Season 4 trailer and they’re currently shooting season 5.
I am tumescent.
The Expanse (TV)
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Annnnd turns out the article is fake, Ty Franck debunked it on social media
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The most recent Ty and That Guy aftershow had Keon Alexander (Marco) on it, and it’s a fantastic discussion of the character’s goals and psychology
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How many eps are now out?
Episode 3 came out on Christmas Eve, 3 more to go.
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Thanks.
For this series it’s so dumb. Blitzing S4 a couple of years back over the Xmas break was fantastic.
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Blitzing S4 a couple of years back over the Xmas break was fantastic.
I really hated that. Watched it in 3 days and all that excitment was gone. It’s frustrating but weekly makes the show a better watch, for me obvs.
Really enjoying Ty & That guy this season. The chat with the guy who plays Marco was great. Looking forward to Drummer next week :)
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Depends on how your memory works and how the show is written. I’m not convinced this one is done as a week-by-week show in the way of something like Hawkeye.
They could have also done similar scheduling to that so it’d all be out by Xmas.
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Whoa! I was squirming on the couch during a cringe-worthy scene.
And yay Camina!
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I actively winced when the crate came down for the second time!
Also, very interesting that they put Admiral Duarte in for a scene. I know Ty Franck said they hadn’t been asked to do anything further, but they’ve put so much foreshadowing for the last three books in here…
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Episode 4 aftershow with Dan Nowack, one of the writers.
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The last episode is 90 minutes long, but yea, there’s a _lot_ to cover in that time.
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Finally watched Season 5, and haven’t started on season 6 yet, so I have to close my eyes to the rest of the thread for now, but:
Yeah I’m fine with it… apparently I’m the only one who wasn’t aware they were writting Alex off the show, so that took me by surprise because of how sudden it was, but yeah, it was for sure the best way to do it.
I was taken by surprise, as well. I’m very sad to see the character go, but, well, what can you do in that kind of situation. And it was certainly a powerful moment – all the more so because killing a character who ostensibly wasn’t the one in danger was a damn effective surprise (probably haven’t been this surprised by a character’s death since Tara’s in Buffy).
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I feel bad that I haven’t been talking about just how good this season has been so far. It seems to be pretty low key, so I’m guessing that all the explosions are coming next week.
There’s so many things to love and most of them are Drummer related. That show down between her and Avasarala was fantastic, just gold standard. Going to be so upset when it’s over. Although there does seen to be a feeling that there’s a big anouncment on the way. There was something in the way they were chatting in the last podcast that makes me think this isn’t over.
That and how much money it cost them to shoot the Laconia stuff.
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My main concern is Filip’s arc, his last chapter in the book is one of my favourites and while you can get him from his current place to there, it’s probably going to wind up being changed a fair bit.
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Episode 5 aftershow with Shohreh Aghdashloo and Cara Gee
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Given I’m rereading the last few books before delving into book 9, after I do the traditional differences between the book and show post for series 6, do people want spoiler posts for books 7-9?
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Can you still spoiler code them? Planning to start the series in March once I have the short story collection.
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I assume so, otherwise I’d put them in a google doc or something and link to it.
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Right, I’m all caught up. This season has been really great, and I’m looking forward to the rest of it.
Some thoughts:
– Don’t like the actor playing Marco. In part it’s also the way the character is written, but he just doesn’t come across as charismatic or impressive at all, just like a narcissist prone to alternatively sullenness and rage. There’s really no reason anyone should be following this guy at all.
– Love Amos’ reaction to Holden’s decision. I do hope Filip turns out to have been worth this… Last season, he honestly went on my nerves a bit, but his recent development was quite good.
– The moment that bird thing was alive again, I knew the kid would go all pet semetary on us. What’s going on with the brother is currently the most interesting bit.
– Poor Camina, I really felt for her. The portrayal of her family and their journey was one of the best things about this season.3 users thanked author for this post.
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Given I’m rereading the last few books before delving into book 9, after I do the traditional differences between the book and show post for series 6, do people want spoiler posts for books 7-9?
Yep. Don’t think I’ll ever find the time to read them, so might as well.
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I can’t believe it’s all over tomorrow
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Oh, that was good. Could have easily been lengthened, much like the whole season, but very happy with it.
Still thinking a cop or angry neighbor might show up at my door (I had the volume cranked the whole episode. It called for it, and it worked!)
It’s still sinking in. I could rewatch that tomorrow night, easily.
I’m still holding out hope for more! Fingers crossed!
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Well, I’m sure as shit glad we wasted so much time with the weird ship, the “dogs” and that family for absolutely nothing… =/
The rest was alright, kind of a bittersweet thing I suppose. But it had a little bit of everything that made the Expanse good, and a nice dose of action, so that was nice. It’s not super satisfactory though, because like Holden points out, we still have a lot of plot left to cover with the protomolecule and the creatures and all that, so yeah, not a great ending for sure, but a very good episode nonetheless.
