitting on a girl and realized that she liked him because he was Marco Inaros' son and nothing else. Humiliated and angry, he did what he did but doesn't really remember it. There's a very Expansian "What's on Space TV" moment. Eventually, Filip's alone-on-the-Pella routine is broken up by the arrival of some of Marco's people including Karal and Wings. This is a very interesting choice of name and, really, I'd say it's a mistake on Corey's part. Or, if not a mistake, a sign of the shoddy writing back in Chapter Nine of Nemesis Games. See, back in that chapter, Naomi coins the term Wings for the guy because of how his hair resembles the folded wings of a bird. Chapter Nine is presented as if Naomi doesn't know who this guy is and hasn't seen him before -- hence the nickname. And then, in Chapter Nineteen, Naomi reiterates that Wings is not his real name, just one she came up with for him. Now, this gets confusing because Chapter Nine is basically Naomi lying to the reader so the Coreys can have a chase scene, so, I'm not sure why on Earth Filip is referring to Wings by the nickname his mother came up with. The Coreys do offer an explanation but, well, it reads about as poorly as you think it might: His real name was Alex, but someone on the crew had started calling him Wings at some point because of that hairstyle. Well, okay. Anyway, Wings' has been living it up -- his eyes are bloodshot pink, and his gait is a little too relaxed and unsteady. Wings has a present for Filip. A vest of real alligator leather, worth more than all the money he or Wings would see in five years. Filip sees it as a symbol of everything the Earth used to remind them they were small, and now he has it. Wings thinks it might be the last leather vest out of Earth. As the Free Navy withdraws from Ceres, they ruin the docks, strip out the reactors and weapons and sensors, and vent the water reservoirs into space. Interestingly, the term "defense grid" is used again, and between that and a "last, best hope for..." reference earlier in this chapter, I'm even more certain it's a Babylon 5 reference. Filip thinks it'll take Earth years just to get Ceres back to where it was, and Earth can't chase down the Free Navy ships as they've taken care to put refugees on each one. And they can't ignore Ceres because millions of people will die. The crew of the Pella drape themselves in their loot and drink a bunch of alcohol. Marco comes to see Filip and tells him that leaving Ceres was the right call, no matter what Earth and Mars say. Filip wonders if his father will reprimand him for murdering someone, but he doesn't. He ignores the memory of Naomi's disapproval, or tries to. Chapter Fifteen: Pa Pa's compiling a list of the settlements of the outer planets and what they need, a list of the colony ships she and her fleet have taken, and the ships of her own fleet -- who might not have her back once they realize she's not working for Marco anymore. She's writing her list on the walls of her quarters, worried that Marco might be monitoring anything electronic. Nadia, her wife, comes in and talk about Pa becoming a pirate queen. As they talk, the news comes in that Earth has taken Ceres. With the supplies that Earth and Mars have brought as part of their flotilla, they can maintain the station and its population for two weeks. Fred Johnson begins to talk about how the looting of Ceres is a betrayal of the culture of the OPA and Pa angrily shuts it off. Pa doesn't consider Fred an ally of the Belt -- just an Earther who is the face of the Belt when there's a camera around. Nadia thinks that he could protect them and lend his ships to their cause, but Pa doesn't need his protection or his ships. As far as Ceres is concerned, if Earth wanted Ceres, well, they can have it. Nadia points out that Ceres got robbed by them, but Pa says it was robbed by Marco. In the end, Pa says she'll help the people of Ceres if necessary -- but she won't help the people of Earth because "they had centuries" to help the Belters and didn't. The Connaught arrives in the vicinity of the Hornblower. Pa chats with Captain Carmondy and tells him that she's changing plans. Carmondy is to take his ship to Rhea and free the prisoners. Carmondy recognizes it as a mutiny. Pa says it might be, but the mission is still the same -- grab colony ships, support the Belt. Carmondy says, fine, he'll come aboard but Pa is not going to let his people come aboard en masse -- he'll send his people over in pairs, weapons and armor sent before them. If he refuses, she'll destroy the Hornblower as a warning to the others. Carmondy offers to go their seperate ways, but Pa reiterates that she'll destroy the Hornblower. So, he can hurry up and surrender, or she can kill him and his ship. Chapter Sixteen: Alex Alex is chatting with Mfume, the Roci pilot from Nemesis Games, about how they used the railgun as an improvised drive system back in Cibola Burn. Alex says that, well, Naomi told the Rocinante to do it and he just babysat the ship and it's right back to that idea of, like, why do they have pilots beyond the fact that the roleplaying game had a pilot? Bobbie is there, too, and Mfume mentions how he heard her go hand-to-hand with "a protomolecule soldier" and Bobbie shuts that down. They're drinking in the Blue Frog on Ceres, Miller's old haunt, and it's a little weird to see the whole crew of the Rocinante drinking in a bar in a station on the verge of humanitarian catastrophe and that we were told Inaros had basically stripped of anything usable and his crew had basically explicitly taken all the booze. The crew talk about a bunch of stuff, and Sandra Ip makes a pass at Alex while Bobbie says she's never ever been attracted to him. Alex heads off to the bathroom and reflects on how things went on the way out from Earth. Everyone was worried about secret rocks Marco had thrown but, of course, taking out the Azure Dragon meant there were no more rocks. They expected there to be a battle for Ceres but, of course, all they found were Free Navy ships burning away from Ceres. Alex ends up reflecting on battle tactics and patterns and it's weird because it feels like stuff we should see from former Lieutenant Holden and not cargo transport pilot Alex. Then, they docked with Ceres and there persisted in not being a battle. Earth and Mars' crews were even now getting Ceres functioning again to prevent the whole place from collapsing. So much of this chapter is exposition, my word. When Alex returns to the bar, he heads over to Holden who is sitting by himself. Holden's brooding over how one of his dads called Belters skinnies in front of Naomi and it seems to be putting him on the verge of an existential crisis. Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 16 posted:“I always thought that if you gave people all the information, they’d do the right thing, you know? Not always, maybe, but usually. More often than when they chose to do the wrong thing anyway.” Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 16 posted:“They weren’t killing people. In their heads? They were striking a blow for freedom or independence. Or making it right for all the Belter kids that got lovely growth hormones. All the ships that got impounded because they were behind on the registration fees. And it’s just the same back home. Father Cesar’s a good man. He’s gentle and he’s kind and he’s funny, and to him Belters are all Free Navy and radical OPA. If someone killed Pallas, he’d be worried about what the drop in refining capacity would do before he thought about how many preschools there are on the station. Or if the station manager’s son liked writing poetry. Or that blowing the station meant that Annie down in Pallas central accounting wasn’t going to get to throw her big birthday party after all.” I won't make too much noise about what Holden's saying because, well, it's just simplistic pablum dressed up in vaguely anti-capitalist clothes. But what I realize is that Holden said this back in Leviathan Wakes: Leviathan Wakes, Epilogue posted:“That’s what got us here,” Holden said. “Icons. Symbols. People without names. All of those Protogen scientists were thinking about biomass and populations. Not Mary who worked in supply and raised flowers in her spare time. None of them killed her.”
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Dec 13, 2022 06:45
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Babylon's Ashes, Chapters 17 - 20 Holden starts a Youtube channel, Filip meanders about, Pa watches Holden's Youtube channel, and Naomi spends a chapter watching things happen. Chapter Seventeen: Holden Holden's gone off to do something. That something is an adolescent Belter girl. Easy joke aside, Holden is recording a Belter girl (noted as having the big head and tall height) named Alis Caspar who lives on Ceres. Holden was impressed by seeing her doing a trick with some glass balls and doing a chant. A kind of children's game, I think. Alis and her chaperone, Tia, play the game and Holden records it. Fred Johnson shows up and the sight of him terrifies Alis. Fred asks Holden to come with him. This is not the first video that Holden has recorded of people living on Ceres. It's his fourth and he's been sending them to Monica. Walking with Fred, he passes by Amos and Clarissa who are doing repairs on the Rocinante. Holden reflects that the Rocinante still does not have a full crew. Up on the bridge, Fred tells Holden that he's going to set up shop on Ceres and Avasarala's going to make him acting governor. His plan is to call everyone in from the OPA to hold a meeting, although Holden thinks that'll make him a target for assassination. With representatives from Earth and the Belt, they need someone from Mars. Fred suggests Bobbie, because Smith is no longer in the government and Richards isn't likely to play ball with anything that isn't immediately investigating their military. Fred thinks Inaros is winning, even if Holden thinks he just walked away from the biggest port in the Belt. Fred doesn't think Inaros ran away and he mentions that leaving Ceres was a deliberate ploy to make Earth spend resources on Ceres and drive up tensions by having inners come in and order Belters around (but there's Fred, accepting a poisoned chalice...) But, Fred says, rumor is that there's dissent about Marco's leadership. Maybe we'll get lucky, Holden says, and Inaros will get himself killed without us. Fred asks what he was doing recording the women. Holden says: Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 17 posted:“It’s what’s missing in all of this,” Holden said. “It’s what let things get this bad. We don’t see each other as people. Even the feeds are always about weird things. Aberrations. All the times that a Belt station doesn’t have a riot? Those days aren’t news. It has to be an uprising or a protest or a system failure. Just being here, living a normal life? That’s not part of what the people on Earth or Mars hear about.” As mentioned, this is sort of the Holden Discovers Livestreaming bit. It's incredibly stupid. I was going to talk about it here, but I think it's better done in a few chapters, or at the end. There's a lot of things wrong in Babylon's Ashes, and I consider this subplot to be one of them. Basically, it feels more like Holden is upset that one of his dads called Naomi a slur than he has the fact that billions of people are dying. And if the Coreys want that to reflect, say, an inability of Holden to process the damage to Earth, they haven't done a good attempt at showing it. Chapter Eighteen: Filip Sometimes I think the Coreys forget that they're writing in third-person limited, and this opening exemplifies it. The opening paragraphs about the Pella coasting through space feel like an establishing shot in a movie, not any part of Filip's internal world. In his internal world, Filip is wondering if Marco is telling the truth that the retreat from Ceres was a tactical move and not a sign of weakness. Perhaps they're preparing to strike at Tycho or Mars or Luna or the places in the Belt that've rejected the Free Navy. Then, Pa's message comes in. Marco makes Filip watch it. Pa says that she respects Marco and the cause but can't withhold material from the citizens of the Belt. She admits she is disobeying his orders, but thinks Marco will understand it is the best way forward. Really? Filip says it is mutiny, but isn't sure if Pa is correct. He says it doesn't matter, and that the only thing that does is that she's eroded his father's authority. Marco says they should stop trusting women and leaves. Filip watches the message again. When the crew comes in, Filip tells them that Marco had anticipated it and everything will be fine. Marvo vanishes into his quarters for three days, and authority falls to Rosenfeld and Filip. Rosenfeld thinks that the longer they take to reply to the 'changes in situation' then the worse it'll be, and Marco isn't around to do it. Filip says that his father has a plan, but Rosenfeld mentions that one of Pa's ships -- the Witch of Endor -- has reached Pallas and is returning the cache-safes to the people. With Fred Johnson taking control of Ceres and calling an OPA meeting, Rosenfeld points out that that Marco's rhetoric that the revolution is over is no longer true. Filip gets angry and Rosenfeld says that Marco is a great man, but that means he might go so far off into the void that he loses sight of them and they of him. Rosenfeld thinks the navy needs orders to keep them in line -- any orders. Filip refuses to give any, and goes off to see Marco. In his quarters, Marco doesn't seem like he's hiding away. Filip thinks he's been loving crew members. Filip tells Marco what Rosenfeld said, and Marco calls Rosenfeld to tell him that he's returned from the underworld with wisdom. He orders the Free Navy near Pallas to intercept the Witch of Endor, destroy it, and send proof to the Pella. Fred Johnson will be the next target. Chapter Nineteen: Pa Pa has reached Iapetus, moon of Saturn. Iapetus Station is surrounded by water haulers stripping the moon of water, which feels like an unsettling scene that the Coreys don't really dwell on beyond 'getting while the getting's good.' The Connaught hails the station and metnions they have prisoners to hand over -- unofficial prisoners, that is. Pa reflects that the colony ships she's handing over to the Belt will make a difference between life and death, and that it didn't have to be this way if the Belt had been allowed to become independent. Now, the Belt has a chance to bootstrap itself to a sustainable future, Pa thinks, unless Marco collapses it in the attempt. Marco hasn't replied to her message. Of her fleet, eight of the sixteen ships have sworn allegiance to her. Four of them acknowledged receipt of message. Only two of her ships rejected the message, but they haven't acted against her, either. And that's eight plus four plus two which gives us a total of... fourteen? Even if we include the Connaught, that's only fifteen. Where's the missing ship? I'm not sure the Coreys know either, because we move past that. Lots of people are calling out to Pa for help and she feels responsible for all of it. The supplies of the Hornblower will assist Iapetus Station, and enough reserves for the station to help others. Pa figures she can let "market forces" take care of things from there. Oksana laughs at something. Turns out she's watching Holden's interviews: Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 19 posted:My name is James Holden, and I want to introduce you to some of the people I’ve met here on Ceres. I want you to hear their stories. Come to know them the way you do your shipmates and neighbors. I hope you’ll carry a little bit of these people with you the way I do now. As they're watching the feed, Pa notes on the news that the Witch of Endor has been destroyed. The news has footage but isn't sure why the Free Navy is firing on their own ships. Pa realizes they have Marco's answer. Later, while Josep talks about how language reflects consciousness and to change one is to change the other (what is this, Arrival?), Pa realizes they can't go one on one with Marco and that none of her messages to Rosenfeld, Dawes, and Sanjrani have had replies. Josep calls Pa "child-bride." Well, okay. She goes off to run tactical plots with Bertold because Marco didn't just kill the Witch of Endor but is apparently coming for the whole of Pa's flotilla. But perhaps they can get the inner fleet to agree not to fire on them, even if it means hiding with Fred Johnson. Bertold says it is a bad plan. Michio pulls up a tightbeam transmission to Ceres. Chapter Twenty: Naomi Naomi is chatting with Bobbie in the Rocinante. Bobbie says that the danger now is overreach -- sure, they've had some wins, but they don't know the extent of Marco's forces or what he's going to do. Which strikes me as odd, given that this is the series that stresses you can't hide anything in space, and there's been x amount of weeks or months since the attack on Earth. At this point, surely you're past the 'sizing up his forces' stage. Marco didn't strike me as having a particularly large fleet back in Nemesis Games. Bobbie thinks they need to find a new tactical shape. She thinks Avasarala wants to capture Inaros and put them on trial. Naomi thinks it is an act of war. Bobbie thinks to make it a statement of contempt. Bobbie thinks Fred's attempt to build a coalition can't work, that he's trying to rebuild a caterpillar when they need to build a butterfly. Bobbie gets a message and, after Naomi telling her that Holden considers her part of the crew, leaves. I only just realized how odd this feels reading this bit. It feels very much like the writers responding to Bobbie's popularity rather than her history with the Rocinante crew and Holden's character. Bobbie was part of the Rocinante crew for, what, a few weeks, maybe? And several years ago, at that. Holden still draws a mental distinction between the Fred Johnson Rocinante crew and his older crew. But Holden apparently considers Bobbie to be the Rocinante's gunner. Well, maybe the distinction is that Holden thought Bobbie was extremely attractive. Naomi cleans up the galley and takes a mental inventory. She wonders if Marco had considered what'd happen after he disrupted the lives of everyone in the system. Probably not. She wonders if Filip is doing the same maintenance she was doing, or if they realize that the spoils of war can't keep the Pella flying forever. But they'd probably keep flying longer than most. Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 20 posted:Men like Marco could orchestrate vast battles, order the looting and destruction of worlds, and never run out of coffee. Turns out, it's to do with Pa. Naomi has just woken up Holden (who was sleeping in a crash couch, not his bunk?) and they're meeting with Fred. Fred mentions that he'd worked with Pa on Medina. Bobbie says that Pa is part of Inaros' inner circle but he's broken ranks and now the Free Navy is shooting at each other. Looks like Fred hates Pa due to being complicit in the attack on Earth and conducting piracy against colony ships and Bobbie wants to work with her because she's part of Inaros' inner circle. Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 20 posted:“This is my best-case scenario, Draper. Inaros’ coalition is falling apart. They’re shooting at each other, not at us. If Pa degrades Inaros’ fleet, that means they’re that much easier for us to face. Every ship of Pa’s that Inaros turns to slag is one less that’s hunting down innocent people and stealing their property. There is no advantage to me or to Earth or to Mars that comes of getting involved in it, and I personally resent you calling in your friends here to try to bully me into thinking anything different.” Shouting at Fred, Bobbie tells him that nothing he's doing is working -- not Ceres, not the fleet, which all feels a bit presumptive. Turns out the OPA isn't coming to attend Fred's meeting. Bobbie thinks they can use Pa to get intel on Marco, perhaps even what'll get them Marco. Fred points out that Pa has a history of mutiny. Holden says the last time she mutined (well, the last before this one) she saved everyone in existence. Fred says that Pa isn't offering to work with them, she just wants them to protect her from Marco. Naomi sips some water. Holden says they'll get in touch with Pa, and if Fred doesn't like it he can pull his crew off the Rocinante. He tells Naomi that they need someone like Pa, and she isn't sure what he means by it.
