Babylon's Ashes: The Expanse Book 6 (Spoilers)

[Lord Barger]

1 hour ago, larrytheimp said:

I'm thinking all of them died, but wouldnt be surprised to find out thats wrong and there could be more contact with another Miller construct yet to come.  I imagine we get more protomoleculeand Civ that destroyed it-stuff in the next installment

Thanks! Appreciate the answer!

[Happy Ent]

5 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

I imagine we get more protomoleculeand Civ that destroyed it-stuff in the next installment

Let’s dream a bit about what is going to happen.

See, for the first few books I assumed there would be a Big Twist in which it is revealed (through a shift of POV) that Duarte’s faction is right: The Mao/Protogen/Dresden/Duarte people, who are now on the far side of the gate are homo’s only hope, and they’re working their asses off in order to take on the ancient alien civilisation.

But now I no longer this this will happen, because we have good evidence that the ancient alien civilisation is destroyed.

[karaddin]

But we have no indications that whatever killed them is no longer a threat, and several hints that it is. What form that threat will take is unclear, but I still think that is coming.

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

Just started Levithian Wakes, only 6 chapters in but I'm really liking it. Now, my question is wether I should read the Novellas and if there are certain orders in which to read them other than publication order. I'm new to sci-fi, with Red Rising being the only series I've ever read. I like the feel of this series, a but of everything it seems like so far. And, the characters are interesting and I'm already invested in a few in a short period of time.

[Rhom]

1 hour ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Just started Levithian Wakes, only 6 chapters in but I'm really liking it. Now, my question is wether I should read the Novellas and if there are certain orders in which to read them other than publication order. I'm new to sci-fi, with Red Rising being the only series I've ever read. I like the feel of this series, a but of everything it seems like so far. And, the characters are interesting and I'm already invested in a few in a short period of time.

Leviathan Wakes was my first sci fi in a long time.  I was also hooked immediately. I have not read the novellas.  Publication order seems the best from what I understand.  You won't  miss anything if you don't read them, but they do flesh out several of the characters significantly based on what I've seen here.

[RedEyedGhost]

2 hours ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Just started Levithian Wakes, only 6 chapters in but I'm really liking it. Now, my question is wether I should read the Novellas and if there are certain orders in which to read them other than publication order. I'm new to sci-fi, with Red Rising being the only series I've ever read. I like the feel of this series, a but of everything it seems like so far. And, the characters are interesting and I'm already invested in a few in a short period of time.

Read everything in publication order.

[Darth Richard II]

Publication order always.

[red snow]

I finished Babylon's ashes the other week. It was still entertaining but it wasn't "great" like I felt the previous book was. I think part of the problem for me was the number of POVs. While it was necessary to tell a rather big story there were a couple where I thought it wasn't eg when the crew of the Rocinante are all together I don't feel it adds that much seeing multiple POVs. Plus, characters like Naomi, Alex and Amos worked really well as non POV characters prior to "Nemesis Games" (although I have to concede that Amos is one of the more interesting and unique characters when we see inside his head). I just felt that all the POVs made the story feel less focused and I got less of an arc from the characters. It could also be that some of the POVs don't feel that distinct to me and having just finished Robin Hobb's "ship of magic" where she absolutely nails all the character's voices it stood out.

As I say, I still enjoyed it and I much prefer the focus being on solar politics over protomolecules but I hope the next book can reign the amount of POVs featured. As the story mainly dictated an increased number I'm hoping the next one can get around this issue. It's just a far cry from the 2-4 POVs in the initial books.

The odd thing is that this book will probably work really well in TV format, so there's that to look forward to.

[Kalbear]

As to the novellas, I thought Vital Abyss was as good as anything that they have ever written, and the Churn gives a ton of background into Earth and into Amos' background. 

[Kyll.Ing.]

How did I not see this thread before?

 

I really enjoy this series, and have read all the books (though not in a few months now...). Strangely, it seems like I have interpreted the question of the gates a little differently from most other people in here.