But I really don’t know what they were thinking with that whole other subplot… why even bother? it’s kind of a shit move to do that, tbh.
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it’s kind of a shit move to do that, tbh.
There’s got to be an anouncment coming up, that cost far too much to be for nothing.
I like the ep, it was too short and had to much crammed into it. but it worked. They really ran out of budget on the rail gun attack though, that looked like a computer game from about 2010.
I loved that the Martain marines were named from Aliens. Fucking nerds
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I loved that the Martain marines were named from Aliens. Fucking nerds
There was also a R Deckard, K Thrace, J Rico, W Riker and S Connor in there
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A couple of quick thoughts as I want to watch the episode again before giving my final opinion:
-Loved the dinner scene with the Roci crew, the found family element for them is one of my favourite elements of the books to the point that I was expecting Holden to propose a group marriage for them in book 6 after spending so much time on Pa’s marriage group (or Drummer in the show).
-Loved the assault on the Ring Station, even if it clearly stretched the effects budget beyond its limits. It was probably the show’s biggest setpiece and it worked really well for me.
-I was worried Filip wasn’t going to escape Marco so showing the little clip during the final sequence was very welcome. I figured it was coming when we didn’t see him get eaten, but still.
-loved the final shot of the Roci flying off into space, and the final, final shot of the ring during the credits with the Unknown Aliens’ effect swirling and growing2 users thanked author for this post.
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But I really don’t know what they were thinking with that whole other subplot… why even bother? it’s kind of a shit move to do that, tbh.
It’s weird, but I’ve decided I like it. There’s a larger story involving Pet Sematary Kid, the orbiting structures they guy telling Marcos to go fuck himself, the entities in the ring… Those aspects of the story were never going to get wrapped up, but I am glad they didn’t just leave them out, because it would’ve reduced the story. Now it’s incomplete, but I am fine with that – maybe I will someday read the novels after all. Or maybe they’re holding on to some kind of hope that the Expanse TV show will be given another shot after all, in one form or another. Overall, I’d rather leave this universe with the feeling that the mystery of the protomolecule is going on and has become richer, rather than it being neatly wrapped up in a greatly reduced manner.
Loved the final episode, overall. Obviously, much of it was very hurried indeed, but it worked well enough, even the ending. That was quite a crafty move by Holden.
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It’s weird, but I’ve decided I like it. There’s a larger story involving Pet Sematary Kid, the orbiting structures they guy telling Marcos to go fuck himself, the entities in the ring… Those aspects of the story were never going to get wrapped up, but I am glad they didn’t just leave them out, because it would’ve reduced the story. Now it’s incomplete, but I am fine with that – maybe I will someday read the novels after all. Or maybe they’re holding on to some kind of hope that the Expanse TV show will be given another shot after all, in one form or another. Overall, I’d rather leave this universe with the feeling that the mystery of the protomolecule is going on and has become richer, rather than it being neatly wrapped up in a greatly reduced manner.
Yeah, that’s basically all setup for a sequel that may or may not happen. Everything there is paid off in the novels, and Duarte actually gave Marco all the weapons and ships he did basically to provide cover so he could take his forces to Laconia and take over without the UN or Mars getting wind until it was too late.
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The little we saw of Duarte was great, by the way. Wish we’d gotten to see him become the next season’s major antagonist. The actor was doing really well in establishing him in the conversation with the girl.
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DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SERIES 6 and BABYLON’S ASHES:
POV characters : Namono (prologue), Holden, Filip, Clarissa, Anderson Dawes, Michio Pa, Salis, Jakulski,Vandercaust, Avasarala, Amos, Bobbie, Prax, Anna (epilogue)
- The Prologue is from the POV of Anna’s wife, showing life on post-rock Earth. Anna is injured and laid up in bed and Nami is trying to get supplies from the UN aid stations and also look in on Anna’s congregation, but is feeling the stress. The devastation on Earth is much higher in the books than in the show – the show says millions of casualties while estimates in the novel are six billion or more.
- The Laconian story in the show is adapted from the short story Strange Dogs
- The Roci is docked at Luna when the story begins. The crew set out from there with Bobbie on board as Mission Commander to intercept the Azure Dragon. There’s an amusing scene where the crew are bristling because Avasarala and Fred tell them that they’ll be shipping out with a commander on-board until Bobbie reveals it’s her and then Holden just says “Oh, that’s different then”-The crew status on the Roci is a little different – Alex is still alive, Naomi is fine with Clarissa being on-board while Holden is more reticent. And Fred is still alive, he, Avasarala and the Martian Prime Minister are working together on Luna to coordinate the UN, Martian and mainstream OPA vs the Free Navy
- Naomi was the one to work out ships were disappearing during Gate transits in book 5, and this info has been shared with the UN. Naomi is continuing to work the problem in the background of the show, as are UN experts.