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Dec 22, 2022 06:15
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Babylon's Ashes, Chapters 21 - 24 I'm so bored. But the Corey team maybe made a mistake? Or maybe I did? Chapter Twenty-One: Jakulski We're back to Medina Station. We're following Jakulski, who was mentioned back in Chapter 4 as Salis' tech supervisor. Someone named Shului is asking him to cover an extra half shift as part of a greeting ceremony for the Free Navy because he has an infected eye and someone he likes is going to be there. Jakulski accepts, even if it costs him going out for a drink with his team. Jakulski heads back to his cabin to get his formal uniform. There's an Expansian paragraph where he lets himself wax philosophical about the meaning of the lights of Medina Station. How many characters have we had, do you think, that conjure up deep meaning over everyday things in order to flesh out the word count? It sticks out to me that Jakulski tosses his jumpsuit into the recycler after he takes it off. Like, I get that the universe has basically magical recycling tech, but I'm not sure at all why you'd need to recycle it in the first place. Jakulski thinks things on Medina are a bit on edge given the Free Navy schism between Pa and Marco. Duarte isn't bothered, apparently. He's sending through resources, advisors, and equipment. He's also already built a ship: the Proteus. First ship to come through the gate that hadn't gone out through it first. In fact, it'd arrived at Medina already. Proteus is maybe the most interesting name for a ship so far in the Expanse, but given the series' general disinterest in meaningful names or even interesting ones, it makes it difficult to care about it. Still, knowing what I know of the Martian splinter group from later novels, it's at least somewhat interesting. Jakulski meets the welcoming party at the Medina airlock. The group off the Proteus wear Martian uniforms but with a different insignia -- no indication of what the new insignia is. Captain Montemayor of the Proteus says they're there to assist Medina in addressing any instability that might come in from Sol. Later on, Roberts -- a member of Jakulski's team -- is telling him that it's Callisto all over again: that is to say, a proxy war. Belters dying for the interests of Earth and Mars. Salis says Marco asks for Duarte to send someone to Medina. Jakulski doesn't agree. Salis says it makes sense -- since Pa knows how the railguns are defended (wait, Pa knows that?) then they need to switch things up. Roberts thinks that Marco is distracted and Duarte's putting his pieces in place. Jakulski isn't sure which is true. Vandercaust says that it's a war and there's no easy narratives. Regardless, Jakulski feels like someone is making Medina to be the solar system's biggest mousetrap -- and he's living inside the cheese. Chapter Twenty-Two: Holden Well, looks like Fred pulled his crew off the Rocinante. Holden doesn't seem to be bothered by it: he doesn't think anyone could replace Alex or Naomi if something bad happened, anyway. There's a pair of ships approaching Ceres -- the Minksy, a ship that had been looted by Michio Pa's people, and a Free Navy gunship that is "probably" one of Pa's. Holden has his crew go over the Rocinante's inventory: they've got bad juice (third-rate, Holden calls it) and only eighty percent of their PDC rounds. Holden checks on his space Youtube channel -- he's put out ten videos. He watches one of them. Naomi shows up on the command deck. Holden says he has to show the people on Earth that everyone is still just one tribe. Sigh. Holden wonders if Fred will let them go out to intercept the incoming ships. Naomi asks why they're doing this. Holden says they can't keep blowing things up to make the situation a good one. Bobbie shows up and takes the gunner seat. The Rocinante undocks from Ceres and they head out toward the incoming ships. The approaching ships paint them with targeting lasers, but no one fires. The OPA gunship is a Martian corvette that is a newer generation of the Rocinante -- smaller, streamlined, probably similar firepower. Its transponder is off. Bobbie wants to lock them. Holden refuses it. Fred calls them up and says that if they end up taking possession of that colony ship then it doesn't come within three thousand klicks of Ceres. If anyone needs help, it happens after the ship has been examined and scanned. The escort paints the Rocinante. Bobbie returns the favor. They enter torpedo and railgun range. No one fires. Holden calls up the escort and asks them to identify themselves. Turns out that the escort ship is the Connaught and Michio Pa greets Holden, saying it's weird to see him again. Chapter Twenty-Three: Pa We swap over to Pa, and hop backward a bit in the timeline. One of Pa's ships, the Munroe, has been taken out. Marco's forces caught up to it as it was answering a distress call from a mining ship, the Corvid. Man, these are some boring-rear end names, Coreys. Long story short: four Free Navy ships caught up to it and blew it to bits. If you're thinking, Milkfred, what's the Munroe, then you're having the same thought I did. Pa hasn't mentioned this ship once in any of her previous chapters, even back in Chapters 15 and 19 when she as reflecting on the condition of her fleet. This is a repeating issue the Coreys have -- just mentioning things off-handedly when we should have had them mentioned once before in order to give them any dramatic impact above 'none at all.' "The Munroe died second" (the opening line of this chapter) really has zero meaning when I have no idea what the Munroe is -- a colony ship, one of Marco's vessels, one of Pa's? It feels like a weak attempt at 'the Xinglong died stupid' back in Leviathan Wakes. Like I said, it's a repeating issue. Probably in every novel (I haven't been keeping track) it feels like there's these developments that would resonate a lot better if they were hinted at, even very slightly, at all prior to them happening. You'd assume the Coreys would figure out sixteen ship names and think, hey, if the Munroe is going to be blown up in Chapter 23, maybe we should name it in Chapters 15 and/or 19 and maybe have the Captain get a few lines of dialogue. Instead, here's our first mention and Pa is like, eh, I barely knew the Captain anyway. The Minsky -- God, these names -- had been about to try and slip through the ring gate when Pa had captured it. Which was lucky, because going through the gate would've led to Medina Station's new railguns shooting it to bits. Which Pa reflects she knew all along. Which is odd because, like I thought back in Chapter 21, it doesn't seem like something Pa knew prior to this point (and the term 'rail gun' does not show up in any of her earlier chapters.) So, Pa reassigned the Serio Mal so she could take the Minsky to Ceres to see Fred. Pa reflects that her flotilla was Marco gifting her the lighter ships, with Marco and Rosenfeld taking the capitals. I know, I know, Milkfred is about to go on about sci-fi navy stuff, but nothing we've seen indicates this. The Pella is a Rocinante-esque corvette/frigate. Nothing in the Free Navy appears to be anything larger than that. Especially when, as Bobbie pointed out back in Nemesis Games, it was only the smaller ships going missing. Pa reflects that no one is special or matters because everyone dies in the end. Then, Holden hails her. Pa considers him "everybody's favorite pawn." She could open up on James Holden and get back into Marco's good graces. Even if she died, it might save her fleet from the Free Navy. Well, as we know, Pa replies to Holden. She offers to transfer the Minsky to them. Holden wonders if it's a trap. It isn't. All of this 'will they shoot, won't they' suspicion lands flat because, like, Pa's spent this whole novel acting against Marco and Holden's an idiot. So, it's kind of surprising when someone fires six torpedoes at the Connaught. Pa doesn't fire because Holden gets upset and opens up with the PDCs, shooting them all down. They basically go back to where they were -- handing over the Minsky. Holden says he has no ide who fired the torpedoes. Michio figures it's Marco. Soon after, Marco says he has proof that Michio Pa is a traitor working for the Belt: images of the Rocinante defending the Connaught. After handing over the Minsky, Pa departs Ceres because their goal was to get close enough to get shot without getting shot. Okay. Pa figures that if no one with power loves them, then they can make their own power. Chapter Twenty-Four: Prax Prax goes through his morning routine: tea and breakfast. Yadda yadda, how Prax makes pancakes, how him and Djuna get along, what he wears... Natalia asks Prax what resistance means. Prax gives her a high-level explanation about electrons, which is funny and fitting. Then, Prax uses an analogy of a straw and juice to actually get Natalia to understand it. What follows might sound like a slight against the Coreys, but it isn't. It'll make sense in a moment, trust me. My understanding of the pair is that they're both creative types with daughters who presumably had a lot of time to house-husband. So, this little conversation between Prax and his step-daughter feels really real and heartfelt in a way that a lot of Expanse exchanges don't. I do like it, I just don't get why it's in this book. Eventually, Prax goes to work. There are Free Navy guards now, openly wearing weapons, and Prax is afraid of them. Prax recalls that in college he studied philosophy but doesn't remember it. Still, he thinks of the phrase "the terror of the normal" which he attributes to a lecture on Heidegger. Now, I studied Heidegger (over a decade ago, jeez) so while I may be wrong, even if a cursory Google search backs up my assumption: it's not Heidegger. If it is, it's obscure. In fact, the only quotes for that point back to Babylon's Ashes itself. I'm reminded of the old German saying in Cibola Burn which, while catchy, doesn't appear to be anything except something the Coreys invented. Anyway, Heidegger. What the Coreys want to do here is allude to the fact that the Free Navy taking control of Ganymede and it becoming the new normal is terrifying. Given the usage of Heidegger, the allusion is, obviously, to Nazism. While the Free Navy uniforms haven't been described, I think most readers will picture them as black. There's the idea: it's terrifying to wake up one day and realize there's black-uniformed bad guys walking around like they own the place. Thing is, I'm pretty sure they're not familiar with Heidegger. Heidegger was a member of the National Socialist party and spoke about the greatness of their philosophy. While he may not have been as anti-Semetic as some of his fellows, he lost a position at his university because people thought the Nazis had too much influence over him. In his later years, he claimed to regret joining the Nazis, but never really reckoned with what they did. Sometimes, he is regarded as being sympathetic to the Nazi idealogy but in a passive sense. I'm not sure which part of his philosophy they're trying to get at with "the terror of the normal." Especially when Prax reflects that he now understands it "better than he had back then" because "this was how things were now. This had become normal." It's like they're positioning Heidegger as an anti-Nazi philosopher who wrote that the true terror of the Nazi party was that they became normal -- that jackbooted thugs walking around with weapons openly displayed on a daily basis without a care in the world is more terrifying than having them beat you to death. Maybe that's true. But I genuinely can't recall Heidegger writing anything like that. I feel like they've maybe mixed up Heidegger and Baudrillard's "desert of the real" and half-remembered it. Or perhaps Arendt's ideas about the banality of evil and, again, misremembered it? Because I don't think that's really accurate to what Prax is describing, either. Arendt's idea about the banality of evil was how evil was basically conducted by administrative cogs in the machine, people who were outright unable to see things from any perspective other than their own, lacking imagination or empathy -- hence, banal. And, of course, we could spend pages discussing whether Arendt's perspective was correct, too, or whether she had blind spots herself. The alternative to the Coreys getting it wrong is that, well, Prax is an idiot and he doesn't know what he's talking about -- but I hate this response. If that's true, then they devoted about two-hundred words to something Prax misremembered while expecting the audience to be like me and catch it, and maybe smile beatifically at how, haha, Prax got it wrong? In this moment where Prax is genuinely experiencing fight-or-flight at the sight of the Free Navy goons and wondering if they'll ever be laughing and flirting with Mei? I suppose I'll point out that this isn't the first time the Coreys have invoked a philosophical idea and botched it. In the TV series adaptation, mention was made of the idea that the native Americans who had seen Cortez's ships couldn't conceive of them and that this made the ships literally invisible. When called out on this as being, well, dumb, the Corey team Twitter mentioned that the point of the scene was that the Rocinante crew were idiots and mindlessly repeating the story. Yeah, I don't get it either. Anyway, Prax gets to work. They discuss the Hy1810 data, which Prax says he'll handle now. He ends up not doing that and watching one of Holden's videos, the one with Alis Caspar. Then, it looks like someone named Fatima Crehan is doing her own video back to Holden. And someone from Shanghai is doing the same. In the end, Prax doesn't look at the Hy1810 data and keeps it under administrative lock. He goes home and has dinner with his family. Djuna asks if he had a bad day at work. Prax says, no, he thinks it was maybe very good. We are 47% of the way through this novel.
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Jan 2, 2023 09:51
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Vlogging Heidegger In Ganymede
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Jan 2, 2023 15:40
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I'm really enjoying this re-read - you're up to about as far as I managed to get with both the novels and the TV series. One thing that has stuck with me is how weird it is that the Expanse is consistently described as hard SF. As you've noted a few times at various points in the re-read, the series' roots as an RPG are pretty clear, and many of the things that get pointed at as being fresh and interesting (like, say, Belters or the Earth/Mars conflict) have been done better in other works, or are cliches in their own right. It comes across in a ton of different ways (quite a few of which you've already pointed out), but the one that sticks with me is the economics of the setting. To take a very simple example, we know that space travel is relatively inexpensive. Not quite as cheap as modern air travel, but not that far off - there are several sections set on what look like regular commercial passenger traffic (like Amos' short section in Nemesis Games, or Miller's in Leviathan Wakes). Similarly, owning your own spacecraft capable of going more or less anywhere in the solar system is achievable for fairly small groups of people like, say, Pa's family group, maybe even individuals. And... that's it. That's about as far as the idea gets taken. Except each of these ships also has a fusion reactor capable of powering a torchship from Earth to Jupiter in a matter of weeks, which doesn't really gel with a setting where resource constraints drive most (all?) of the conflict. It's hardly the biggest problem with the novels, but again comes back to your point about the novels being written on a "top-down" basis.
