Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels discussion

This thread is for discussing the eight book in the Expanse series, Tiamat's Wrath, and the associated novella, Auberon.

Book nine (Leviathan's Fall) is scheduled to be released in October 2021, so for now the buddy read ends here.

I enjoyed the series so far, which comes as a surprise, for quite often series go down after a great start.

Yes, I too have mostly enjoyed the Expanse. I didn't like Persepolis Rising and was a bit wary opening Tiamat's Wrath: is the whole series going downhill fast? Could this be even worse than the irritating action bullshit of PR? But no, Tiamat's Wrath is once again dependable three-star adventure.

Sure, there were some scenes that weren't the most coherent ((view spoiler)[what was Amos doing in that mountain? And how did he get so easily taken down, when he's been such an unstoppable killing machine in the preceding seven books? And really, Rocinante landing right next to the capital right in the middle of the war? You'd expect they'd have some proper antiaircraft (antispacecraft?) batteries installed. (hide spoiler)]), but that's par for the course for this series. I've pretty much accepted that the writers swear by The Rule of Cool: if it makes them go "oh yeah!" they will just write the scene and try to make some flimsy justifications for how their favourite scene could actually happen. It's a bit annoying, but whatever.

(view spoiler)[Bobbie dying in a blaze of glory was very predictable, so it lacked the emotional punch the writers were probably aiming for. Amos' death was also very obviously going to be only temporary. But the writers did manage to totally surprise me a couple of times: the annihilation of Medina Station, for one, but the biggest unexpected twist was Duarte getting all brain-damaged right in the middle of everything. That made for a refreshing change of pace, when Laconian high command fell into very realistic chaos. (hide spoiler)]

I agree with you, Antii. I think I liked Persepolis Rising better than Tiamat's Wrath though. The two spoilers you first mention were issues with me as well, and the two later were more refreshing twists. The former reminded me of some of the unlikely conveniences we've talked about in the Vorkosigan saga. I didn't have the same issues with Persepolis Rising though. Still, it's all good adventure.

My issues with PR boil down to "Laconia is at the same time able to effortlessly able to conquer the whole Sol system and unable to secure the Medina Station from a handful of rebels". It very feels to me that both of these things can't happen at the same time.

If Laconian rule is so flimsy that the few rebels on Medina can hijack your cruiser, how come the hundreds of thousands (millions? ten of millions?) rebels in Sol system can't do comparable feats? And vice versa: if they are so efficient, how come the main characters stand a chance against them? It just strikes me as completely implausible and plot-driven: since the writers only care about the main characters, they don't want to complicate things by having any of those billions of people in Sol having any will of agency. It was extremely irritating to me.

4-8 are going on my TBR and I am going to try to get through them this next year.

Antti wrote: "Laconia is at the same time able to effortlessly able to conquer the whole Sol system and unable to secure the Medina Station from a handful of rebels"

The US managed to make an A-bomb and place a man on the Moon, but are unable to stop mass shooting is the best allusion

Not really, since mass shootings are random and happen during peacetime - and they don't happen in a closed system such as a space station. This was concerted enemy action during a war in an extremely surveilled environment.

It's like if in the middle of the Second Gulf War a group of Ba'ath officers managed to escape from Abu Ghraib - and also hijacked a US missile cruiser in the process. It's extremely implausible.

There were maneuvers a few years back were US cruiser was not captured but destroyed (in war games) but a group of civilian ships, and 9/11 also show that being a superpower doesn't ensure safety

9/11 is fairer comparison, but I would point out that it happened during peacetime and not while US was in the middle of a grand war. Usually security and intelligence operations are much more paranoid during wartime. And the terrorists didn't have to operate in a space station.

I can't really stress this enough: with facial recognition techniques, organized terrorist operations on a space station should be pretty impossible. I'd expect even during completely peaceful times the station security has to be on a constant lookout for nutcases who decide that they will blow a hole in the wall or destroy the life support system or something equally catastrophic. During occupation the security should be even tighter- there shouldn't be any room for rebels to operate.

I understand that this would've made for a lousy plot, so the writers had to handwave like crazy to give the heroes a chance to be heroic. I understand that, but I still don't like it.

Antti wrote: "I understand that this would've made for a lousy plot, so the writers had to handwave like crazy to give the heroes a chance to be heroic. I understand that, but I still don't like it.
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Agreed

In my mind, it's not all that different from the unlikely gyrations in the Vorkosigan saga.