- Drummer’s arc in series 5 and 6 is loosely based on Michio Pa’s in this novel. By comparison, Pa is now the nervous woman who messes up the ambush in episode 1 of the show.-In the novel, Pa is in command of the Free Navy’s roving forces that are capturing and looting colonist ships heading towards the Ring and using those supplies to keep the Belt going in the absence of Earth’s supply chain. She was first officer on the Behemoth during book 3, and found herself adrift following her return from the Slow Zone, eventually forming a polyamorous marriage group and falling into Marco’s sphere of influence. As the story begins, she’s summoned to Ceres for a meeting of Marco’s inner circle.-Filip is sullen and insular as the story begins, hurting from seeing Naomi go out the airlock in book 5. He learns that she survived and that everyone else on the Pella knew but were keeping it from him, making him turn inwards further. When they get to Ceres for the meeting he gets in a bar fight and shoots a security officer rather than his bunkmate. Anderson Dawes is still alive and in charge on Ceres, he arranges for Filip to be handed over to Marco in exchange for Filip’s permanent exile from Ceres.
- The attack on the Azure Dragon is a little bit different – the Roci cripples the ship with a railgun hit, but as they dock the Dragon’s crew trap Bobbie in the airlock and then drop onto the Roci’s hull in salvage mechs, trying to tear the ship apart at short range. Amos and Clarissa head out onto the hull, defeating the Belters but Clarissa is shot twice – she doesn’t use her implants for fear of drowning in her own vomit like she nearly does in the show. After this she and Holden have their chat in the medbay.
- The Roci returns to Luna after capturing the Azure Dragon, Avasarala surprises Holden by rescuing his parents from Earth before their supplies run out.
- The Free Navy abandons Ceres in much the same way. Pa is disgusted by this decision and decides to continue raiding colony ships for supplies, but passes them out to anyone in need. Marco orders the Free Navy to attack her ships, and she winds up cutting a deal with the UN and Mars to deliver supplies to their territory as well, up to and including Earth in exchange for safe passage.-Holden has the idea to humanise the conflict by doing little interviews and vox pops when they’re on Ceres, and while Monica helps him out she’s does make any on-page appearances. Bobbie is offered a crew position on the Roci at this point while also acting as an Earth/Mars liaison to Fred. There’s no bombing of Ceres in the novel.
- Fred is trying to bring OPA elements who are wary of Marco together, but they refuse to come to Ceres while it’s under the control of the Consolidated Fleet, so he arranges to meet them at Tycho and arranges to fly out there on the Roci. They’re ambushed by the Free Navy during this flight, and the battle plays out much the same in the show, except Alex is flying the ship and Bobbie is operating the weapons for the entire fight. Fred dies of a stroke during the fight, and Avasarala tells Holden to go to Tycho in his stead and get them on board
- Prax’s story in the book is about 3 chapters, but plays out much the same way – a colleague is killed by Free Navy soldiers and it prompts him to leak info on the new strain of grain that can help feed Earth. You get a lot of detail about his home life, he’s married again and his new wife also has a daughter from a previous relationship, who’s basically best friends with Mei.
- Salis, Jalkulski, Vandercaust and Roberts are members of a work crew on Medina, they get a chapter each showing what’s happening in the Slow Zone – Salis’ one has them mounting the railguns on the Nucleus, Jalkulski’s sees him as part of a reception party when a Laconian ship comes through their gate, and in Vandercaust’s he’s interrogated as a possible mole after colonists from 15 gates tried to raid Medina for supplies the Free Navy have impounded for their own use. After Jankuksi gets out of lockup, they figure out that not every ship that was sent to raid Medina made the gate transit successfully. Roberts’ chapter comes during the attack on the Slow Zone, seeing the horde of converted small craft coming through the gate and realising that most of them were decoys.