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Jan 6, 2023 09:08
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What's the deal with Babylon's Ashes? No, I mean, seriously: what's with this book? We're (practically) half way through and beyond stopping the rock strikes on Earth, what's happened exactly? We're about seventy thousand words in, and nothing has happened. Holden got upset that one of his dads used a slur in the aftermath of the worst crime against humanity in the species' history. Marco's allies have basically already turned on him, including an outright coup from Pa and her insipidly boring polycule. Filip shot a dude and has wandered down some space corridors. It's like each character had one or two plot beats and then something jammed the works up. This is unlike the previous novels. Even Cibola Burn, which I would've said was the weakest prior to this one, had things happen by this point: a shuttle blew up, more company goons were killed, Murtry executed the ringleader in cold blood, Basia ended up on the Rocinante, Naomi got captured by the corporate goons, Murtry killed all the terrorists. I suppose I should mention that when I say things happening I mean events or moments that alter the trajectory of the plot or reveal to us something about the character and their internal worlds. All the other novels have generally done this -- by the halfway point, things have happened, things have been revealed. Well, I have a theory. I hope you're excited for another post where I speculate wildly based on shaky evidence, because I am! The top-rated review for Babylon's Ashes on Goodreads used to be a one-star review that got very in-depth into the issues with the book. Unfortunately, it's been deleted in the time since I checked it out a few weeks ago and the day I created this post. But that review is where I encountered this idea: the Babylon's Ashes that we are reading is not the original idea for the storyline. The commenter mentioned, and I'm really paraphrasing here, that Babylon's Ashes was to be a novel that was somewhat similar to Cibola Burn: while everyone is busy with Marco, colonists wake up something strange and alien. Only they're not waking up the protomolecule builders or their technology -- they waking up the things that killed them, and they're pissed that someone has been squatting on their turf while utilizing the tech of the builders. From memory, they didn't have much in the way of evidence (although I think it was posted years ago, so, there's some interest there with some of the overlap of how the series went.) It's a pretty crazy theory because it would constitute an extensive rewrite of not just this novel but the next three. But these novels have never been that well planned out, have they? But one thing I found compelling is that this idea is actually present in these novels. It's also such a small idea, one that I don't think I've ever seen readers of the Expanse bring it up as a potential dropped plotline. Is there any textual evidence? Well, yeah, actually. Let's look at the two most direct (emphasis mine): Nemesis Games, Chapter 36 posted:“With the silence from Medina Station, all contact with the colonial planets has been lost. We can only speculate on the significance of the partial report from the Fólkvangr settlement concerning alien activity in the southern hemisphere of New Triton —” Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 8 posted:“Frontiers are dangerous places. Things happen there that wouldn’t if it were more civilized. Wakefield went silent. Some people are saying they woke something up there, but no one’s sent a ship out to look. Who has time, yeah? Got a war here to finish. Then we can look back out.” So, speaking of the state of this novel, let's take a look at the blurb: Babylon's Ashes, back cover posted:A revolution brewing for generations has begun in fire. It will end in blood. This is a fairly odd blurb for the novel we're currently reading. The first paragraph is more like background to the ending of Nemesis Games so, hey, whatever. But everything on from that doesn't feel accurate. For example, we're halfway into this novel and this mission to Medina Station hasn't been mentioned (although it will become the climax of the novel.) Is there really a struggle for power going on? Earth, Mars, and the Johnson OPA have gotten together pretty easily and Inaros' Free Navy has essentially zero legitimacy. Is the chaos growing? Not exactly -- Earth isn't under threat anymore and Marco's plans involve idealizing Afghani militants and giving up all the valuable territory in a setting which has said, time and time again, that ships are easily tracked in space. And what's that about things happening out past the ring gates, in the uncanny spaces? Who are the few damaged and desperate people? Everything we've seen is happening within Sol or Medina. Nothing has happened out past the ring gates at all! How has the alien mystery deepened? There's been no pivot from the Free Navy to the protomolecule builder murder mystery and, not to spoil my own Let's Read, but there won't be one. Admittedly, this could be the writer of the blurb doing their best to make gold out of lead. A book like Babylon's Ashes, with its meandering slice-of-life storytelling, wide cast of one-off perspective characters, and lack of strong narrative spine or compelling antagonist, could be difficult for someone to blurb in a way that grabs someone's attention. What sticks out to me is that neither Marco nor Filip are mentioned. But it's also nothing like the blurbs for the previous books in the series, either. Now, I don't know too much about the workings of the industry, but I feel like if your blurb is disregarding over half of the novel and focusing on the events right at the end (and arguably eventing others) then something might be a little shaky. But beyond that, we can just look at the existing blurbs. Leviathan Wakes, Caliban's War, Abaddon's Gate, and Cibola Burn all deal with the premise of the novel and the initial narrative hook. LW: a ship's captain and a detective look for a missing girl and stumble into a conspiracy. CW: a ship's captain helps a scientist find his missing daughter on Ganymede and stumble into a conspiracy. AG: the crew of the Rocinante join a scientific expedition and someone wants to kill Holden. CB: a new colony is torn apart by violence and Holden thinks his mission is meant to fail... See? That's all stuff you learn in the first few chapters. Babylon's Ashes blurb's mission to Medina reflects something that's going to enter the narrative about 60% of the way into the novel! That's like Leviathan Wakes' back cover mentioning that Julie is dead and Eros is crawling with vomit zombies! Isn't that odd? Also, the title. What/where is the titular Babylon? The previous novels have generally had very simple matches. Leviathan Wakes -- Eros is the leviathan that wakes up, Miller goes into the mouth of the beast. Caliban's War -- messy, but a half-monster war. Abaddon's Gate -- a gate to Hell. See? But where's Babylon and what's with its ashes? The first thought might be Earth, but I don't think it matches. The term Babylon can mean a decadent, evil society and I can see how that could be Earth but this novel has basically stated that no matter how bad the UN might be, it didn't deserve the attack, and the decadent Earth rhetoric has basically been Martian propaganda. You'd expect Marco to maybe call Earth Babylon (and how come no link has been drawn between our Alexander and Babylon? Alexander conquered Babylon!) Historically, Babylon was the capital of an Empire, and the UN might count, and so the idea is simple: Earth is Babylon and it is metaphorically burning, so to speak. But my issue with that is that Babylon was an ancient empire -- hold that thought. It could be that Babylon refers to Medina Station. Babylon was a meeting point and centre of trade, an important cultural nexus. This is why JMS named his space station Babylon 5. And while I think it's pretty clear the Coreys have watched Babylon 5 at this point, thanks to their usage of specific Babylon 5 terminology in this novel, I don't think they'd be that open to referring to their rotating drum space station as a Babylon. Like, not to sound like an rear end, but there's nothing in these novels that makes me think these guys love space operas. I think the only 'clever' reference we've seen is to another sci-fi work is The Martian. And just while we're on the topic of Medina Station -- doesn't everything with the massive Laconian railguns feel like a bit of an rear end-pull? Not only do the Laconians manufacture these incredible guns in a matter of, what, days or weeks using new alien technology they've only just begun to study, but they can strap them to the ring station without any hiccups? And let's take this a little broader: isn't everything about this novel really sloppy, going right down to the initial hook of Holden and the Rocinante crew stopping the attacks on Earth? So, if I can put on my crazy theory hat again, or maybe I never took it off, I think the titular Babylon would've referred to the capital world of the protomolecule builder empire, with the protomolecule builders having conquered it or just settled in the ruins. This would fit, historically, with ancient Babylon being the seat of power for multiple empires. It being a graveyard world, in a sense, would also fit with the idea of the ashes. The colonists would've sifted through the ashes and, much like Cibola Burn, ended up waking something up -- only something much worse than a few malfunctioning servitor bug-bots and malfunctioning fusion reactors. With all this in mind, I could see a version of Babylon's Ashes following the crew of the Rocinante as they fight their way to Medina Station, potentially killing Marco toward the start of the novel. At the same time, we're following some people on 'Babylon' who end up waking up the protomolecule killers. Events go down at or around Medina Station, giving the Rocinante crew some first-hand experience with the alien threat. Then, on 'Babylon', our damaged and desperate people, potentially including the crew of the Rocinante, manage to save the day. But there's proof of the proto-killer threat out there, and who knows if they're waking up somewhere else... I could see that being an ending for a second trilogy. The only thing that complicates that is that I'm pretty sure that they went from four books to nine. It could be that they wanted to go for something like that, only to be stymied by not having the time to do it -- the Coreys pumped these books out which may or may not have been to their detriment. It could be that the only way they realized they could make their story work was if Laconia was the only place with active protomolecule tech. It could just be that the editors hated it. I don't know. As much as I can criticize the Coreys, Babylon's Ashes is so bizarre that I find it extremely difficult to believe that anything about this novel is their initial idea for it. It feels like stretching a few paragraphs of story into fifty-something chapters. It's Milhouse crying about getting to the fireworks factory.
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Jan 6, 2023 11:36
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manyleeks posted:I'm really enjoying this re-read - you're up to about as far as I managed to get with both the novels and the TV series. Hey, thanks for reading along! I think General Battuta's comment that the series is basically wearing hard sci-fi clothes as an aesthetic is the best way of understanding it. It made everything fall into place for me. It really isn't hard to imagine these stories in a form that's divorced from their sci-fi worldbuilding. Leviathan Wakes could very easily be a near-future thriller about a detective and a ex-navy captain stumbling onto a conspiracy in the deep ocean, y'know? Earth is the USA, Mars is China, the OPA is the middle east/third world/Africa/whatever. Which is part of I think why people talk about it as being original hard sci-fi. The Expanse managed to snag an audience outside people who read hard sci-fi, so, exposed a bunch of people to ideas that can be pretty captivating if not exactly original who hadn't seen them before. As I've mentioned, there's a reason why so many people were running sci-fi roleplaying games with Earth/Mars/Outer worldbuilding. The 'realistic' elements, like the focus on missiles and PDCs, also make it easy for the audience to digest and the focus on time and space allows the Coreys to get away with, well, rather slow 'action scenes' while feeling like they're being 'realistic.' I mentioned in Cinema Discusso earlier that I think the flaw is that the Coreys think realistic means banal and boring instead of reflecting down-to-earth drama and consequence. The weird thing about the torchships is that the series reminds us every so often that there are ships without Epstein drives. I think Nemesis Games mentioned a bunch, for example. So, maybe Epstein drives are expensive? But, as you say, it seems like every ship we see has one. And the Razorback has an Epstein drive, and I think Nemesis Games tried to imply it was a ship that wasn't worth selling? I'll be interested in seeing what you think of things after this novel! Babylon's Ashes is definitely the low point, and it's no surprise the TV series got terminated here, but the next few novels certainly go in some unusual directions. EDIT: One small thing I might mention is that, and this feels really weird to say, but if The Expanse is making a lot of bad decisions when it comes to meshing worldbuilding and story, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (yes, really), which I've only started playing for the first time, does a lot of things right. Even though it has FTL, dogfights, and tough Martians who are ludicrously bloodthirsty and villainous to near the point of self-parody, it clearly understands how worldbuilding should work for the benefit of the story being told. Whereas The Expanse feels like the worldbuilding is something the story has to navigate around. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 12:03 on Jan 6, 2023 |
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Jan 6, 2023 11:59
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That's a fairly good point, and far be it from me to complain that we live in a universe in which something like the Expanse becomes commercially successful enough to justify a six-season high budget TV series. There's nothing wrong with adopting that aesthetic, either - hell, I'd read a novel predicated on "space-cop fights crime on Ceres!" in this universe if it were written by someone else. I am hoping that the Coreys do more with the protomolecule plot. To me, that was always the most interesting and novel part of the setting, but Babylon's Ashes is book six and we've had, what, three books that actually included the protomolecule in any meaningful way (and that's being generous to Leviathan Wakes, which is more a story about an amoral corporation having access to a bioweapon than it is about the protomolecule in and of itself). It invites comparison to some extent with things like Ian Douglas' Semper Fi series, which has a very similar premise (and to my mind the Coreys have, so far, handled it better). Milkfred E. Moore posted:EDIT: One small thing I might mention is that, and this feels really weird to say, but if The Expanse is making a lot of bad decisions when it comes to meshing worldbuilding and story, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (yes, really), which I've only started playing for the first time, does a lot of things right. Even though it has FTL, dogfights, and tough Martians who are ludicrously bloodthirsty and villainous to near the point of self-parody, it clearly understands how worldbuilding should work for the benefit of the story being told. Whereas The Expanse feels like the worldbuilding is something the story has to navigate around. This is what feels so frustrating about the Expanse setting. Oddly, I think the TV series does a much better job of this than the Expanse novels themselves. The Belter tattoos, for example - in addition to being a neat visual shorthand for identifying characters, it also tells you a lot about the sort of culture and philosophy the Belters have that they're identifying themselves based on a prior generation's hardship.
