Persepolis Rising (Book 7 of the Expanse) - SPOILERS

[Kalbear]

It's worth it. Tiamat's Wrath makes the entire series worth it, or worth it more. Hell, it makes Cibola Burn better.

[Kyll.Ing.]

11 hours ago, Kalbear said:

It's worth it. Tiamat's Wrath makes the entire series worth it, or worth it more. Hell, it makes Cibola Burn better.

I really think it's worth reading, and it would have bummed me out to no end to have to go through four weekends of travel without getting to read the book. Fortunately, work was quiet today, so I caught a bus into town and picked up the book (which was no longer reserved for me) as soon as the store opened. Given how much time I'll spend at the airport this weekend, it's really great to have a new book to read.

[Maithanet]

I'm currently reading Persepolis Rising (1/3rd done), and I'm venturing into this thread to ask my general Expanse questions that I've had kicking around for a while.  I've finally made it to a book where the thread isn't locked!

1. Perhaps less relevant now, but how many "belters" were there in books 1-5?  I had pictured it something like 30 million or so, which makes the idea that they kill 20-30 billion people on Earth because of the crimes of the inner govts. pretty astounding.  In addition, I was really having trouble understanding how their military could possibly stand up to a combined Earth/Mars effort in books 5 and 6.  Dutarte took ~ 1/5th of the Mars fleet and gave a portion of it (but none of the Donnager class heavies) to Inaros.  So Inaros has maybe 1/10th of the Mars fleet plus like half or so of the OPA, and with that he can challenge Earth AND Mars?  Even assuming atrocious losses in the Earth/Mars battles of books 1-4, that seems ridiculous.

2.  This might seem like ancient history, but WTF were the "cloaked" gunships that were able to destroy the Donnager in book 1?  The Martians clearly thought that the Donnager easily outgunned their adversaries, but then they were defeated and boarded in the space of a few minutes.  Why hasn't that technology come up again?  Later books indicate that hiding your Epstein drive is virtually impossible, so why was the Donnager caught so flatfooted? 

 

[Kalbear]

56 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

1. Perhaps less relevant now, but how many "belters" were there in books 1-5?  I had pictured it something like 30 million or so, which makes the idea that they kill 20-30 billion people on Earth because of the crimes of the inner govts. pretty astounding. 

There were probably a bit more than that - places like Ceres and Ganymede are pretty big, IIRC. And there's a LOT of space out there to roam and play, so to speak. But that's in the same ballpark, yeah - less than 1% of the total human population. 

56 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

In addition, I was really having trouble understanding how their military could possibly stand up to a combined Earth/Mars effort in books 5 and 6.  Dutarte took ~ 1/5th of the Mars fleet and gave a portion of it (but none of the Donnager class heavies) to Inaros.  So Inaros has maybe 1/10th of the Mars fleet plus like half or so of the OPA, and with that he can challenge Earth AND Mars?  Even assuming atrocious losses in the Earth/Mars battles of books 1-4, that seems ridiculous. 

IIRC, much of Earthfleet was deployed specifically to stop the rocks from falling and they were essentially pinned at home. Mars, meanwhile, wasn't really actively looking for a fight either; while they weren't happy with Earth being blown up they weren't super unhappy either, and they were also trying to figure out whose side everyone was on. The long and short of it was that most of Inaros' free navy wasn't actually being opposed all that much, period. 

56 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

2.  This might seem like ancient history, but WTF were the "cloaked" gunships that were able to destroy the Donnager in book 1?  The Martians clearly thought that the Donnager easily outgunned their adversaries, but then they were defeated and boarded in the space of a few minutes.  Why hasn't that technology come up again?  Later books indicate that hiding your Epstein drive is virtually impossible, so why was the Donnager caught so flatfooted? 

  

The cloaked gunships were secret Earth military tech developed by Mao's group as part of the next iteration of Earth forces in the system, used for SpecOps and first strike capabilities. The Donnager and other ships were caught flat-footed because Mars didn't know about this tech at all. Once they figured it out, they got a better idea of how to watch for those specific characteristics of the drive plumes (which up until that point registered as basically slightly loud background noise), but until that time they had no idea that they needed to look out for it at all. 