First, whatever is eating the ships passing through the gates. It seems to be generally assumed that some unseen "monster" (for the lack of a better word) is ambushing and abducting ships for some nefarious purpose. Could it simply not be the gates' means to fuel themselves? Keeping the gates active might be a very energy-intensive process, and matter is energy. It could just be that certain traffic patterns coincides with the "fuelling" process the gates were designed for. That is, under certain circumstances, passing ships are just consumed and converted into energy.

And then the question of Duarte and his folks. Am I the only one who'd be seriously disappointed if they emerge from the Laconia system with some sort of super-technology and effortlessly take over the Slow Zone and subsequently the Sol system? I mean, as far as I can remember, there's a few thousand people in Laconia at most, and they have only been settled there for a couple of years. Even with an unusually high degree of "science mobilization", they wouldn't be able to reverse-engineer multi-disciplinary ancient technology from scratch in a shorter span of time than the untold millions of resarchers in the Sol system and elsewhere, without any sort of communication with the outside world, and no resources other than those they brought themselves. It just seems unfeasible that they would be able to conjure up super-weaponry in such a short time span with so few people, regardless of their access to ancient artifacts. Just assembling the machinery required to make materials for the machinery required to make the exotic materials of the elder race would be a decades-long effort by a well-funded government, even if all the blueprints were available. It would be akin to North Korea developing fusion reactors decades faster than the rest of the world, except that North Korea has decades' worth of existing infrastructure in place and a population numbering in the tens of millions already.

 

Lastly... would anybody care to explain the meaning of the books' titles? Leviathan Wakes is easy to understand. A leviathan (the protomolecule) awakes (is activated). But there is no Caliban mentioned anywhere in Caliban's War (I presume it is a name). Who or what the titular Abaddon of Abaddon's Gate is, we're never told. The fourth book doesn't even address what the heck a Cibola is supposed to be. Then it sort of goes back to making sense again, with Nemesis Games (playing tricks on one's arch enemy, i.e. stoning the Earth). Babylon's Ashes is a historical parallel to the former capital of the known world laying in ruins. In that context, it's easy enough to see what Persepolis Rising means; after the Babylonian capital fell, a new city rose to take its position (but for the reasons above, it seems implausible that Laconia will replace Earth).

 

Also... exactly what the covers are supposed to depict is completely beyond me. Spaceships crashing? All of them? Without context? I love the books, but the covers have always puzzled me.

[Corvinus85]

19 minutes ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

First, whatever is eating the ships passing through the gates. It seems to be generally assumed that some unseen "monster" (for the lack of a better word) is ambushing and abducting ships for some nefarious purpose. Could it simply not be the gates' means to fuel themselves? Keeping the gates active might be a very energy-intensive process, and matter is energy. It could just be that certain traffic patterns coincides with the "fuelling" process the gates were designed for. That is, under certain circumstances, passing ships are just consumed and converted into energy.

I doubt that is what it's going to be, but I like your interpretation. It does make sense.

20 minutes ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

And then the question of Duarte and his folks. Am I the only one who'd be seriously disappointed if they emerge from the Laconia system with some sort of super-technology and effortlessly take over the Slow Zone and subsequently the Sol system? I mean, as far as I can remember, there's a few thousand people in Laconia at most, and they have only been settled there for a couple of years. Even with an unusually high degree of "science mobilization", they wouldn't be able to reverse-engineer multi-disciplinary ancient technology from scratch in a shorter span of time than the untold millions of resarchers in the Sol system and elsewhere, without any sort of communication with the outside world, and no resources other than those they brought themselves. It just seems unfeasible that they would be able to conjure up super-weaponry in such a short time span with so few people, regardless of their access to ancient artifacts. Just assembling the machinery required to make materials for the machinery required to make the exotic materials of the elder race would be a decades-long effort by a well-funded government, even if all the blueprints were available. It would be akin to North Korea developing fusion reactors decades faster than the rest of the world, except that North Korea has decades' worth of existing infrastructure in place and a population numbering in the tens of millions already.

I agree. But I think that Duarte and his people are most likely to encounter the tech/civ/monster that destroyed the protomolecule civ, and whatever comes out of that gate will be that or a mix of it and human tech. But I think Holden and crew will head over there in the next book, and thus nothing has to come out of there necessarily to the Sol system. However, the next book will be titled Persepolis Rising...