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Jan 7, 2023 23:26
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manyleeks posted:This is what feels so frustrating about the Expanse setting. Oddly, I think the TV series does a much better job of this than the Expanse novels themselves. The Belter tattoos, for example - in addition to being a neat visual shorthand for identifying characters, it also tells you a lot about the sort of culture and philosophy the Belters have that they're identifying themselves based on a prior generation's hardship. The TV series did so much for the Belters. It surprises me again and again that the collar seal neck tattoos were a TV series invention. Making the Belter idea be more cultural than physiological was a great change, and it's something that feels really relevant to this update! Babylon's Ashes, Chapters 25 - 28 Marco Inaros ambushes the Rocinante at a three-to-one advantage. I'd like to see Ol Jimmy Holden wriggle his way out of this! Ah, well, nevertheless. Chapter Twenty-Five: Fred "James Holden has just declared piracy legal," Avasarala is saying to Fred. She's fairly upset that Holden took in a "pirated ship" from "a pirate" with a "cut of the loving booty." She thinks Fred let him do it. Avasarala says she understands that Holden is Holden, but she'd expected better from Fred. It occurs to me that I'm not actually sure what went down. Like, is Avasarala correct? Before the chapter it appeared in, the Minsky had never been mentioned. I assume it was not so much a pirated ship as one Pa had rescued (indeed, this is basically what Pa's chapter says) and that it hadn't been stripped for supplies. For the master politician we're told Avasarala is, she's coming off as a bit of an idiot here. Couldn't you swing it as Pa performing a humanitarian mission? The colony ship was presumably the property of Mars or Earth, so, it's less piracy and more returning to its rightful place, to to speak. She just turned on Marco, after all. It feels like the novel felt it was overdue for a 'Holden will be Holden' sort of moment and they really wanted one to happen. Avasarala tells Fred that Richards has gotten the Martian parliament in order. Admiral Souther wants them to take Rhea or Pallas. Admiral Stacey -- Stacey, really? -- wants to avoid stretching their fleet too thin. Fred thinks either strategy is a mistake but doesn't explain why. Then, Avasarala mentions there were two more rocks thrown at Earth, one of them with stealth coating, and Avasarala says there could be hundreds more of them spaced out over years or centuries and they'd have no way of knowing about it. So, what was the point of hitting the Azure Dragon? Seriously! Back in Chapter 3, it's painted as being the ship responsible for keeping the combined fleet pinned near Earth for fear of rocks. The loss of it led Marco to tell his inner circle that their whole sunward strategy was toast. I remember pointing out that this is the exact problem with what the novel had set up: just because you take out the spotter ship, as pointless as it would be, there's no way of knowing how many more rocks had been thrown. You'd really have to consider that the apparent spotter ship is bait or otherwise a distraction. But the whole combined navy moved into an offensive strategy, went out to Ceres, and, oh, here's more rocks which whoever is left just so happens to shoot down, even though one had stealth coating! Despite these earlier events in the novel, Avasarala doesn't seem concerned by the two rock strikes beyond that her great grandchildren may still be shooting down Free Navy rocks. Is there another spotter ship? Are they going to recall any of the combined fleet toward Earth? No idea and seemingly not. Fred takes a shower. Avasarala mentions that the situation on Earth is getting worse. She tells Fred not to let Holden make any more laws. Fred's been awake for thirty hours attending to various crises on Ceres and he's tiring. Fred reminisces about his first lover, Diane Redstone, and a phrase she picked out from a poem by Robert Frost. Fred replies to Avasarala, telling her that he'll try to keep Holden in line. He'll be seizing the colony ship Minsky and sending a third of its cargo back to Earth. Fred goes to see Holden. Holden's annoyed that someone shot at them, Fred says they shot at the pirates, and that it wasn't his people. Apparently, it was Free Navy sympathizers who'd raided a supply dump to get the munitions. What, half a dozen anti-capital ship torpedoes which they then fired from Ceres? I don't know, my credulity is pretty strained. The book needed something exciting to happen in that chapter so, uh, sudden torpedo strike! Fred is still set on conducting his big OPA meeting, but the people won't come to Ceres. So, he's doing it on Tycho. The Rocinante will be his ride. They both know Inaros will attempt to disrupt the meeting. It may give Pa some space, too, although Fred still doesn't think allying with her is a good idea. They'll head out in four days. When Fred leaves the Rocinante, he has a reply from Avasarala: she wants him to pass a list of necessary supplies for Earth to Pa. "Apparently," she says, "we're all loving pirates now." Chapter Twenty-Six: Filip Rosenfeld is hosting a dinner for Marco and the other captains aboard Pallas Station. Marco and Rosenfeld are chatting about the concept of purification and Pa's mutiny. Marco, of course, is saying that he had anticipated it. He didn't know if she would break, but he was ready for the eventuality. Meanwhile, Filip is eyeing some of the women at the dinner and hoping some of them are checking him out. None of them are. Marco continues his talk with Rosenfeld, mentioning that he has plans for anyone who might break away from the Free Navy. Rosenfeld is concerned that Pa will build support by giving out supplies. Marco says his next strike will show everyone how weak she is. It's difficult to care about Marco as an antagonist. Even if we hadn't already had virtually everyone in his inner circle mention that he's a weirdo with delusions of grandeur who people have put their blind faith in for nebulous reasons, it's pretty clear by now that he's just a blowhard. Marco says that Johnson and "his cobbled-up fleet" (is he meaning the big combined fleet?) can't do anything but sit at Ceres. If they move toward the outer planets, they can be attacked. If they retreat sunward, they leave the Free Navy to retake Ceres. Filip imagines Rosenfeld's responses: that they've been looking weak since they left Ceres, that Pa has managed to evade Free Navy retribution, that Fred is giving orders from Ceres and Marco isn't. It's an odd paragraph and I'm not sure whether it's supposed to be, like, Filip projecting his thoughts onto Rosenfeld. Marco says they just have to wait. Rosenfeld mentions that Fred is trying to meet with various OPA bigwigs. Marco says they can let Johnson talk. Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 26 posted:“I told you before that Johnson would be off the board, and he will be. We didn’t take him at Tycho, and we’ll take him somewhere else. He is my white whale, and I will hunt him to the end of time.” Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 26 posted:Men have patterns, he said. And Fred Johnson’s were misdirection followed by overwhelming force. They've been sitting there for days. Despite the lack of anything happening, Marco is energized and excited. Turns out that the Free Navy strike group has been there before the Minsky arrived at Ceres, but Marco elected not to attack. He just grabbed the footage of the Rocinante defending the Connaught. No mention is made of him ordering the launch or anything. Filip has another 'cryptic' dream sequence. Karal wakes Filip and he heads up to the command deck. The Pella is ready for battle. Marco says that the hour has now arrived: Fred Johnson is heading to Tycho. But, more than that, he's heading aboard the Rocinante which is now beyond the protective range of Ceres. So, they can get Holden, Naomi, and Fred -- three birds, one stone! Marco has Filip take control of the Pella's guns and torpedoes. The Pella and her two partner vessels burn for the Rocinante. Three-on-one. As Filip thinks, given the odds arrayed, the Rocinante can only die. And it's a fair assumption: three modern Rocinante-like ships against an aging predecessor, striking from an ambush. The Rocinante spots them, paints them with a targeting laser. Marco gives the order to fire at will. Chapter Twenty-Seven: Bobbie We swap right over to Bobbie. The Pella and its partners have fired torpedoes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it does not appear to be a tactically sound engagement for Marco Inaros. As Bobbie considers it, they're millions of klicks away, on bad vectors and, oh, the Rocinante is already past them. The only hard decision they'll have to make is whether they will be able to flip and brake toward Tycho. Despite this, Bobbie thinks that they'll need backup from Tycho to avoid the Free Navy ships pounding them into scrap. The torpedoes are still over an hour out from PDC range. Fred Johnson is calling up Ceres to get them to fire some long-range torpedoes. The Rocinante is on a three-g burn, which is about the best they can do on their third-rate juice. The Free Navy ships are on about a six, and this is something of a bother for me. So, perhaps the biggest thing about Belters is that they can't handle normal gravity. Naomi can't spend long on the surface of Ilus without feeling sore. Going down to see Holden's parents on Earth was considered an impossibility. Therefore, should Earthers and Martians not have a massive advantage over Belters when it comes to space combat, then? The Rocinante may have one Belter aboard, but the Free Navy is all Belters. Surely the Rocinante would have the advantage of endurance. Of course, perhaps my understanding of physics and biology is in error, but I don't think there's much distinction between one-gee of planet gravity and one-gee of acceleration. While I can't really be bothered to go back and check, I think maybe Caliban's War mentioned that the Rocinante crew had to account for Naomi's Belter physiology and so they did not burn at a full gee if they could ever help it. Nemesis Games definitely mentioned that being under even one gee burn made Naomi's body hurt. Additionally, I also had trouble picturing where exactly Marco's attack squadron was in relation to Ceres and Tycho during Filip's chapter. The revelation that they've started attacking once the Rocinante is already past them doesn't help me much. Okay, I guess Marco was waiting for the Rocinante to be outside the range of Ceres -- but does that mean Marco's ships were hiding within Ceres' defensive range? I'm assuming Marco would've been watching Ceres like a hawk. Did he not see the Rocinante until it was already well underway? Again, not to get on a space warfare tangent, but this feels like an odd setup. Would it not make more sense for Marco to put his ships somewhere between Ceres and Tycho, and then to ambush the Rocinante once it's outside of Ceres' range but not yet past them? That way, the Rocinante has to either turn and deaccelerate to head back to the safety Ceres (allowing Marco's ships to catch up to them, the exact thing Bobbie is worried about when they brake for Tycho) or try to punch through the gauntlet at maximum speed which would risk bringing them into close-quarters combat with three warships. Bobbie looks over the tactical plot. Despite her initial thought being that Marco's ships were on bad vectors, they're now on reckless, aggressive vectors. She thinks that if Ceres fires off a barrage of missiles, then one of Marco's ships will turn off to shoot them down. But why? Like, seriously, why? Not only would the missiles need to take time to reach the ships, but the previous books have also established that a formation of warships is able to defend itself much more effectively than a single warship. Anyway, Bobbie figures that she wants to die in battle, because: Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 27 posted:She wanted to win, to protect her tribe and wipe the enemy into a paste of blood and dismay. She also quotes Horatius to herself -- facing fearful odds, yadda yadda. The Free Navy ships fire six more torpedoes, for a total of sixteen incoming. Holden wonders why they're spacing them out because, y'know, if they fired a massive spread at once they could just overwhelm the Rocinante easily. And again, why don't they? Marco wants to kill Fred, Naomi, and Holden. Like, he doesn't give a poo poo about capturing them for personal execution. He just wants them dead. The Shinsakuto abandons formation to flip and burn because Fred just got confirmation that Ceres will assist and is, presumably, firing torpedoes. How far are they from Ceres exactly? Surely the Shinsakuto has no need to break formation so immediately. Why is this happening? Well, we know why. Here's the thing about 'hard' sci-fi combat like this. Combat in a setting like this is rather mathematical. This isn't Star Wars where your Corran Horns and Wedge Antilles can pull off wild maneuvers that defy the odds. The Rocinante has x amount of torpedoes it can fire. The Rocinante's PDCs can stop x amount of incoming torpedoes (and a few more if Alex pushes it.) This upper-end number is given to us by Bobbie: ten. If more than ten torpedoes come in on the Rocinante at around the same time, they're dead. Bobbie directly thinks this, and even reflects that people on the Free Navy ships would be coming to the same conclusion. Meanwhile, the Free Navy can fire 3x torpedoes and shoot down 3x the amount in return. Even if the Free Navy ships can't fire a salvo of ten at once, we've seen that torpedoes can be programmed to do all sorts of things. They could probably drop a few volleys out, then shoot them toward the Rocinante en masse -- essentially, firing them all at once. Basically, the point is this: in a three-on-one fight, where the attackers have not only numerical but technological superiority, there's nothing the Rocinante can do. Remember, the Pella and its accompanying vessels are similar to the Connaught: the next generation of the corvette-class, if not a new class of warship altogether. That is, of course, if the three ships are commanded with anything approaching reasonable competency. (By the way, these ships are called corvettes in Chapter 22 but called frigates in this chapter and there's no way the Coreys can't be doing this mix-up deliberately at this point.) Anyway, these ships are not commanded well -- as mentioned, the Shinsakuto has peeled off because Ceres has just fired torpedoes at targets outside its defensive radius. What is that protective radius, exactly? Even outside it, Ceres was still able to fire torpedoes that prompted the Shinsakuto to take a defensive posture. The Rocinante accelerates and Alex and Bobbie manage to shoot down the first ten torpedoes -- but it's close. Alex wonders whether they should go on the offensive against the remaining two ships that are closing the distance. Man, the Shinsakuto must be able to really move! The Rocinante fires five torpedoes -- a third of its stores -- but the Pella and Koto shoot them all down. Then, Bobbie comes up with something pretty cool. I'm not sure how to put it but, basically, they kick the Rocinante into a 360 spin and fire the railgun at the 180 point. On second thought, I guess it's a 360 No Scope. Yeah. Well, it worked. They hit the Koto and it drops its core, taking it out of the fight. They try the move on the Pella, but it dodges the shot. The Pella launches torpedoes but "without the Shinsakuto and Koto to box them in" (what), there's no threat. Now, whoever would lose the battle would be whoever would run out of PDCs or torpedoes first. Bobbie sends a message to Holden to distract them and Holden does a tightbeam to the Pella. Another railgun shot, another dodge. The Rocinante is on a ten-gee burn and the Pella is keeping pace. Bobbie figures out that the Pella is -- sigh -- always dodging to starboard to evade the railgun. She tests it and, yep, the Pella dodges the same way. Bobbie realizes that, yes, there's actually no such thing as PDC range. And this is a small critique of the Rocinante's railgun -- the PDCs themselves basically make the railgun unnecessary. As Bobbie says, the PDC rounds don't evaporate or slow down, leaving each shot with the exact same energy it had when it left the barrel. So, Bobbie fires a burst from the PDCs to Pella's starboard, then three torpedoes to keep the Pella busy, and then times the railgun to fire at just the right point -- and the Pella dodges straight into the PDC rounds, taking a bunch of hits and veering off. Bobbie fires five more torpedoes at the Pella and the ship retreats from battle. Alex and Bobbie cheer their victory. But then Bobbie realizes there's a problem. A medical alarm is going off. Now, for everything I've said about this chapter and its wonky logic, I actually think it's a really cool setpiece. The Rocinante is outgunned and there's a bit of tension with it being this battle of attrition where every torpedo counts. The railgun no-scope is fun. Bobbie figuring out how to catch the Pella with the PDCs is cool, even if it depends on whoever is driving the Pella being extremely dumb. The problem with it is that the Coreys wrote a no-win situation, backed the Rocinante crew into a corner, and then, let's be honest, had to machete a way to their win, cutting through their worldbuilding like jungle explorers. This chapter is one of the ones that I think really illustrates that idea of the series wearing hard sci-fi as an aesthetic. This is a really fun battle! It just feels dissonant in the context of the wider series and, so, the Rocinante's victory depends on a series of contrivances. Or it depends on Marco being an absurdly poor tactician who botched an overwhelming three-to-one advantage. There'd be ways to fix it. Easy ones. The simplest is just to have it so Marco wants to capture Holden and/or Fred to execute them or put them on a show trial or both. That way, it'd be more of an endurance test and help explain why Marco doesn't just dump a dozen torpedoes at the ship carrying all three of his nemeses. It's also a bit of a problem with the rotating perspectives. I'm just not interested in how the Rocinante crew will get out of it. There's no danger. The Rocinante doesn't even take a hit! As a reader, I'm more interested in how Marco will gently caress it up. The TV series keeps the ambush in, but changes virtually everything about it to make it, well, work. And it's genuinely exciting! I'll talk about it in a follow-up post. Chapter Twenty-Eight: Holden Holden remembers that when he left the Earth Navy, he'd been happy that he'd never have to see any more ship-to-ship fighting. But he reflects now, with everything that's happened, he'd have seen less fighting had he stayed in the military. Oddly, Holden thinks he isn't in charge in this battle. Also, Fred Johnson's crew is back on the Rocinante. Yeah. The Shinsakuto falls away to engage the torpedoes from Ceres. The Koto and Pella are gaining. The Rocinante spins and puts a railgun round through the Koto. Naomi doesn't take the stress of the turn well. Holden considers telling Bobbie that she can't keep pulling those maneuvers because they have Belters onboard, but figures he has to hate it and endure. Eight-gee impacts and turns are pretty bad, it seems... but the Rocinante and Pella are burning harder than that! It's an odd thing to draw attention to given how the Free Navy are all Belters. If I'm being generous, I might suppose that Naomi is a 'severe' Belter and therefore more vulnerable to the gee forces than Marco and Filip who, as we saw in an early Chapter 2, don't consider themselves to be as 'severe' as some other Belters. But, like I've said, it is a little weird that the face of the Free Navy is this really, really handsome guy. Like, not handsome for a Belter or anything, but handsome for an Earther. I genuinely think the Coreys either overlooked, forgot, or retconned this. Bobbie tells Holden to distract the Pella. Holden tightbeams the Pella. He gets eye-to-eye with Marco Inaros. Given the speed, neither of them can talk, so they just stare at each other. Marco ends up showing Holden Filip. Holden imagines it as a way of Marco saying: "she may be with you now, but I hosed her first." Holden considers Filip a child and that there're mistakes you make when you're young. The Pella takes a hit and withdraws. Holden... disarms the torpedoes that Bobbie fired at the Pella! Then, the medical alarm is going off, and Naomi tells Holden that Fred is having a stroke. Holden orders Alex to cut thrust. Bobbie hauls Fred to the medbay. Luckily, the Pella doesn't seem to realize the Rocinante has made itself wickedly vulnerable. When they reach the medbay, however, Bobbie reports. Fred is dead. Later, Amos and Clarissa prepare the body for burial. Holden thinks that death was random but mundane. Fred was old, had high blood pressure, and they'd been in a hard burn with bad juice. Back in his quarters, Holden and Noami talk about Fred and his history. Holden thinks they'll have to tell everyone at Tycho that Marco won -- Fred is dead. Naomi says Marco didn't win and that if the negotiations can't work without Fred then they can still win without the support of the OPA. "Only the war," Holden says. "Not the part that matters." So, that's it. Beyond the attack on Earth, Marco's biggest victory had been that Fred Johnson had a stroke. A 3:1 tactical advantage and Marco's sole claim to winning it came down to Fred randomly dying. Not a single other character in The Expanse has ever died from this. On the one hand, it feels right (certainly better than how they gave it to Alex in the TV series) but it's not really interesting, either. What's bothering me about Babylon's Ashes is that it's drawing such a focus on the space warfare elements, but it's probably the weakest part of the Corey toolbox. The Azure Dragon was nonsense, but no one in the novel seems to notice or care. The plot of Babylon's Ashes is this weird background offensive by Earth and Mars against the Free Navy. The Pella's ambush of the Rocinante doesn't make much sense. They're putting such an emphasis on the things I'd say they're actively bad at. We are now 54% of the way through this novel, and the worst thing that has happened as a consequence of Marco Inaros' insurrection has been Fred having a stroke. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Jan 8, 2023 |
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Jan 8, 2023 01:31
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It makes sense that Marco would want to take out the Rocinante but what doesn't make sense is nobody thinking about it. Surely if you (Jimmy Holden) are carrying VIPs to an important meeting, you file a flight plan, and someone in the military says "You know the Free Navy will see your departure and will want to take a shot at you, let's give you some escorts". This is like Churchill getting in a plane to meet up with Stalin and Roosevelt by flying over, I don't know, Nazi occupied Norway: an attack might not be guaranteed, but it would be really easy! And then Marco says "of course the Rocinante will have escorts, so we'll have to draw them off by attacking them in force from behind, and when they drop back to screen the Rocinante I'll come in from the other side and 1v1 the Rocinante and totally own them" and there, you've got your set piece. It's a very weird bit of Expansian physics that ships moving through space always have fairly low relative velocities. By this I mean, like, they meet up to fight and they're able to exchange fire for hours. In reality, if you were to burn as hard as possible to intercept someone also burning hard, and you're coming in from anywhere other than behind them, odds are very good you'd blast pass each other at rear end-tearing speeds that would make a low Earth orbit satellite look like a slowpoke. (For an easy demonstration, imagine launching a satellite into orbit around Earth going east to west, then another going west to east, then ordering them to fight each other.) This could make for a really cool fight! It's like a medieval joust: you just go at each other blasting away with everything and then you flash past in a blink and maybe someone's dead, maybe you're both dead. It would also involve the kind of super high G divert maneuvers that would absolutely kill people. But no, Expanse ships always just kinda craaawl together while exchanging torpedoes, like they're very big Soviet and American warships playing Harpoon. There's a bit at the start of this chapter I'm never sure whether I like or detest, about Marco's ships being like wolves and everyone's so loving hyped to kill ol' Jimmy. The thing that doesn't work about it is it makes them sound like a bunch of Brazilian Counter-Strike players rushing B talking about how hard they're gonna gently caress the other team's moms. They're popping off so hard about how macho and cool they feel that it's obvious they're going to eat poo poo. The Free Navy in general is associated with this kind of bro machismo that I buy coming from Marco but, I don't know, feels weird and almoooooost a little racist as an all-pervading trait. I say racist because...they feel a little Hispanic/South American coded a lot of the time? Maybe I am the racist one. Maybe I'm reading too much into Belter slang. But they seem way more coded as Mexicans, than as say, Chinese people, or Persians like Keon Alexander who plays Marco. And with that comes all this hot-blooded machismo stuff and I dunno, it's weird. Is this like a sort of historical determinist "the underclass will always be poorly educated and therefore into sex and killing and honor and posturing?" Is it just something they thought would be interesting to read? I'd much rather read about an actual Mexican revolutionary than Marco, so if they're going to take inspiration from Hispanic culture I wish they'd actually dig into the history. Instead we get, uh, Alexander the Great comparisons? Anyway I'm just gonna post, maybe this is all stupid, I dunno.