- Sanjrani (a male character in the books rather than non-binary like in the show) sneaks away from Marco and meets with Pa in secret at one of her group’s supply dumps. Sanjrani reveals that Marco has not been following the carefully laid out logistical and economic plan they worked out to keep the Belt alive without supplies from Earth, and as a result they have about three years before people start to starve in earnest
- When Holden arrives at Tycho, he’s surprised to find Dawes amongst the OPA leaders, given he was last seen as a member of Marco’s inner circle. Holden excludes him from his conference but Dawes decides to support him anyway, working each of the leaders privately to get them to support Holden. This is one of my favourite sequences in the novel and it’s a shame they couldn’t work it into the show.-The Free Navy isn’t racing to the Slow Zone in the novel, after the fight against the Roci Marco takes the Pella to Callisto for repair and refit. Filip is starting to feel the weight of his actions and is at a low point because Marco is blaming him for their inability to destroy the Roci – up until they discover Fred died and he starts to say “we did it” –
- Filip realises that Marco will always steal credit and place blame and Naomi talking about how Marco put blood on both their hands comes to the fore of his mind
- The plan to send the Roci and the Giambatista to the Slow Zone is formed. There’s no raid on the Ring by the MCRN that’s destroyed by the railguns, they already knew about the installation. The Coalition Fleet makes a broad attack on the Free Navy’s positions so they’re too distracted to notice the run for the ring. During this Pa’s fleet assaults Pallas, and after they disable the station’s defences and block the docks with a crippled ship. Rosenfeld is on the station and Pa convinces him to surrender and defect.
- The Railguns can’t fire through the ring in the book, instead the Roci has a quick fight against a pair of gunships on the Sol side of the Ring before sending the crates and landing pods in. The assault on the railgun station happens similarly in the book, except they land on the Nucleus in drop pods and Bobbie ends up using the engine on one of them to destroy the railgun reactor. The Nucleus shrinks and glows green after the reactor blows, wrecking the rail system the guns used to reposition and rendering the entire facility unusable.
- Filip doesn’t stand up to Marco until after the tide has turned against the Free Navy, echoing Naomi’s repeated point from book 5 that Marco always tries to make whatever happened look like it was the plan all along, only for Marco to dismiss him as a child having a tantrum. He walks away from the Free Navy just before they leave Callisto to try and retake Medina, signing on as a ship worker under the name Filip Nagata.
- Marco’s end and the negotiations afterwards work out pretty much the same in the novels, except Holden flat turns down presidency of the Transport Union and nominates Pa instead, who accepts the job.
- In the epilogue, Anna and her family are on a colony ship, leaving Earth to make a new life. It just shows a couple of hours in their lives.
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SPOILERY POST FOR PERSEPOLIS RISING
POV characters: Coratázar (Prologue), Holden, Singh, Drummer, Naomi, Alex Clarissa, Duarte (Epilogue)The book begins 28 years after Babylon’s Ashes. In that time the Roci has been running missions for the Transport Union, with a constant crew of Holden, Naomi, Alex, Amos, Clarissa and Bobbie. Clarissa’s implants have begun to break down, leaving her in very poor health and Amos is acting as much as a nursemaid for her as he is ship’s mechanic. Drummer is now president of the Transport Union and probably the most powerful person in the solar system. Earth and Mars have a political alliance, with the collapse of the terraforming project on Mars their engineers have spent decades repairing the damage Marco did to Earth. The Transport Union is big into massive engineering projects, they’ve built mobile stations like Tycho only bigger called void cities, and as the story begins they’re opening a massive space station in Earth-Luna’s L5 as a transfer point for goods to and from Earth. The prologue shows what Coratázar has been up to on Laconia, which is basically working with the protomolecule, both integrating it into human technology and experimenting on humans. The end results of this experiment are being applied to Duarte, now the military dictator of the planet, who intends to become immortal and rule all humanity forever. Criminals and soldiers who breach the Laconian military code of justice are generally handed over to Coratázar for experimentation and kept in a secure facility called The Pen
While returning from a mission where a prisoner gets loose on the Roci, Holden and Naomi decide to retire, cashing out their shares in the Roci and selling them to Bobbie, who is nominated to take over as Captain. The day after they part ways the Laconians send a message to Medina saying they’re sending a delegation to the station to discuss their future together. Everyone assumes things have gone to shit on Laconia but a show of force is planned to keep them in their place. Naturally, this all goes horribly wrong and the Laconian ships are human/protomolecule hybrids far more advanced than anything developed in the thirteen hundred worlds. The ship hulls heal railgun shots almost instantly and the battleship Heart of the Tempest uses a directed magnetic beam is used to destroy the lead Transport Union ship and the railguns on the Nucleus. The remaining forces, including the Roci surrender as Medina is boarded by troops from the destroyer Gathering Storm. Santiago Jille Singh, the commander of the Gathering Storm is installed as governor of Medina. He’s a young Captain and highly motivated by the Laconian ideal, meaning he doesn’t quite get how things work and he expects everyone to bend to his ideals. While he labours with this task, the Tempest commanded by Admiral Trejo transits to the Sol system to single-handedly defeat Earth and Mars. As part of their attempts to instil Laconian rule, they build a prison in the middle of Medina’s drum, where prisoners are on public display. Singh is nearly killed by insurgent gunmen, leading him to institute a draconian lockdown. He also realises that if the Laconians fire their magnetic beam weapon at the Nucleus, it shoots hard radiation out of the ring gates, cooking everything nearby. This means that a single Laconian battleship can hold the Slow Zone and destroy ships coming through any or all gates.