24 minutes ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

Lastly... would anybody care to explain the meaning of the books' titles? Leviathan Wakes is easy to understand. A leviathan (the protomolecule) awakes (is activated). But there is no Caliban mentioned anywhere in Caliban's War (I presume it is a name). Who or what the titular Abaddon of Abaddon's Gate is, we're never told. The fourth book doesn't even address what the heck a Cibola is supposed to be. Then it sort of goes back to making sense again, with Nemesis Games (playing tricks on one's arch enemy, i.e. stoning the Earth). Babylon's Ashes is a historical parallel to the former capital of the known world laying in ruins. In that context, it's easy enough to see what Persepolis Rising means; after the Babylonian capital fell, a new city rose to take its position (but for the reasons above, it seems implausible that Laconia will replace Earth).

Other people here can do a better job than me explaining this but I believe Caliban's War is some reference to the character Caliban from Shakespeare's The Tempest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliban

Abaddon most likely comes from this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abaddon Basically it most likely refers to the Slow Zone and the dead civilization that created it

Cibola is one of the seven golden cities of myth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Cities_of_Gold_(myth), thus it probably refers to the planet where once again there is amazing dead tech

And in regards to the title of the next book, Persepolis was the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, thus if Duarte and his people do become the new dominant power, it would fit nicely as a sequence of titles with Babylon's Ashes. The Persians became the new power in the ancient world, taking over from those who had ruled from Babylon.

[Kyll.Ing.]

Aha. I knew I had heard about Abaddon and Cibola somewhere before. Abaddon has appeared as a name of sinister characters in other forms of media (Dr. Abaddon being a name that sticks to mind, although I cannot remember from where), and I surely must have known (but forgotten) it was biblical.

As for Cibola, I have no excuse. I should have seen that one. Particularly since I just made a looooong post on Carl Barks over in the Comics thread.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

On 4/2/2017 at 3:46 PM, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Just started Levithian Wakes, only 6 chapters in but I'm really liking it. Now, my question is wether I should read the Novellas and if there are certain orders in which to read them other than publication order. I'm new to sci-fi, with Red Rising being the only series I've ever read. I like the feel of this series, a but of everything it seems like so far. And, the characters are interesting and I'm already invested in a few in a short period of time.

I really enjoyed The Churn. It fills in Amos's backstory quite nicely. My only complaint is that it is so short. The only other novella of theirs that I've read was The Butcher of Anderson Station, which was just okay.

[Rhom]

On ‎4‎/‎4‎/‎2017 at 11:20 AM, Kyll.Ing. said:

How did I not see this thread before?

Welcome to the discussion!  If you are curious for a bit of a retrospective, there are spoiler threads for each of the books.  You can look back and get some really neat perspective sometimes on where other readers thought the story was going before the next book in the series actually came out.

If you're into the TV show, there's a thread for that over in the Entertainment sub-forum.

[Darth Richard II]

On 4/2/2017 at 6:46 PM, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Just started Levithian Wakes, only 6 chapters in but I'm really liking it. Now, my question is wether I should read the Novellas and if there are certain orders in which to read them other than publication order. I'm new to sci-fi, with Red Rising being the only series I've ever read. I like the feel of this series, a but of everything it seems like so far. And, the characters are interesting and I'm already invested in a few in a short period of time.

Not to go too far off topic, but as you like Bakker you should definitively read Dune.

[Rhom]

50 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Not to go too far off topic, but as you like Bakker you should definitively read Dune.

Yes

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

Not to go too far off topic, but as you like Bakker you should definitively read Dune.

I have. Just the first one though.

[RedEyedGhost]

1 hour ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

I have. Just the first one though.

Perfect, you're finished with Dune.

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

13 minutes ago, RedEyedGhost said:

Perfect, you're finished with Dune.

That's what I've heard. Heard it gets a bit outlandish after that.

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

So, almost finished Abbbadon's Gate and I'm really enjoying this series.

Question. I noticed in the TV series thread as everyone referring to the Monsters as Caliban's. I got the reference, but in the book I don't recall them being referred to as Caliban's. Did I just miss that reference or was it made clear by some other means?