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Jan 8, 2023 05:29
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General Battuta posted:It makes sense that Marco would want to take out the Rocinante but what doesn't make sense is nobody thinking about it. They do have a mention by Fred in his chapter where he says he can only take the Rocinante as the OPA negotiators don't want any Earth or Martian ships present. I imagine this is the way the Coreys wanted to isolate the Rocinante, but it neglects the fact that surely the OPA would be able to scrounge up one or two ships to escort one of the most important people in the Solar system during a time of war. The flight plan filed by Holden with the agency would, of course, list him, his men and Mr Johnson here. General Battuta posted:And then Marco says "of course the Rocinante will have escorts, so we'll have to draw them off by attacking them in force from behind, and when they drop back to screen the Rocinante I'll come in from the other side and 1v1 the Rocinante and totally own them" and there, you've got your set piece. I contemplated drawing a map of the battle between the Pella squadron and the Rocinante, but the whole sense of space geography felt way off. Something like this would've made Marco seem more cunning and alleviate a lot of the issues with the set piece itself. But there's a part of me that thinks the Coreys have decided that Marco is, like, this toxic masculinity stand-in figure, and so giving him any kind of positive aspect is a no-go. He's a dummy, he hasn't read books, he talks a big game! Holden imagines him having, like, a high school jock level insult. Marco being an obsessive, petulant thug is fine, I think -- but you kind of need him to have some ability to win or even just get one over the heroes. Credit to Keon Alexander, though. The guy really nails Marco and he's a real case of an actor elevating the material. Of course, the writers also altered him and Filip, and allowed Marco to have some great moments. There's a moment in the final season where Marco has just tricked Drummer's fleet and he orders the Pella's guns to open fire at close range, gutting his opponents, and he's got this perfect mix of battlelust, joy and self-satisfaction. General Battuta posted:There's a bit at the start of this chapter I'm never sure whether I like or detest, about Marco's ships being like wolves and everyone's so loving hyped to kill ol' Jimmy. The thing that doesn't work about it is it makes them sound like a bunch of Brazilian Counter-Strike players rushing B talking about how hard they're gonna gently caress the other team's moms. They're popping off so hard about how macho and cool they feel that it's obvious they're going to eat poo poo. The Free Navy suffers, I think, from being very linked to Marco. Despite the exploitation of the Belters by the inners being pretty well established, everyone just mentions that the follow Marco because he's really, really pretty (although I think Rosenfeld acknowledged that it was because Duarte gave him the ships, but surely you could just kill Marco and take over once you had the ships.) Even now, with Marco loving up time and time again and basically being mocked and questioned by his inner circle, people just follow him because they all seem to think he's a great man who'll stick it to the inners. It isn't helped by the fact that people like Naomi, a Belter herself, basically says that everyone following Marco is just a trigger-happy murder hobo who cheer the death of billions. Like, how big is the organization? The Free Navy feels more like Inaros' hardcore cult of personality cadre -- a dozen ships and their crews. But it also feels much bigger (and the Expanse wiki says it's made up of over fifty million people!) with all these facilities all over the system and even multiple fleets that include capital ships. Marco being one part of a larger revolution, the leader of the most militant wing, feels better than him being the godhead of the cause. How does the rest of the Free Navy and the crew of the Pella feel about his Ahab-esque quest to get Freddy J and Jimmy H? Well, everyone seems okay with it. Even Filip! In perhaps a more thoughtful Babylon's Ashes, Inaros would've been the guy to strike Earth and get the inners on the backfoot. Unfortunately, and somewhat tragically, he's basically treated as a figurehead while the more politically-savvy and rich Belters shunt him out of anything actually important as they go on to try and create the new society because it turns out the guy who happily threw rocks at Earth, regardless of his justification, isn't conducive to picking up the pieces. Hey, sure, go kill Fred and Jim, we'll have a big party when you get back, oh Alexander! Then you can have this showdown between Jim and Marco where these two diametrically-opposed idealists in corvettes aren't going to leave without one or the both of them dying. Marco was a useful idiot for some powerful people, just as Holden has been a useful idiot for Avasarala and Johnson. There's definitely an odd race/class element to the Belters, especially Marco. He doesn't use Belter slang. Naomi and Filip mention that he talks like an Earther. There's been no indication he's one of the 'severe' Belters. He idealizes aspects of Earth culture like no one else in the series has. I feel there's some points of comparison between him, the 'Earth man's burden' OPA guy Fred Johnson, and his vendetta against him. But I'm also not sure whether it's just my brain trying to assemble something coherent. Either way, it gives off the vibe of Marco manipulating the poorly educated underclass for his own ends, of having made them all complicit in an immense genocide for his own gratification. It's like the writers know that Marco has a point so they need to delegitimize him as much as possible. When it comes to the presentation of the crew, given that Bobbie literally 360 noscopes a Free Navy ship, it could be that the Coreys just had video games on the mind. Much like how we had zombies in Leviathan Wakes, crowdfunding in Caliban's War, and Youtube in this novel. I'm not sure if I'd consider the Belters to be Mexican-coded but, really, I'm not too familiar with Hispanic culture beyond the broad strokes. They strike me as just being ambiguously foreign, which is kind of its own problem. But along those lines, there is one thing that bothers me about the Belter slang specifically -- it's really othering. Years ago, I read an article regarding the usage of everything from foreign loan words and phrases and full on sentences in otherwise English works. The argument it made is that by using them, or even just italicising them, it's basically establishing English as the default and other languages as the exotic other. That's the feeling I get whenever the Belter slang shows up. I've mentioned before that I don't like it because sometimes it feels like it's hard to figure out what a character is saying. It's not much different than writing out someone's heavy accent phonetically, really -- it just gets in the way. In the chapters with Filip and other Belters, like say Naomi, who speak to each other in slang, it strikes me as especially odd because there's that gap between the characters and the reader and the writer. It's only the Belters who have this exotic language, for example. Alex and Bobbie have never busted out anything Martian. I don't think any character has ever spoken a language other than English, in fact.
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Jan 8, 2023 07:12
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If my understanding of space geography is right, and I'm not sure it is, then Ceres and Pallas are on opposite sides of the Sun to each other and have a similar orbital period which means they'll never end up closer than they are. Which means Tycho has to be somewhere between them and therefore easier to reach (a Syfy map seems to put it approximately at the halfway point between them.) Which means Marco's tactic of seemingly hanging out close to Ceres and only catching the Rocinante after it is already past them is even more inexplicable. I'm just not sure how that works when the chapter mentions Marco poring over the sensor data and being all excited and eager (but then it also mentions he's all withdrawn and quiet just a paragraph later.) And what does it mean to be outside the effective range of Ceres' defenses in space, especially when Ceres can immediately fire upon the Free Navy ships with torpedoes and force one of them to break off? When the book says that the three Free Navy ships are traversing the space between Ceres and Tycho, did the writers actually mean Pallas and Ceres?
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Jan 8, 2023 14:29
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Broke: there is no timeline given for the series Woke: the series takes place in 2386 as indicated by the most plausible future alignment of orbital bodies
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Jan 9, 2023 00:38
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Nemesis Games and Babylon's Ashes were my least favorite two of the series. Fortunately the floor on these was so high that it doesn't mean much. As others said....Marcos and Filiip simply weren't very good characters. Actually finished the entire series yesterday. Time to see how the show compares.
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Jan 20, 2023 01:26
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Babylon's Ashes, Chapters 29 - 32 The powers that be decide that Holden should be sent to the meeting on Tycho in Fred's place. Filip sulks. Pa ambles. Medina Station exists. Chapter Twenty-Nine: Avasarala Gorman Le has news for Avasarala -- a mysterious transmission has come in from an unknown party on Ganymede. It's a recipe for nutritional yeast with advanced radioplasts, based on protomolecule research. It'll allow them to feed 500,000 more people on Luna itself, and they could test it to fee more people on Earth. But if something goes wrong, it'll cost them time and production and people will die in the time it takes to clean it all up. Avasarala thinks it is a good bet and, so, orders Gorman Le to implement it. Then she gets a report from Admiral Pycior about the situation near Enceladus. Much like Ceres, the Free Navy bailed out and now Earth is left with even more people to feed and support. Avasarala thinks it's like trying to catch water in her fist. Report on the Rocinante: it got ambushed but escaped. Avasarala says "small favors" and doesn't think further on it. Her daughter requests a personal meeting. Avasarala wants to put it off, but then agrees to see her for dinner in three days. A priority message from the Rocinante, from Captain Holden. Holden relays what happened: Pella led an attack, Fred dead. Holden doesn't know if there's any point in the meeting without Fred and so if they should even still attend. Fred's death is the "drop in the cup" that actually has Avasarala lose herself in grief. Avasarala returns to her quarters. Kiki, her granddaughter, shows up. Kiki's mom is upset that Avasarala has rescheduled their dinner again. They have a little deep-and-meaningful conversation that is really difficult to care about, then she sends a response to Holden: Fred might be dead but Holden has a job to go: go to Tycho Station and make sure the OPA meeting works out. Chapter Thirty: Filip Aboard the Pella, limping along after the lost battle against the Rocinante, Filip is brooding over it. The Koto is basically derelict, having been cored by a railgun round. In a somewhat inexplicable mention, Filip reflects that the Shinsakuto had been "hounded and harassed" out of formation by fighting ships and torpedoes from the Earth-Mars fleet and Ceres. Doesn't sound accurate to me but, hey. Not to belabor this point, but given that it's been the biggest plot event in this novel so far, I think it's something to talk about. You know what could've worked here? Have Marco attack the Rocinante within close proximity of Ceres. For example, mention that the combined fleet has moved out and only left a token garrison to support Ceres. While there are a lot of ships there, they're mostly tenders and rearguard vessels. Ceres itself has its torpedo launchers and defence grid, so, it doesn't have too much for the Free Navy to worry about -- especially given that Marco and co. looted it and basically rendered it useless. Then, as the Rocinante is departing, Marco charges the station with his three ships. Marco's a hungry wolf, driving his three frigates in for close-range combat. Ceres goes to fire its torpedoes but, uh-oh, building on the strike against Pa, Marco's people have sabotaged the launchers! The three corvettes hound the Rocinante, which tries to use Ceres itself to evade the Free Navy ships, but the Free Navy ships are relentless. Some of the garrison and supply ships move to hinder the Free Navy frigates -- the Shinsakuto breaks off to handle them. But the crew of the Rocinante know it's only a temporary reprieve, and one that's basically putting one of the wolves among the sheep, but it gives them space to burn hard away from Ceres and drag the fight away from the civilians. They no-scope the Koto -- bam! But the Pella continues to pursue, gaining, closing the gap. The Rocinante pulls off Bobbie's trick, damaging Marco's flagship -- but the Pella just keeps coming! Then, torpedoes from Ceres! Heading not for the Rocinante, but for the Pella! Marco breaks off. Like, I know the Coreys have this pathological need to not let their villains do anything cool or interesting, but I feel something like that would so things to buff up the setpiece some. The first is that it illustrates Marco's reckless hunt for the Rocinante, his tactical acumen (as chaotic as it may be), his network of agents on Ceres, and so on. Secondly, the space geography is way more conducive to ships needing to break off and engage different targets, whereas the battle in the book itself feels like it's taking hours or days away from Ceres itself. It also allows Marco to box in the Rocinante, which they tell us he's doing in Chapter 27 even if it's impossible because they're nowhere near each other. And finally, it gives Marco a little win he can crow about, even though both the reader and his crew might know it is bullshit: ah, we may not have got the Rocinante, but the heroes aboard the Shinsakuto shattered the Earther supply lines! You see, my plan to abandon Ceres was to give us the opportunity to do something like this! Anyway, there's trouble on the Pella. The crews of the Koto and Pella have stopped wearing their Free Navy uniforms, although Filip still is. It seems like the crew blame Filip for the loss and are basically excluding him. Karal and Miral think Earth is going to hold on to Ceres forever. A woman whom Filip doesn't know thinks they need to start winning. Both Ceres and Enceladus have been losses. Filip says they beat Earth and the woman storms off. Miral takes Filip to do some repair work. The Pella lost a bunch of PDC coverage and a single torpedo could've made it through. Filip thinks that, had that happened, then "the old bitch from the galley" and "her leathery rear end" would've drowned in her own waste air. Sometimes I feel like I'm overly sensitive to gendered insults, but I feel like they're the only insults we've really seen in The Expanse. When a character gets mad, it seems like there's a woman they can call a bitch. A female Free Navy character shows up just so, really, Filip can get upset and petulantly think insults at her. With the exception of Pa, like, everyone on Marco's crew and other major Free Navy characters have all been men. Turns out a torpedo did make it through the PDC fire and struck the Pella -- only the warhead didn't go off. Because, as we know, Holden deactivated it "without thinking." Good work, Holden. As they work, Miral tells Filip that he used to be a drinker at Filip's age, too. He had a friend who used to get into fights, often because someone was feeling embarrassed. If someone's lost face, or thinks they've lost face, then they'll say things they don't mean and do things they don't mean. Miral tells Filip that his dad's a good man but Holden's a sore spot. So, he adds, don't take it too personally. Filip is like, wait, take what too personally? Filip goes to see his dad. Turns out, Marco's been telling people that the loss was Filip's fault. "You were the gunner," he reasons, "and they got away." Filip says that he didn't drive the ship into the PDC rounds. And Holden had a railgun. Marco tilts his head and says, "now you're giving me reasons why it's okay you failed?" I actually kind of like Marco here. He's a dick, yeah, but it's maybe the first time I think I can see the dark, toxic charisma that the Coreys want me to take away from him. Of course, it fades immediately with how he browbeats Filip into saying that he "hosed it up" and that "crying and excuses are for girls" because, y'know, of course he does. Filip leaves, annoyed. He knows Marco is feeling humiliated. Three of their ships hadn't been able to stop the Rocinante and while narrative contrivances do play a role in how that turned out, a part of the failure was seemingly Marco's idiotic calls. Filip returns to his cabin. A tech is hot-bunking in his bed. Filip kicks him out and broods on what happened. Marco, he thinks, had been wrong. He hadn't hosed it up -- Marco had. This time, Marco was wrong. He hears Naomi's voice, saying: wonder what else he got wrong... Chapter Thirty-One: Pa Pa and co. have made their base of operations at Eugenia. The Coreys call it a "duniyaret" which appears to be an attempt at a Hindi loan word (duniya means world, duniyaret means something like worldlet, I guess?) and is a fancy way of saying it's a loose collection of rocks that barely counts as an asteroid. The reason they've picked Eugenia is that it isn't too far from Ceres. They've started building a "nakliye" port (Turkish for shipping) and these two sudden uses of foreign words feels really odd. The first is because I don't take Michio Pa to be Indian or Turkish and the second is because, in this novel and others, there's never been this 'look, exotic words!' in the narrative prose itself. Pa heads over to meet with Captain Ezio Rodriguez, an old friend of hers. The Connaught is going to take over the guard and construction job. Pa's ships have been grabbing Marco's stashes and seizing colony ships. Some, they've taken to Ceres. Rodriguez tells Pa he has something special for her: Sanjrani, Marco's economist and member of his inner circle. Sanjrani tells them that Pa is killing everyone in the Belt. Both Marco and Pa should be siding with him. Pa wonders if Marco knows he's here -- no, and Sanjrani says he'll be dead if Marco finds out. Sanjrani has been trying to talk to Rosenfeld, but he listens only to Marco, and he can't get ahold of Dawes. Pulling up some diagrams, Sanjrani says that they made plans back at the start of Marco's whole thing but then it doesn't look as if they followed them. Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 31 posted:“First thing we did,” he said, “was destroy the biggest source of wealth and complex organics in the system. The only supply of complex organics that work with our metabolisms. The worlds on the other side of the ring? Different genetic codes. Different chemistries. Not something we can import and eat. But that was okay. Projections were clear. We could build a new economy, put together infrastructure, make a sustainable network of microecologies in a cooperative-competitive matrix. Base the currencies on —” How long has it been since the attack on Earth, anyway? I feel like it's only been a few weeks? Anyway, Sanjrani heads off a day later. Pa's concerned that people are going to starve while she and Marco are at each other's throats. She tells herself that Marco had gone off script before she had, so, her retribution was okay. Now they have three years to make everything work, and they had to have started already. Or they need a new plan. The Rocinante sends a message for Pa. It's from Holden. He says he's in a weird situation and needs a desperate favor. Chapter Thirty-Two: Vandercaust We're back on Medina with Vandercaust, one of Salis' worker buddies. Looks like the Medina Free Navy guards have been beating the poo poo out of him. A Free Navy officer comes in, takes some focus drugs, and asks Vandercaust why he missed the battle alert yesterday. Vandercaust says it was because he was drunk and slept through it. The officer asks him if he's heard about what happened. Vandercaust says "fourteen or fifteen" ships came through "from the colonies" and got blown to bits by the Laconian rail guns. The officer, basically a boy, asks him if it was fourteen or fifteen. Vandercaust isn't sure. Nor does he know which rings they came through. Turns out the ships all came through different rings within fifteen seconds of each other. Vandercaust supposes that it was a coordinated incident. Which means they either had some way to bend time and space, or a mole on Medina. Vandercaust realizes that this isn't about missing the shift. The interrogator asks him how he found out about the attack. Vandercaust mentions that his workgroup -- Jakulski, Salis, Roberts -- told him. The interrogator asks about them and Vandercaust realizes that all of his buddies might have a reason to be involved. Salis works in communications. Roberts was going on about proxy wars. Jakulski had been at the greeting for Laconia's advisors... The interrogation goes on. They ask about more things, such as Pa and Rodriguez and so on. Eventually, Vandercaust thinks that he has no reason to protect his friends beyond the "vague tribalism" of working with them. After a while, some more Free Navy types show up and tell him he's late for his shift.Salis and Roberts are like, wow, they beat you up for nothing? Vandercaust doesn't know if the guards won't just show up to grab him again. He's been gone for three days. Salis says that his friend in comms found something in the data core: confirmation of gate traffic prior to the attack. Except two of the ships didn't make it. Then, news comes in: they got the mole. They're going to execute him once they're done questioning him. Salis is like, well, that's what he gets for putting Medina at risk. Roberts says that's why they let Vandercaust go: they found the real guy involved. But Vandercaust thinks that the person there is a scapegoat and the only luck he had was that they, for whatever reason, didn't pick him.
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Jan 22, 2023 03:24
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I keep thinking about Chapter 32. Not because it's particularly good, but because it's weird and irrelevant. I just don't find the 'life on Medina' subplot interesting. Did anyone? Were these chapters about Salis and co. and their rather anodyne experiences about Medina Station anything someone was reading Babylon's Ashes for? Did anyone close this book and go, ah, those chapters were my favorite? I think Chapter 32 once served a different purpose. I think that it might be another point of interest in the idea that Babylon's Ashes was rewritten extensively, and that it once involved the protomolecule killers waking up beyond the gates. What we've got here is a chapter that's been awkwardly jammed into a story it doesn't fit into anymore. It starts with a simple thought: I don't get what purpose the chapter serves, nor the logic of it. Vandercaust, a fairly nothing character in a fairly nothing section of the novel, wakes up in a cell. He's interrogated about an attack that we don't really learn anything about but may have involved someone inside Medina itself. Afterward, he's released and the Free Navy finds someone who may or may not have been responsible. The attack, as best as we can tell, involved approximately a dozen ships that came through the gates at speed, charged Medina Station, and got blown to bits by the Laconian super-railguns. The worst Medina got of it was some debris striking the hull. The idea, it seems, was that they coordinated with someone on Medina to attack the station, presumably with the goal of capturing it or destroying it. But here's where we run into problems. The simplest way of illustrating it is, like, 'with what army?' Medina Station is big and it's filled with Free Navy goons, Laconian officers, and people who seem generally sympathetic to the Free Navy cause. A dozen or so civilian ships can't do it. So, maybe they were going to the destroy it -- well, that's a big task and, frankly, pretty insane. If they were civilian ships, presumably unarmed, they'd have to ram the thing. And, more to the point, if they were coordinating with someone inside Medina, someone with the ability to communicate with them across each system, then why the heck didn't they warn them about the super-railguns? It'd be a suicide mission. Well, maybe that's the point. Maybe the read is supposed to be that the situation in the colonies is getting, or has been, that desperate that teh colonists are willing to risk it all in a do-or-die, death-or-glory strike on Medina. But, what, a dozen or so ships from a few systems all hit that level of desperation at a similar time? And all agreed to launch a simultaneous attack across a vast open expanse into four super-railguns? With civilian ships? And they made no hails, no demands, no messages? And no one comments on the insanity of it? Everyone's just kind of like, oh, weird -- ships come through the gates and blow up, can't explain that. But there is one oddity that stuck out to me in the interrogation. The Free Navy officer goes from demanding to know which gates they "came through" to which ones they had "gone through." That's a pretty different answer to be seeking! Did some of the ships not get caught by the railguns? Or is it just as Vandercaust thinks later on, that they were trying to screw with his head? Another little element is that the events of this chapter never come up again. It's this weird blip. Even the supposed traitor they find might just be a scapegoat, as per Vandercaust's internal narration. So, my thought is this. If we assume that Babylon's Ashes was originally a very different story that involved something dark and terrible waking up beyond the gates, then this chapter functions much better. This chapter may even have been the inciting incident, or something like it. Maybe the segway from the events of Act 1 to Act 2. Something early, at least. Think of it this way. Medina Station is doing its thing. A bunch of civilian ships come through a gate. Wow, they're burning hard. And they're not saying anything. The Laconians activate the super-railguns and blow them out of the sky. Did the Laconians do it because they're, well, Laconians or did they do it because they know more than anyone else does? They say they were going to attack but Medina but, with what, hand tools and pre-fab shelters? No, something doesn't add up. Even if they claim to have found a secret data core and the guy who coordinated it. In this version in my head, the ships are coming through the gate because they woke something up -- or something just woke up -- on the other side of the rings. They couldn't communicate with Medina Station for whatever reason and got destroyed. This filters back to Earth and Mars who go, wait, a dozen civilian ships tried to attack Medina and got blown up? We need to figure out what's going on, and without Earth under siege, we can spare ships to do it. Notably, Vandercaust even thinks of this as an explanation, in a sense: "Some way to break lightspeed and bend time." But there's another thing, something I thought pretty interesting when I remembered it. This behavior of hostile ships swarming into the slow zone is also something that comes up in the final book in the series, Leviathan Falls which is the only book to really engage with the protomolecule mystery lore side of things (and it's not exactly incredible stuff.) If Babylon's Ashes was to, in fact, involve that stuff at an earlier point, then perhaps that's an indicator as well. Why'd they change it? Well, as I've said and we'll see as we go on, I just don't think the Coreys knew how to write it. I'd say it risked sidelining the crew of the Rocinante and escalating the story to a scale where they'd struggle to be relevant. You can argue that Babylon's Ashes is already struggling to find ways to fit them into the story.
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Jan 23, 2023 11:33
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Babylon's Ashes, Chapters 33 - 36 Holden has no plan, and seemingly decides to go with a suicide run based on the weird assumption of an OPA ambassador. Dawes shows off his political acumen. Amos has some angst. Filip has more. Chapter Thirty-Three: Holden On Tycho, Holden, Naomi and Bobbie are preparing for their meeting with the various OPA representatives. Holden, however many years into being both an OPA enforcer/ambassador, representative of Earth's government, independent starship captain and general celebrity doesn't have a rank or a uniform, and he doesn't want to wear his shipboard jumpsuit. If that is because it says Tachi still and does not fit, well, it's left unsaid. So, he's basically wearing a dark t-shirt and pants. Naomi's the same. Bobbie's wearing her Mars uniform but has removed the insignia. Holden's nervous and claims to have never done anything like this before. I think of Ilus and Naomi brings it up right on cue and Holden replies of Ilus: Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 33 posted:“You mean when that one guy killed the other guy in the street and then burned a bunch of people alive?” Then, the story backs up to the Rocinante's arrival at Tycho. They had a funeral for Fred. Amos and Clarissa don't say anything ( amiable smile mention ) and Alex and Sandra go off to bang (probably.) Avasarala tutors Holden in how to hold a meeting and how to act, and provides him with a dossier on the major players who'll be attending.Avasarala says, and this has been highlighted 252 times: Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 33 posted:Strength by itself is just bullying, capitulation by itself is an invitation to get hosed; only mixed strategies survive. Everything is personal, but they know that too. They can smell pandering like a fart. If you treat them like they’re a treasure box where if you just tweak them the right way, the policy you want falls out, you’re already hosed. They’ll misjudge you, so be ready to use that. Holden imagines Miller's voice in his mind and tells Dawes to wait outside. Dawes goes. Holden tells Ostman that if she wants respect, then she can ask before she invites people to his secret meetings: Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 33 posted:Aimee Ostman’s lips were pressed thin. If you’re looking for mutual respect, you can start by asking before you invite people to my secret meetings. It seemed like a rude thing to say out loud. Holden has a message from Michio Pa to try and smooth things over. Basically, she says that she was part of the Free Navy inner circle until she became convinced that Marco Inaros is not the leader the Belt needs and the Free Navy has no interest in keeping the Belt alive. She says she's been working with Fred on a plan to guarantee the safety of the Belt, which Holden notes is a lie, and says that Holden is integral to it. It might be a lie, but it's one he worked on with Pa and Avasarala. My reading of it is that by working on it with those two, Holden means the speech Pa read out specifically, as he mentions arguing over wording. One of the representatives needles Holden about how Inaros loses women to him. Bobbie claims that Fred's plan is a sound one. Ostman says that Holden's getting all the women while Inaros takes all the stations, which is a bizarre thing to say given that a few chapters ago he abandoned another major port. Another representative says that Inaros lost everyone in the room before he ever began, which doesn't feel right, and that they all know he has an "open sore" where his heart is. He wants to know the details of the plan. Holden isn't willing to discuss it. I wish there was a little more angst on Holden's part that this plan is just something to get them talking and doesn't actually exist. Ostman wants to know why they're even here if they can't get details on the plan. Another representative says, for some reason that I'm not entirely sure, that the plan is to go for Medina Station. Holden says they'll discuss it in twenty hours but, if they don't want to show up for the discussion, then they need to leave Tycho immediately. The representatives file out. Holden is like, gently caress, how does Avasarala do this all day. Bobbie asks if Fred really had a plan. Holden says yeah, probably -- but it wasn't one he told Holden. So, this one they're talking about? Holden's making it up as he goes. Chapter Thirty-Four: Dawes Fred Johnson's body was fed into the systems of Tycho Station, but there are photos up in the chapel. Dawes chats to them, about how he had a speech prepared. He's sorry to have "backed the wrong horse" and that he compromised Fred while he did it. He's not happy that Holden's involved. Dawes reflects that the Free Navy should've been a glorious moment for the Belt. To Dawes, Inaros had conjured a whole military for them out of nothing. So, what, did Dawes not know that Inaros was given his fleet by Duarte? Because Dawes himself thought that Duarte had given him the ships back in Chapter 8. I guess he's just being weirdly poetic. Dawes had thought he could control Inaros as Inaros was a failure at being a political animal. Which is a little odd because everyone has talked about how charismatic the guy supposedly is, even Dawes back in Chapter 8. Dawes had thought he could play kingmaker. Dawes had thought he could corral Inaros, Rosenfeld, Sanjrani and Pa. And, hey, if he'd declined, it all would've happened