Bobbie and the Roci crew, Holden and Naomi all wind up joining the resistance on Medina, which is led by Drummer’s husband Saba. They successfully bug the data feed from Medina to the Sotorm but can’t read the data because it’s encrypted. Bobbie and Amos also clash with a radical cell of old-school OPA operatives who set off a bomb in the station after Saba sends them to tell the radicals to restrict their actions in order to prevent collective punishment.
The first battle between the Tempest and a combined fleet in Sol goes poorly for the defenders, with one of the void cities and many other ships destroyed. As the ship inexorably dives into the gravity well, word comes to Medina that a second battleship is heading to the Slow Zone to control the space. Forseeing the end of organised resistance on Medina when that happens, Saba, Holden and Bobbie form a plan to raid the encryption room that airgaps the data traffic between the Storm and their operations on-station. They plan to have some drones take out the guards on the encryption room with grenades, then raid the computers for the keys they need and then set off a bomb that takes out some oxygen tanks and vents the section to vaccum to cover their tracks. However, they realise one of the guards has a deadman switch that will trigger an alarm if he’s killed, so Holden runs through Engineering, smashing up stuff and sets off a bunch of alarms. He’s captured by Laconian marines but creates enough confusion that the deadman switch isn’t noticed until it’s too late. The Tempest approaches Pallas, announcing to the Transport Union that they can’t allow the facility to remain in their hands, and as a result will destroy it. Tycho has been docked there for years,and most of the inhabitants of Pallas evacuate along with Tycho, and the station is destroyed by the Tempest’s beam weapon. As the weapon fires, all humans in the Sol system black out for three minutes, and a glowing orb identical to the one Holden and Elvi found on Ilus is on the deck aboard Tempest when they come around. Singh realises who Holden is and interrogates him about Ilus and shows him footage of the orb on the Tempest. Holden surmises that the aliens who killed the Ring Builders just took a shot at Humanity, and they should find Elvi as she knows more about alien artefacts than anyone else. Singh decides to have Holden shipped back to Laconia.-The resistance decrypts the data they’ve stolen from the Storm, and finds a full security audit in the files. This includes a code that can be used to shut down the marines’ power armour in case of mutiny, and they decide to use this in a plan to get as many resistance members off the station before the second Laconian battleship arrives.
The Tempest is intercepted by a large fleet of Earth, Mars and Transport Union ships. While they damage it, up to and including hits from nuclear warheads, the ship is still active and inflicts massive casualties. With the Earth/Mars command in total disarray, Drummer issues a surrender order, ending military resistance in Sol system. The Resistance kicks off their plan to escape from Medina – Bobbie and one of the radicals blow open another hole in the hull, taking out two Marines in the process and stealing the most intact set of their power armour. A riot breaks out at the detention centre, and the Resistance send the disable signal to the Laconian power armour, locking the all in place. Alex sneaks onto the Roci and launches from Medina with the help of Resistance members in the station administration with the Storm detaching to give chase with a skeleton crew on board. Bobbie, Amos and a team of OPA operatives latch onto the hull as it detaches and begin to cut in. Naomi, Clarissa and one of the other radicals set out to disable the station’s sensors, but this radical has double-crossed the resistance, forcing Clarissa to use her implants to take out the Laconians before dying from a gunshot wound. Amos isn’t able to disable the Storm, but Bobbie realises how few people are aboard and they’re able to overpower the ship’s crew. The Roci, the Storm and about 50 other ships escape through the rings while Medina’s sensors are blocked. In the aftermath of the escape, Singh orders his head of security to prepare a list of Medina personnel that can be trusted, and then to execute the rest. It transpires that the head of security had orders to execute Singh if he did anything like this – the people of Medina are considered Laconian citizens and while Laconia’s punishments are brutal, they apply them to people who have at least been accused of a crime. So in an attempt to send the right message to the descendents of the newly conquered worlds and stations, Singh takes the fall.
Back in the Sol system, the change of power is underway. A small fleet of Laconian destroyers, less advanced than the initial ships but still powerful arrives and intimidates the last pockets of open resistance into giving up. Drummer is under house arrest and is told to give a press conference which is entirely scripted, where she says that the plan was always to move from the Transport Union’s primacy to a national army protecting shipping and enforcing the law, but of course Laconia is a better choice for this than Earth and Mars. Drummer is invited to Laconia to become part of Duerte’s circle of advisors, the first stage in transferring cultural primacy from Sol to Laconia. Trejo mentions that mass relocations of people will happen over the coming decades and centuries to better spread out the population.-The Roci is safely hidden on Freehold, a planet of space Libertarians that was the destination of the mission at the start of the book. Naomi and Alex are living there while Bobbie and Amos have hidden the Storm near a gas giant in the same system and are working to learn the ship and its technology -Holden and Duarte meet on Laconia. Holden is instantly disgusted with how Duerte has altered his body – and Duarte can read the electrical activity in Holden’s brain as they talk. Holden tries to warn Duarte off experimenting with Protomolecule technology but Duarte counters that humanity was never going to do that, and instead Holden should work with him and Coratázar to develop the weapons they need to defeat the aliens who killed the Ring Builders.