While the Epsteins can't be modified to be totally hidden, they can be modified to look a bit off, and that combined with radar and lidar absorbing tech (which Inaros uses on the asteroids in book 5) makes them very hard to detect until it's too late. And it doesn't take much to take out another ship if you have first strike capabilities. 

[Maithanet]

Quote

The cloaked gunships were secret Earth military tech developed by Mao's group as part of the next iteration of Earth forces in the system, used for SpecOps and first strike capabilities. The Donnager and other ships were caught flat-footed because Mars didn't know about this tech at all. Once they figured it out, they got a better idea of how to watch for those specific characteristics of the drive plumes (which up until that point registered as basically slightly loud background noise), but until that time they had no idea that they needed to look out for it at all. 

While the Epsteins can't be modified to be totally hidden, they can be modified to look a bit off, and that combined with radar and lidar absorbing tech (which Inaros uses on the asteroids in book 5) makes them very hard to detect until it's too late. And it doesn't take much to take out another ship if you have first strike capabilities. 

It just seems strange that cloaked ships were a really important plot point for like one chapter, and then never really come up again.  But I guess that's as good an answer as I'm gonna get. 

58 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

IIRC, much of Earthfleet was deployed specifically to stop the rocks from falling and they were essentially pinned at home. Mars, meanwhile, wasn't really actively looking for a fight either; while they weren't happy with Earth being blown up they weren't super unhappy either, and they were also trying to figure out whose side everyone was on. The long and short of it was that most of Inaros' free navy wasn't actually being opposed all that much, period. 

Well given that Inarros declared dominion over all space, I would assume Mars would be fairly motivated to put an end to that kind of talk.  Not to mention a brazen military attack on the Martian President. 

Even if we assume that only a third of the Earth and Mars fleets were available for an offensive, that still seems like plenty to put down Inarros and his ragtag band.  I felt like his fleet was as strong as the plot demanded, even though by the rules established in the series it didn't make a lot of sense. 

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

It just seems strange that cloaked ships were a really important plot point for like one chapter, and then never really come up again.  But I guess that's as good an answer as I'm gonna get. 

They were important, but once you figure out their signature they're not nearly as useful. And until Nemesis Games we didn't really have much of a shooting war. 

1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

Well given that Inarros declared dominion over all space, I would assume Mars would be fairly motivated to put an end to that kind of talk.  Not to mention a brazen military attack on the Martian President.  

From what I recall some Martians were cool with that attack as well. 

1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

Even if we assume that only a third of the Earth and Mars fleets were available for an offensive, that still seems like plenty to put down Inarros and his ragtag band.  I felt like his fleet was as strong as the plot demanded, even though by the rules established in the series it didn't make a lot of sense. 

I'll see if I can find the references in BA, but I really do remember them explicitly stating why Inaros had the run of the system and why he could take over places like Ceres without any real threat to his hegemony. It wasn't a forever thing, but the excuse was that literally every single ship that Earth had was in orbit around Earth because space is pretty large and defenses against cloaked asteroids are hard. 

[Kyll.Ing.]

18 hours ago, Maithanet said:

1. Perhaps less relevant now, but how many "belters" were there in books 1-5?  I had pictured it something like 30 million or so,

I think the very first chapter of the series lists the numbers. I don't have the books here to check, but I think the main stations held a few million at most and a couple hundred thousand lived on smaller stations and rocks scattered around the Belt. 

18 hours ago, Maithanet said:

This might seem like ancient history, but WTF were the "cloaked" gunships that were able to destroy the Donnager in book 1?  The Martians clearly thought that the Donnager easily outgunned their adversaries, but then they were defeated and boarded in the space of a few minutes.  Why hasn't that technology come up again?  Later books indicate that hiding your Epstein drive is virtually impossible, so why was the Donnager caught so flatfooted? 