anyway. A bit of a problem I have with this chapter is that Dawes' doesn't feel like he had any of the thoughts he did earlier in the novel. Later, he meets with Aimee Ostman. She thinks Holden can go gently caress himself for kicking Dawes out of the meeting. Dawes says Holden was in the right to kick him out for showing up unannounced. Ostman wants to leave, Dawes says that if it's a Fred Johnson plan then it's a good one. And -- and I actually really like this bit -- Dawes sells her on it by telling her that she needs to be there to keep Holden from screwing things up. Dawes goes to see Liang Goodfortune, one of the other representatives. Dawes stresses Holden's resume -- he's been on Medina, he's been on Ilus, he was on Eros, he fought pirates for the OPA, he's been on diplomatic missions and worked for the OPA for years. Which is exactly what I was thinking earlier! Liang is like, hey, there's OPA and then there's OPA. He saw Johnson as being useful for the Belt, but not much more than that, but Holden worked for Earth. Dawes says Holden couldn't handle it and was working on a water hauler and, hey, his lover is a Belter and he's been doing those videos. Liang calls the videos insulting and patronizing. Dawes says Holden means well. But you can side with Holden or go with Inaros because, ugh, Dawes thinks that "even if he has to go to war by himself" Holden will destroy Marco Inaros. Dawes then goes to see Carlos Walker, another of the representatives, and says Holden needs support. Walker says that he's there out of respect for Johnson and nothing else. Besides, Medina is too defended. But Dawes is like, look, this is Fred Johnson's plan and Michio Pa knows all about the defences. But hold up. First, there is no plan to attack Medina. Liang Goodfortune was the one to bring up Medina, and it's unclear why he thought that, and it's unclear why everyone's decided that's the case. Holden even reiterated at the end of the chapter that they were making it up as they went, and we were given no indication they even had a goal beyond keeping the OPA at the negotiation table. Additionally, I'm not sure what evidence we've had that Pa knows about the railguns. I know Chapter 23 mentioned they were there, but it still feels like a patch job to make this sequence work. Walker says there are risks to letting Inaros do what he wants and risks to confronting them. But only one of those involves his ship taking fire from railguns. Dawes says Holden hasn't even asked him to do that yet. Dawes mentions that Holden might not look it, but that he's a thinking man. I imagine you've figured out what's going on by now. The whole point of this chapter is that Dawes is basically being a political chameleon, saying whatever he thinks will get the various OPA people on side. The next section, for example, begins with him telling Micah al-Dujaili, the last OPA ambassador, that Holden acts from the gut. Al-Dujaili says that everyone still cheers Inaros on. Dawes says only some do, but more the idea of him. That seems to do it for al-Dujaili, who hugs Dawes and leaves. Dawes tells the photo of Fred Johnson that he hopes he knows what he's doing, because he's gone and gotten everyone to support Holden. Chapter Thirty-Five: Amos Hey, Amos! Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 35 posted:Sex was one of those things where the way it was supposed to work and the way it worked for him didn’t always match up real well. He knew all the stuff about love and affection, and that just seemed like making poo poo up. He understood making poo poo up. He also understood how people talked about it, and he could talk about it that way, just to fit in. Basically, Amos is somewhat disconnected from his own sexuality. Whether it's a sign of a particular trauma in his past or just his rough upbringing is left unsaid, and I don't think it really matters. He knows he has the need, a pressure that builds up, and it can make him stupid -- so he tends to it like any other biological need. When he needs to deal with it, he goes to a licensed brothel because he's familiar with the place and knows what to expect. Additionally, it's a reasonable belief that he was raised in a similar place and therefore finds it comforting. He finds some common understanding with the women he visits, because he'd been involved in the trade himself and so there's no bullshit on either side of the transaction. Amos "takes care of what needs to be taken care of" and then he goes to sleep. I think this is something I thought of as an error back in Leviathan Wakes, that Amos had sex where later novels indicate he just goes to brothels to sleep. So, I'll cop to misremembering that -- he does both. That said, I still think Amos' depiction as a bit of a horndog doesn't really gel with this chapter. In the first few books, it felt as if Amos was a bit of a hedonist -- he loved sex and would find the sexiest strippers to indulge in whenever he could, something that I think Alex, Holden, and Naomi all comment on. Here, it's just a need. I feel like Amos would equate it closer to making GBS threads than anything enjoyable. He has to take care of it, so he does, and he does it alone and in private. Tonight, however, Amos can't sleep. Something's keeping him awake. He departs, smiling an amiable smile at another john as he goes. He heads back to the Rocinante. Some people recognize him, and Amos thinks that might be a problem -- but not yet.Amos goes down to the Roci's machine shop. He goes through his technical reports, then the data from the torpedoes Bobbie fired against the Pella. Something about that is bugging him. Clarissa shows up. She's so skinny that the too-small Tachi jumpsuits are actually too big for her, which is kind of funny. She thinks Amos isn't all right. Amos says he has to talk to Holden. So, he goes up to see him. Holden's chatting with Bobbie in the galley. Apparently, Holden really is drawing up a plan to take on Medina, which Bobbie sums up as a plan that involves throwing ships at them until they run out of ammo. Amos doesn't want to interrupt their planning, but he does want to sleep -- so, he walks in on them. Holden says they need to discuss it with Pa again. Bobbie says they can estimate the railguns based on fire rate (Pa had that information? Or are their estimates off?) and all they need to do is get a small team onto the surface of the ring station to disable the guns. Holden doesn't think it's a good idea given that it's, y'know, the ring station. Bobbie volunteers to lead the team. Amos, getting noodles from the dispenser, backs her up. Holden says he has to run it by Avasarala, Pa, and the OPA Council. Bobbie then asks about "this Duarte rear end in a top hat" and wonders what Avasarala thinks about how he'd react. Sort of interesting that she doesn't seem to know who he is, and hasn't really been briefed, but I guess he was just some Commander and not an Admiral or anything. Still, feels weird that Bobbie's wondering that. Of course, that's when Amos says he has to talk to Holden. He sits down across from Holden. Amos says he's gone over the battle data and that one of the torpedoes fired at the Pella resulted in a direct hit. But it didn't go off. I didn't know that, Holden says, I didn't check. Amos says that a dud torpedo is a serious issue, so, he's been looking into it. To his credit, Holden immediately says he disarmed them. Amos, who has been suspecting this or something like it, doesn't take it too well. Still, it feels like there's a lot less tension than there should be in this scene. Holden says that Marco showed him Filip and he didn't want to kill Naomi's son. I don't know. I can understand why Holden did it, because he's a sap, but it just feels kind of dumb because not only is it Marco Inaros, the biggest mass murderer in the history of humanity, but Naomi herself basically gave up on Filip and basically said she considers everyone on the Pella a lost cause. Like, it's not really romantic or noble but just stupid and patronizing. Does Holden know better than Naomi? If Naomi's wishes are for her son to be blown to pieces on his dad's ship, who is he to get in the way of it? It's a war, and Filip has made his choices -- angst only helps balance the scales so much! And it's not like Filip ever shows up after this novel, or even that Naomi ever thinks about him again. So much of Babylon's Ashes feels like meaningless drama written without much of an overarching plan. I've read a lot of web serials in my time, and this feels like how some of their plots end up: an event happens, the event gets resolved in a way that feels dramatic, the resolution gets shoved under the rug. For example, Amos just kind of says that, look, if Holden isn't willing to win then why are they fighting? Even makes a tribe reference. Holden says he doesn't regret what he did and that he'd do it again. But he knows he can't do it again next time. He also hasn't talked about it with Naomi which I can't imagine going anything different from how his chat with Amos has gone -- polite but mildly perturbed and arguably not true to the character's personality. Amos asks Holden if he's the right guy for the job. Holden says he isn't, but he's the one who got it. Amos decides that's okay and throws his half-eaten noodles into the recycler and walks out.As he goes, Holden thanks him (for not beating him to death, I'd assume) but it loses a bit of gravitas because, well, it doesn't feel like Amos was ever truly considering it. Like, coming off Nemesis Games, I'd suspect Amos to be sitting there, like, wondering how he'd kill Holden if it turns out he's making bad decisions. He'd have to make it quick because, look, he screwed up but he'd always been a pretty good guy. And then he'd have to explain it to Alex and Naomi -- poo poo, it'd suck to have to beat them down, but Alex is overweight and soft, and Naomi's got belter bones, so, it'd probably only take one punch to each throat. Peaches. Well, he could take her, unless she kicks in her mods. But then, either way it went, he's pretty sure neither of them would be walking off the ship. Amos is a dangerous guy. That's the whole point of his character. He's an attack dog who leashed himself to Holden because he respects his moral compass. Holden won't, in Amos' estimation, lead him wrong. But here he is, doing exactly that. Holden put his tribe at risk for a reason that is, ultimately, very selfish. Amos and Naomi are very close. We saw in Caliban's War that they confide in each other. In Cibola Burn, the thought of Naomi in the brig just about sends Amos into a murderous rage. Have Naomi and Amos discussed the events of the Pella? If they have, it's obviously been pretty shallow, and Naomi hasn't told Amos her true thoughts. Whether negative, that Filip can just die, or perhaps secretly that she hopes Filip can survive. Because that'd be interesting, too, if Amos were like 'Good call, Cap. Probably shouldn't be saying this but...' I have two guesses -- well, one extended guess -- about it. Basically, I think the Coreys have a different view of Amos and I'd say they didn't want to risk alienating their readers by having Amos contemplate hurting Holden for what he did. But that's what Amos does. In Nemesis Games, he'd pretty much do it anytime things started getting vaguely tense. In the TV series, the adaptation ramps up the intensity of the confrontation between the two, although it doesn't get violent. Still, it feels much closer to Amos' character. If Amos isn't going to act like Amos then, well, why are we even in his head for this chapter? Beyond seemingly some need to have an Amos chapter? I'd argue this would be a much better Holden chapter. We could learn stuff about this out-of-nowhere plan to take Medina, and then Amos can suddenly come in. And Holden, increasingly nervous, can then wonder if Amos knows about the torpedoes. And then he can realize that Amos knows. And that Amos knows he knows. Then he can begin to wonder if Amos feels betrayed. Should he come clean? And, if he does, whether that means he'll leap over the table and beat him to death. Just how far can he trust Amos if he thinks he's been betrayed by the man he counts on to do the right thing by his crew and everyone else? I don't know. This is an odd chapter for me. It has that narrative gruel vibe that's been mentioned before. 'We need someone to confront Holden over sparing the Pella.' 'Well, how about Amos? We don't have an Amos chapter yet.' It doesn't feel like the Coreys are that interested in this story, either in the sense of the plot or the actions of the characters involved. Holden refusing to strike the Pella and kill Filip, sparing Marco in the process, and how that'll affect his relationship with Amos and Naomi -- it's a great recipe for some drama and development! But it feels like the punch is really pulled in this chapter and, as we'll see, the conversation with Naomi soon is barely even lukewarm and mostly skipped over, too. Because even the writers know that these should be much bigger moments. Anyway, Amos goes back to the machine shop. Peaches is surprised he's not heading back out to Tycho. Amos says it's fine because he can sleep now. That'd be funny, too, if that was actually all Amos was concerned about -- some technical bug in the back of his mind, and Holden's anxiety and fear is entirely misplaced. But I don't think that's the case. Chapter Thirty-Six: Filip Filip has angst. See, to Filip, fixing your ships is what makes you a Belter. Earthers... live off the government dole. Martians... dream of making their own Earth. But Belters fix ships. But more than that, Belters are resourceful and rely on each other and make scraps go further than they were designed to. Okay, sure. But really? Ship repair is such a Belter thing? 'Fixing your ship is what makes you a Belter, but let's not discuss the reality that even Marsies and Earthers need to fix their ships, too.' Like, something like: "Earthers repaired their ships only because government handouts prevented them from replacing them. Dusters acted like their ships never got a scratch. But Belters fixed their ships to show cleverness and resourcefulness. Because Earth and Mars forced them to ride the line between safety and disaster." Or maybe Filip's just a bit of a dummy. Anyway, Filip has angst because he's a Belter and he doesn't want to repair the Pella. Everyone's treating him like a pariah. Marco's leaving him in limbo -- not forbidden but not business as usual. With a thruster down on the Pella, the order comes in to head to Callisto shipyard to get it fixed. That is, the place where Filip set all this in motion. No one goes after the damaged Pella, of course. En route, Filip fantasizes that James Holden and "his own traitorous whore of a mother" (there it is, another whore comment...) come after them. Sometimes the Pella gets beaten up worse and everyone sees that Filip was right. Sometimes they lose and die. Other times they kill the Rocinante. The Martian base on Callisto hasn't been rebuilt yet. The Pella lands. Filip heads out without his uniform and without shore leave. Filip had never been to Callisto before his raid, and it looks like this installation took some damage from it. Filip thinks it was their fault for being close to the Martian base they hit. Filip walks around for a time, hoping for someone to call him out as the guy who did the damage and confront him, but nothing happens. He ends up going to a bar. He watches the news. He wants some pretty girls to look at him. On the news, it's news from Earth -- wildlife is dying, stadiums are filled with corpses, etc. Filip feels as follows: Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 36 posted:The pride in the devastation was still there. Those dead were because of him. The ash-drowned cities, the blackened lakes and oceans, the skyscraper burning like a torch because not enough infrastructure still existed to extinguish it. These were the temples and battlements of his people’s enemy, fallen into dust and ruin, and thanks to him. The raid he’d done here, at this yard, had let it happen. Filip feels he's done something wrong, but doesn't seem to know what. Then, on the news -- Fred Johnson has been confirmed dead after a Free Navy attack. Karal grins and tells Filip, hey, congratulations, guess you got him after all. Back on the Pella, it's a celebration. Filip is no longer a pariah. Marco's happy with him. Girls are interested in him again. It's the Free Navy's first real victory since Earth. Marco gives a speech saying that Fred Johnson was a fraud who began his career by slaughtering Belters and then pretending to speak for them. An icon of false patience and complacency while Earth stripped the Belt clean. We did it, Marco mouths to Filip. But Filip thinks that his father is happy to share credit but not mistakes. Then, Filip has something like a memory of a vision. A "stunningly beautiful" woman says, "He put blood on my hands too. He thought it would make me easier to control." Which is what Naomi said back in Nemesis Games. Kinda oedipal, Filip.