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Working my way through season 6.
Liked this line in ep 3:
“Package said it was food.”
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Yea, if you haven’t read the books it just leaves the story hanging. Which is no fun for the TV crowd.
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Oh, the books are next.
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SPOILERY POST FOR TIAMAT’S WRATH
POV characters: Holden, Elvi, Teresa, Naomi, Bobbie, Alex
4 years have passed since the fall of the Sol system. Holden is still a prisoner of Laconia, wandering Duarte’s palace. Amos is missing, he left for Laconia with a nuke, intending to rescue Holden or blow up the capital city and hasn’t been heard from since. Naomi and Saba are leading the Underground from hidden positions – Naomi inside a shipping crate that’s passed from ship to ship in cargo transfers, never actually being unloaded at a dock. Saba’s location is a mystery to everyone. Bobbie is in command of the Gathering Storm, with Alex as her XO and pilot. Avasarala has died recently, and Duarte has insisted that her state funeral takes place on Laconia. Holden meets her granddaughter there. Shortly after this he has a conversation with Duarte’s teenage daughter Teresa, who is being educated to step in as High Consul should anything happen to Duarte. In their conversation Holden repeatedly stresses that she should keep an eye on him, clearly trying to put the idea in her head.
Elvi is part of a mission searching the dead systems – worlds with no habitable planets but are still connected to the Ring network. Most of them have some protomolecule artefacts, so they have a “catalyst” aboard – a woman the Laconians put in the pen, infected with protomolecule but the infection stopped spreading before turning her into a vomit zombie so she can be safely moved around without infecting others. They enter the system, get the Catalyst out of her cell that blocks any signal she might be sending, and then wait and see what happens when she can communicate with anything in-system. When the book begins they’re investigating a system which contains a diamond the size of Jupiter and appears to be a storage system for all knowledge the ring builders accumulated. But the military commander of the mission naturally cares little for science and insists they move on to their next destination.
The Gathering Storm is smuggled into the Sol system inside a large Transport Union ship for a raid – a freighter is transporting replacement parts and antimatter to the Heart of the Tempest, and more importantly a political officer they want to abduct and interrogate. The raid goes well at first, with Alex destroying the first of two escorts while Bobbie leads a boarding party that quickly subdues any resistance. But the second escort fires its PDCs into the freighter even as the Storm moves to destroy it in order to prevent the resistance from getting their prize. The freighter is vented to vacuum, killing everyone except Bobbie’s boarding party in their stolen Laconian power armour, plus the Storm takes a heavy hit disabling many systems. While their secondary objectives of obtaining supplies and spare parts are successful, losing the political officer and the damage the Storm took are blows to their morale. Elvi’s ship discovers an empty system, containing only a neutron star close to collapse, with the ring five times further out than normal and directly above the star as opposed to being on the plane of the ecliptic. There is literally nothing else in the system, so the military commander of their mission declares it the perfect place to move to the military stage of the mission – they will wait for traffic in the rings to near the limit that ships start to disappear, and then send through an automated ship. When it starts to vanish, they’ll send in a second ship with an antimatter charge on a timer in an attempt to harm the aliens that killed the Ring Builders, and effectively send them a message to back off. Elvi thinks this idea is stupid, but she’s got no way to stop it.