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Jan 31, 2023 00:21
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Babylon's Ashes, Chapters 37 - 40 gently caress. Chapter Thirty-Seven: Alex Alex spent the night with Sandra Ip. He wakes up and calls her 'Pookie.' There's also mention of a dream sequence in that Coreyian way of mashing up random images (apple juice, in the Rocinante's engines!) I feel like dream sequences are a hallmark of a character written by Franck, but I'm not sure. That, or the rough prose: Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 37 posted:“Hey to you too, Pookie,” he growled. The night’s sleep left his voice deep and gravelly. Sandra Ip is off to check on the ships of the OPA bigwigs. Alex and Sandra have been seeing each other since that night on Ceres and I'm cutting out all that exposition, much as I'm cutting the talk about a gravel miner made from a yacht. Alex, for his part, is off to do nothing -- the Rocinante isn't going anywhere. When Sandra is gone, Alex wonders if she's just a bit of affection and pleasure in the eye of the hurricane. Alex has a sense of dread about the Rocinante. Holden's been busy talking about supplies and support from the OPA, sending reports to Avasarala, and getting messages to Pa about the fire rate of the OPA railguns. Alex thinks Holden is no longer Holden but a man playing James Holden, but he can sense the desperation and despair behind it all. Meanwhile, the Free Navy has apparently been scoring wins -- capturing ships and killing spies, supposed or otherwise. But rocks are still being intercepted before they manage to hit Earth. The consolidated fleet, Alex thinks, is going to have to do something. And soon. I know I keep saying things like this, but this plot is so messy. Rocks are still ending up toward Earth, despite the loss of the Azure Dragon and Marco's admission to his inner circle. The Free Navy goes from being on the run to scoring wins depending on the need of any given chapter. The Earth/Mars fleet, freed up with the destruction of the Azure Dragon, has just been sitting around, unable to really do anything despite a numerical and technological advantage. I don't understand how the Coreys can be so bad at this space opera stuff. In the earlier books, sure, but the focus was elsewhere and it was more of a lack of attention to detail. This is more like a lack of attention to basic plot and world-logic. It's like there's this whole war going on but the details are a massive black box, despite the fact we've got perspective characters on both sides (and well within the command structure, at that!) It's like this novel is a story about a war engulfing the Solar system written by a pair of people who have no interest in it or, perhaps, think it's vaguely silly. Alex goes to a restaurant. Holden calls him and says they're leaving in thirty hours. In four hours, there's going to be a all-hands meeting. Alex throws his half-eaten meal into the recycler and goes off to find Sandra. He finds her. She says she wasn't looking for a husband. They'll bang one more time in an hour and a half, and do.Four hours later, Alex enters the Rocinante's galley. Everyone's there. Strangely, Amos is eating scrambled eggs with his fingers. Alex asks Holden what the plan is. Chapter Thirty-Eight: Avasarala Which means, of course, we swap to someone else. Avasarala is doing tough guy exercises to get ready to return to Earth. She swears a whole bunch. Mars has solved its crisis and put Richards in as prime minister (hooray?) The situation is still very bad on Earth, however -- vigilante raids, whole police forces going rogue, oceans dying. Said, her aide, gives Avasarala a message. As far as I can tell, the Coreys have avoided using the phrase 'Said said.' Boooo. Admiral Souther will be there to join her talks with Mars. And a ship, the Giambattista, is under burn, just as Aimee Ostman promised. Huh? What promise? She goes to visit the Martian delegation, led by a man named Rhodes Chen. Interesting that the first time he's tagged it's just as 'Rhodes' but then he's tagged as 'Chen.' Avasarala dismisses Chen's staff and then brings up a map. Free Navy in yellow. Earth/Mars fleet in red. The allied OPA in... gold. Souther says the target for the allied fleet is Medina Station. I'm sorry, what? Souther says they're targeting Medina as its the chokepoint to the colonies, including Laconia where Duarte has set up shop. By taking Medina, it'll allow them to reopen routes to the colonies and cut off Inaros from his ally. It's funny because, in my memories of these novels, Duarte was this invisible presence -- no one really knew he'd escaped to Laconia until after Babylon's Ashes. I don't know if that's better or worse, but it feels a little odd. Souther says that Inaros relies on strategic retreat, and this has prevented the allied fleet from hunting him down, allowing the Free Navy to conduct raids and attacks of opportunity at their leisure. But Inaros will not be able to abandon Medina. If he does, then they win anyway. Chen asks about the railguns, which Avasarala didn't think Mars knew about. Souther doesn't provide much information on them. They're railguns, they'll shoot up anything coming through the gates. Chen asks how they'll get around it. Avasarala says they're going to send a shitload of ships through the ring. Does anyone know the railguns are protomolecule tech or whatever? Does anyone care? Turns out the Giambattista is a converted water hauler and they've loaded it with four thousand small craft, including prospecting skiffs, small transports, and breaching pods. That's another Babylon 5 term (I'm pretty sure) showing up for the first time. And some of the craft aren't even that. Beyond that, they're also throwing out "several thousand torpedoes" with a variety of warheads. Avasarala says that the boarding craft are mostly empty. Souther says that the best ships will carry teams to take control of the railguns. With the railguns in their hands, they can then get Medina to capitulate and hold off anything from Sol and Laconia. So, what're they shooting the torpedoes at? The ring station? Medina? The guns they're trying to capture and need to force Medina's surrender? Chen thinks it seems like a bad idea. Escorting the Giambattista would spread their forces too thin (what) and they can't send it unescorted. So, Souther says they're sending it with the Rocinante as an escort. Chen laughs and says why bother. Avasarala says that Earth and Mars are going to run a distraction campaign to discourage Inaros from going after the Giambattista and the Rocinante -- "the largest and most aggressive fleet action in history." So, here's a list of questions I have about this:
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Naomi The Rocinante is taking an indirect route to the ring gate. Naomi figures this will keep Marco wondering. That is, she thinks, if he's even watching for the Rocinante at all. Why wouldn't he be? Indeed, Naomi's very next line is that she assumes he is. Like, they haven't even done the ol' disguise-the-Roci-as-freighter trick. If there's one thing the audience knows about Marco at this point it's that he's obsessed with the Rocinante. Hell, he was compared to Captain Ahab. So, Naomi's moment should be one of dramatic irony. If he's even watching it at all, she wonders, and then -- yes, he is, the plan has been compromised. The Free Navy is reinforcing Ganymede and Titan (yes sir, I've been around.) Jim's been sending messages since leaving Tycho. Pa says she's only pledging her forces once the consolidated fleet commits, saying she doesn't want to be the worm on Earth's hook. Naomi and Holden have what should be a cute moment about Naomi not getting the metaphor, but it just feels forced. The more interesting moment is Naomi's reflection of how Holden talks about being a boy on Earth as if he expects Naomi to have had similar experiences. Honestly, this might be the most interesting thing we've seen from these two, even when it goes on to say that Naomi pretends she does but changes the subject immediately. More on the Naomi/Holden relationship in a bit. Naomi thinks it must be weird for Bobbie to be prepping for combat alongside Belters, citing that Belters must've been Bobbie's enemy for "so much of her life." Really? Not Earth? Have we ever had any reason to believe Bobbie's been going up against Belters? She's a hardcore Martian marine who was on Ganymede garrison duty. I don't think she's ever talked about taking on Belters, nor had any antipathy towards them. Holden says there's something he's been meaning to talk about, something concerning the ambush where Fred died. So he does, and that's literally the extent of it. It's told, not shown, in a single paragraph. She compares him to a kid who'd eaten the last sweet. Naomi says, basically, thanks for caring but she'd already lost Filip and she'd tried twice and "twice is always." I think the writer slipped up there. As best as I can tell, the only usage of that back in Cibola Burn was in an Elvi chapter where she thought it to herself, and never mentioned it to anyone else. It's an old German saying from one of her relatives. Naomi using it is, much like the various tribal talk from everyone, just odd. And that's that. The scene ends right after that. It's a bit absurd, isn't it? Holden basically prolongs the war on Naomi's behalf, as if he knew better than her, and it's so loving boring when the two of them discuss it. The TV series, at least, gives them a bit of fire with Naomi calling out Holden for essentially making them complicit in whatever terrible thing Marco does next. The Jim/Naomi relationship is okay, but I can't exactly say I like it. It's so boring. It's like the Coreys are afraid for their OTP to have any tension, like they're a bit too in-love with the idea of being able to discuss everything like rational adults. The most interesting dynamic they had was back in Caliban's War with Holden doing his Miller impression and Naomi not wanting anything to do with it. And maybe there's value in having a relationship in a story where the characters act like adults and discuss things rationally. But Naomi is still too much of a cipher and Holden is, well, not someone who I'd say is the kind of person who discusses things rationally. Even so, there's a difference between having a sensible discussion about a heated domestic issue and electing not to kill the worst killer in human history on behalf of your wife's angst. Hey, remember when Holden shot Admiral Nguyen in the throat? And even then, they didn't really talk it out, did they? This big conversation was handled in a single paragraph where Holden is compared to a guilty child and not a guilty adult. It's not as if Naomi's been crying about not saving Filip. As far as Holden knows, Naomi considers him an adult who has made his choices. She just about died in the process of saving him -- twice! She saved the Rocinante from the exploding freighter trap. They had a whole talk (again, not shown) at the end of Nemesis Games about this. Surely Naomi was honest about what happened and relayed basically what she saw and thought during it. Otherwise, the Coreys shouldn't have skipped over it. It'd be one thing if Babylon's Ashes had a janky plot but heartfelt, genuine character moments. That'd be close to what people say about The Expanse, this space opera background for character stories. But it has a janky plot and character moments it breezes through like it's ashamed of them. Like there wasn't even a narrative outline before they started putting down chapters, so, they reach these points like 'Holden elects not to kill Marco (because we need him later)' then 'Amos finds out Holden spared Marco' and 'Holden tells Naomi he disarmed the torpedoes' and it doesn't feel true to anyone involved. Sigh. Anyway, the Giambattista is bigger than the Canterbury had been. It's braking as it rendezvous with the Rocinante. The Rocinante docks with the Giambattista. The plan is that the Free Navy will overlook it. Bobbie heads over in her power armor. Amos goes over to watch her six and participate in the operation to seize the railguns, leaving Clarissa to play ship repairer. While Bobbie and Amos catalogue the weapons and gear, Naomi reflects on what's happened. She basically compares it to a boxing match with punches, feints and, yes, even a forgotten arm reference. That was Miller, back in Leviathan Wakes. Naomi thinks everything since the rocks fell on Earth was leading to this final strike, one the opponent won't see coming. Bobbie says they're good to go. Holden sends a signal out to the allied fleet to begin the attack. They'll move out as soon as the attack is under way. Not going to lie, I feel a little as if the Coreys have forgotten that there's, y'know, travel time and transmission lag and such? Like, it's going to take X amount of hours for that message to get to the fleet, then X amount to send one back, then however much amount for the fleet to get moving, and... As the novel says, it does take hours. The allied fleet moves in, along with Pa and the OPA. The Free Navy reacts. The Rocinante alerts them that "a couple" of fast-attack ships are heading for the Rocinante, between five to twelve days out. Alex puts their ability to take them as "might", but not with the Giambattista. Especially given that it isn't burning so hard. (And what kind of fast-attack ships? Frigates? Martian fast-attack cruisers that were mentioned in Caliban's War? Just what kind of danger are the crew in?) Naomi looks at the strategic map. Hundreds of ships across four sides. I guess that gives us something of an idea of the Free Navy's strength? But, of course, on the eve of the biggest fleet action since Io, and the whole plan with the Rocinante going to poo poo, we swap over to... Chapter Forty: Prax Prax thinks Ganymede's neutrality doesn't mean anything. The Free Navy is cracking down worse and all the more obviously. He's still going to work because he can't exactly do anything else. Unsurprisingly, he was the guy who sent the food data to earth. The security forces, Pinkwater guys, come to get him and handcuff him. Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 40 posted:At the Pinkwater office, they took him to a small, cold room. Green walls. Green floor. Everything stank of industrial cleaner. The kind they used to clean up blood and spit. Biohazard stuff. A Free Navy officer comes in and asks Prax about Quiana Karvonides, the supervisor whose body he identified many chapters ago. They ask about the yeast Hy1810. They know he moved it out of Karvonides' partition. They know it was sent to Earth from the place he moved it to. Prax goes on a rant. Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 40 posted:“Yes. Exactly. Everyone thinks that it’s simple. New, invasive species comes in and it has an advantage and it outcompetes, right? That’s the story, but there’s another part to that. Always, always, the local environment resists. Yes, yes, maybe badly. Maybe without a clear idea of coping with novelty. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but I am saying it’s there. Even when an invasive species takes over, even when it wins, there is a counterbalancing process it has to overcome to do that. And —” The tall man was scowling, and his discomfort made Prax want to speak faster. To say everything he had in his heart before the hammer fell. “And that counterprocess is so deep in the fabric of living systems, it can never be absent. However well the new species is designed, however overwhelming its advantages seem to be, the pushback will always be there. If one native impulse is overcome, there will be another. You understand? Conspecifics are outcompeted? Fine, the bacterial and viral microecologies will push back. Adapt to those, and it’ll be micronutrient levels and salinity and light. And the thing is, the thing is, even when the novel species does win? Even when it takes over every niche there is, that struggle alone changes what it is. Even when you wipe out or co-opt the local environment completely, you’re changed by the pushback. Even when the previous organisms are driven to extinction, they leave markers behind. What they are can never, never be completely erased.” loving what. Come on. Prax goes home to his new wife. Babylon's Ashes, Chapter 40 posted:“I confessed,” Prax said. “I told them… I told them everything. And then they let me go.” Like, even if they can't tell who sent it because Prax put it in a public partition -- Prax still put in a public partition that someone with a "guest account" was able to send to Earth. If I did something like that at work, I'd be fired at best. And my workplace isn't overrun by despotic thugs! Why does the Free Navy decide to throw softballs? I guess the idea is that the allied offensive distracted the two interrogators but that's nonsense for a variety of reasons. These have been four really bad chapters. Babylon's Ashes has dropped several steps in my estimation. I feel like this book is flawed on some very fundamental levels which the previous five, while rough in places, haven't been.
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Feb 7, 2023 00:27
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And, also, where exactly have all the Belters gone? The ones with bulbous heads and lanky frames. Beyond Naomi and that one 'severe' Belter, it feels like the Coreys have forgotten what Belters are like. I've wondered about this before, if it was a result of the TV series changing things, but it really feels like something's up. I semi-joked once about how, in the TV series, no one would take Marco and Filip's drama seriously if they looked book accurate... but it feels a little like the Coreys themselves fell prey to that line of thought. Or maybe Marco's been stacking the Free Navy with Belters who aren't 'severe.' That'd be pretty interesting! But you'd expect the story to discuss it, wouldn't you?
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Feb 7, 2023 00:31
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Interesting, and I think I'm the first person to bring this up on these dead, gay forums, but there's a new Expanse project in the works.Kickstarter posted:Under the direct supervision and creative guidance of THE EXPANSE creator James S.A. Corey, comes the first new in-canon story since the stunning finale episode of THE EXPANSE Season 6 which will finally reveal the hidden history between Babylon's Ashes (Book 6) and Persepolis Rising (Book 7), BOOM! Studios proudly presents – THE EXPANSE: DRAGON TOOTH! I can't say I'm very excited for it, if only because of it's weird 'alternative-universe-but-kinda-not' design. That, and I don't tend to enjoy comics. Much like the Drummer-centric Telltale game that's to be released at some point, I'm also not convinced the universe is that big enough and exciting enough to tell more than it did. Which isn't a bad thing. I'd say the same thing about Babylon 5. Kickstarter posted:Now, viewers of THE EXPANSE television show will be able to continue the story with your fan favorite characters alongside readers of THE EXPANSE novels who will finally find out what happened during the nearly 30 year gap between Babylon's Ashes and Persepolis Rising. Discover the missing adventures of the crew of the Rocinante – James Holden, Naomi Nagata, Amos Burton, Bobbie Draper, and Clarissa Mao – along with the journeys of other beloved characters including Chrisjen Avasarala and Camina Drummer and the ebbs and flows of the Inners, Belters, OPA, and Transport Union… all leading to the rise of the Laconian Empire! And it all begins with the Roci responding to a SOS signal, and the emergence of a new pirate faction… I feel like it'll suffer the fate of all interquels where it's going to be inconsequential, or something that doesn't slot in neatly and becomes weird that no one brings it up after the fact. I imagine they're using the TV series due to licensing particulars, but I also think it's a shame to do "the hidden history between Babylon's Ashes and Persepolis Rising" without Alex. The cynic in me says this is a way to create an Alex-alike to slot into his place if they ever adapt the last few novels. Also, is big name licenses doing Kickstarters really a thing now? I mean, I know it is, but it always feels weird. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 08:41 on Feb 10, 2023 |
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Feb 10, 2023 08:38
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:Interesting, and I think I'm the first person to bring this up on these dead, gay forums, but there's a new Expanse project in the works. Surprised they can't just do a novel about these adventures or something.
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Mar 3, 2023 23:01
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