Unnerved by her conversation with Holden and frustrated by discovering a boy she fancies asked one of her best friends out, Teresa sneaks out of the State Building to visit Timothy, an old man who lives in the caves in the hills near the capital with a large collection of tools and gear, and calls Teresa Tiny instead of her name. I WONDER WHO THAT COULD BE? Anyway, Amos, I mean Timothy advises Teresa to pay attention to Holden like he suggested. Teresa returns home and watches Holden’s actions later the day they met, and finds him sitting with Coratázar sharing a bottle of wine and talking about immortality and how Duarte won’t let Coratázar apply the protomolecule treatment to himself, but he’s authorised the treatment for Teresa. Naomi’s current ship is headed for Auberon, one of the main economic powerhouses in the colonies, it turns out the ship is going to be boarded by a Laconian political officer, so she and her contact break down her transport crate and make it look like genuine cargo, hide her gear throughout the ship and try and hider her amongst the crew. It turns out most people recognise her and willingly cover for her. The Gathering Storm is hiding out on Callisto when they get word that the Tempest has broken orbit over Earth and is heading for Jupiter to hunt them down. While Alex is planning an escape that lets them lift off and then use their Epstein Drive while Jupiter or other moons obscure them from as many enemy installations as possible, Bobbie is inventorying the gear they took from the freighter they captured, while trying to figure out their next steps in a fairly hopeless battle. And that’s when she finds a bunch of spare parts that suggest the Tempest still has holes in its sensor net from damage it took during the battle for Sol, and the pods of antimatter…
The experiment in the dead system takes place. After the second ship detonates Elvie’s team realise that the neutron star is gaining mass and will soon collapse. They dash for the Ring and manage to get through and out of a direct line from it in time to avoid the spew of hard radiation that comes through. The Ring and the one on the other side of the Slow Zone are destroyed – the latter cutting off 80,000 people in the system on the other side. On Laconia, Duarte asks Teresa’s opinion on what to do with the Slow Zone. after the star collapse, a ship transiting the rings vanishes, clearly an aggressive move by the aliens. Duarte intends to detonate another ship full of antimatter during a ring transit on the assumption that the last one harmed the aliens and he wants to intimidate them. Teresa advises against it, citing the logic of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, but Duarte is not convinced. He says that her perspective will change after she undergoes the treatment and gains his additional senses and immortality. Back in the Slow Zone, Elvi deduces that the neutron star was a trap and they blundered into it, While she tries to argue her point with their military commander and the governor on Medina, they notice the radiation readings at the edge of the slow zone are changing, and the aliens attack again, with both another consciousness attack and consuming the ships in the Slow Zone like they do during Ring transits. Elvi is able to react as she was in the aliens’ un-space when she fell into the orb on Ilus and manages to trigger their ships automated escape mode, designed to return them to Laconia at full burn. They make it through the ring but the ship is partially consumed, and the crew are either dead or heavily wounded – One of Fayez’ feet has vanished, for example. Teresa is visiting Timothy when the aliens attack again. When they recover Timothy ushers her out of the cave and tells her to go home, as her handlers will be looking for her. She’s a bit upset but that quickly turns to being unnerved as a VTOL with her tutor and some soldiers aboard finds her on the slopes of the hills. She soon learns that they placed a tracker in her jaw when she was an infant and is horrified that she’s never had any independence. But this is soon forgotten because it turns out Duarte didn’t recover from the consciousness attack. Coratázar theorises that the aliens wiped out the Ring Builders with a single consciousness attack and are trying it repeatedly on humans, but it worked on Duarte this time because his alterations made him more like the Ring Builders. The only people who know of his state are Teresa, her tutor Colonel illich, Coratázar and Duarte’s steward. They agree to keep it secret and are now the de facto rulers of all humanity while they recall Admiral Trejo from Sol.
Naomi made it to Auberon shortly before the alien attack, her contact on-site turned out to be one of the additional crew that was aboard the Roci during the Free Navy conflict. They recover from the attack and try to contact Saba to see what’s going on, only for there to be no response from Medina at all, let alone the hidden Underground channels. It takes a week for a probe to reach the Slow zone from Auberon and they discover all human-made objects in there are gone – the only thing remaining is the Nucleus, glowing a bright white. Back on Callisto, Bobbie begins to formulate a plan – she intends to destroy the Tempest with the captured antimatter. As the Laconians have only been able to build three Magnetar-class battleships so far, and the Typhoon was destroyed in the Slow Zone, if they can take out the Tempest the Laconians are going to have to decide between using the last ship to defend Laconia or project force. On Laconia, Holden goes about his day, which is largely defined by reminding himself internally that despite the luxury he’s a prisoner of an oppressive empire while ingratiating himself with his captors – he’ll bring the guards coffee which they say they can’t take, so he’ll just leave it there so they dispose of it safely. The second one has a little extra sugar so make sure Lieutenant Yao knows about that one. He tries to pal around with Coratázar and play chess, except today Coratázar is in too much of a hurry. He often spends the afternoon trying to figure out where Teresa will be and set himself up in her path, with a bit of sausage to give to her dog. Today he guesses right and in a brief conversation discovers Elvi and Fayez have been brought to the state building for convalescence and to consult with Coratázar. He concludes from this info that something is wrong with Duarte and begins to plot his next moves.
Naomi decides to take control of the Underground, and has her handful of contacts break protocol and put her in contact with their contacts, and uses this network to get the message torpedo system working again. She gets a message from Bobbie asking for approval for her plan to take out the Tempest, which she approves. Elvi gets to work with Coratázar, while Holden and Fayez catch up and Holden cryptically tells Fayez that Coratázar is planning to kill Teresa and give her to the Repair Drones so he can observe how they work on a well-observed subject. Fayez tells Elvi and she gets far more suspicious of him, to the point of intercepting Coratázar when he takes Teresa out of class for what he claims are routine tests. She also meets Cara and Xan, the children from Strange Dogs/the Laconia plot in TV series 6, who haven’t aged. She quickly realises that they’re self-aware and largely the same as they were before they died and were rebuilt by the Repair Drones/Strange Dogs. Teresa goes to visit Timothy again, and as they talk Laconian soldiers arrive, to take her back, following her implanted tracer. Naturally they recognise Amos and a firefight breaks out in which Amos is killed. Illich grabs her and they retreat, unsure how many other resistance fighters are in the caves. When they return to the caves after, Amos’ body is gone and they figure he’s been taken by the Repair Drones.
Bobbie implements her plan to take out the Tempest. The Storm heads out from Callisto as bait while she and one of her engineers take out a skiff and hide in the Tempest’s flightpath with the antimatter stuffed into a torpedo to ambush them. And it goes kinda wrong when a stray shot kills Bobbie’s engineer and a second wrecks the torpedo. So she jumps out of the wrecked skiff holding the warhead, throws it at the Tempest and then engages her power armour’s jets to go strafe the battleship. She’s killed by a PDC round just before the antimatter warhead detonates, destroying the Tempest and damaging the Storm in the blast. Holden is imprisoned and beaten, and interrogated about Amos by a variety of people including Teresa and Elvi on the assumption that he might say something different to people he’s friendly towards, but of course he’s told the truth at every turn so Trejo and the other conspirators don’t quite believe him. Trejo arrives at Laconia and takes control. Elvi tells him about her suspicions around Coratázar but he’s indifferent so long as Coratázar is working to Teresa is getting increasingly worried about her future given Duerte’s state, and in an emotional moment she cries in front of his comatose form and tells him she thinks Coratázar is going to kill her. Naomi leaves Auberon, initially intending to move on to another system to take stock of the Underground but she decides instead to return to the Roci. Independent of this, Alex also returns to the ship, despondent over Bobbie’s death. Naomi decides that the best move forward is to reduce the Laconians’ power advantage. She orders the Underground to assemble every ship they can to prepare for an audacious mission. On Laconia, the conspirators decide to make a composite image of Duarte they can use to make faked video messages, but as they prepare to scan his face, he stands up, waves at Coratázar and the scientist explodes. The Aliens attack again, this time everyone’s consciousness is turned off for twenty minutes.
Naomi’s fleet, some 400 ships strong transits to Laconia system and lays siege. One group sticks at the ring and pours overwhelming fire into any ship that comes through, one group fires a massive volume of rocks and torpedoes at the planet to overwhelm the planetary defence grid, and the last engages in high-G burns through the system to draw off defending ships. Eventually the Roci and three Donnager-class ships approach the planet and destroy the Ring Builders’ shipyard in orbit – the source of the Laconian self-sealing hulls, magnetic beam weapons, and antimatter production. As the fleet is bearing down on Laconia, Teresa decides to leave. She breaks Holden out of his cell, they grab Amos’ emergency transmitter from the gear that was recovered from his cave and signal the Roci for a pickup. As they escape from the State Building they’re confronted by Elvie, and Holden admits that he manipulated Coratázar into his plan to kill Teresa, but it was so Duarte would remove Coratázar and promote Elvie to head of the science directorate and find a way to defeat the aliens. Frustrated, Elvie lets them go, only for Colonel Illich to track them via Teresa’s implant and confront them at gunpoint. Amos – who was indeed rebuilt by the Repair Drones appears out of the darkness and kills Illich. The Roci lands and the three of them – and Teresa’s dog Muskrat all get aboard and back into Orbit. The Typhoon attempts to intercept them but Teresa talks them down and the fleet escapes Laconia and scatters through the gates. Elvie goes to Admiral Trejo and states that they’re going to repair her ship and she’s going to return to the system with the giant diamond/storage system as she figures that’s the best chance for defeating the aliens. She returns to Coratázar’s lab and frees Cara and Xan, asking them to go with her.-Back on the Roci, Holden is getting treated for the injuries he sustained when he was imprisoned, getting used to being free and mourning Bobbie’s death. He and Amos discuss the latter’s new post-death state, and Amos says that he’s pretty sure he’s still himself, but he knows things he didn’t know before, most prominently being that the aliens are planning to kill everyone.
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Fuck yes!
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It’s a slow burn, really different from the Expanse, but it’s worth it. Don’t listen to the audio book, the narrator is pretty boring. :/
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Yeah, I’m not an audiobook kinda guy
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I’ve just discovered there’s also a novella, because of course there is.
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