Didn't the cloaked ships basically float around empty space without firing their engines until an enemy had been lured in? My memory of the details is slightly fuzzy, but I believe Julie Mao's ship was hijacked to use as bait for a larger ship (the Canterbury), which was nuked so a Martian battleship would come see what the fuss was about. Only then did the stealth ships light up their engines in hot pursuit. They were only stealth when everything was turned off, and I believe Holden was passingly familiar with the relevant technology already. Special hulls and internal heat sinks. I don't think they used any sort of revolutionary new technology, they were "merely" using top-shelf military equipment and took the Donnager by surprise with their firepower. The Martians weren't expecting any hostility with that level of organization, as relations with Earth were fairly good at the time and nobody else were supposed to have that type of equipment.

[Jace, Extat]

15 hours ago, Kalbear said:

They were important, but once you figure out their signature they're not nearly as useful. And until Nemesis Games we didn't really have much of a shooting war. 

From what I recall some Martians were cool with that attack as well. 

I'll see if I can find the references in BA, but I really do remember them explicitly stating why Inaros had the run of the system and why he could take over places like Ceres without any real threat to his hegemony. It wasn't a forever thing, but the excuse was that literally every single ship that Earth had was in orbit around Earth because space is pretty large and defenses against cloaked asteroids are hard. 

And the Martians were having like a constitutional crisis, the president didn't think his government would survive a meeting with Avaserala.

A giant chunk of your military leaving, and giving away a further chunk of your navy to terrorists, is bound to paralyze a state. Not to mention they were probably worried about asteroids being sent at them.

I thought it was pretty clear that Duarte knew Innuaros would never win, and might have actually been surprised if he'd seen the damage that the Free Navy was able to achieve. The belters were never meant to be anything but a distraction while Duarte got his defenses set.

50 minutes ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

I think the very first chapter of the series lists the numbers. I don't have the books here to check, but I think the main stations held a few million at most and a couple hundred thousand lived on smaller stations and rocks scattered around the Belt. 

Didn't the cloaked ships basically float around empty space without firing their engines until an enemy had been lured in? My memory of the details is slightly fuzzy, but I believe Julie Mao's ship was hijacked to use as bait for a larger ship (the Canterbury), which was nuked so a Martian battleship would come see what the fuss was about. Only then did the stealth ships light up their engines in hot pursuit. They were only stealth when everything was turned off, and I believe Holden was passingly familiar with the relevant technology already. Special hulls and internal heat sinks. I don't think they used any sort of revolutionary new technology, they were "merely" using top-shelf military equipment and took the Donnager by surprise with their firepower. The Martians weren't expecting any hostility with that level of organization, as relations with Earth were fairly good at the time and nobody else were supposed to have that type of equipment.

I might be misremembering, but didn't they get surprised by the amount of ships too? Am I making that up or did the Protogen guys pull some slight of hand shit to knock out the Donnagers drive?

[Maithanet]

Finished book 7.  I liked it for the most part, I'd consider it approximately in the middle of the roster of Expanse novels.

It seems like a requirement to talk about the 30 year gap, and I agree parts of it didn't work.  I personally had a lot of difficulty in believing that Bobbie and Amos were still the biggest badasses on Medina.  Isn't Amos supposed to be a fair bit older than Holden?  Wouldn't that make him at least in his early 70s by this book?  Even assuming that medical breakthroughs have made 70 more like mid-50s, that is still pretty damn old to be taking on three Voltaire guys at once.  Does no one in the OPA practice martial arts or take (surely improved) supplements? 

Other than that, I agree that it seems like Duarte picked Singh with his "benevolent dictator" backup plan in mind.  But wouldn't it have been better to put someone competent in charge of Medina?  Like, Singh wasn't just in over his head, he was actively making the situation worse again and again.  If Duarte had just picked an experienced administrator, he wouldn't have had an entire high-tech destroyer stolen and he wouldn't have looked like an impotent ass in front of everybody, right after their huge victory in Sol.  Wouldn't that obviously be better?  If he wanted to show that Laconians are held to a higher standard, surely he could have found a better way to demonstrate it than this cock-up. 

Which actually made me wonder if the author actually intended the choice of Singh to be indicative that Duarte is losing it.  I certainly interpret it that way, but I'm not sure if that was intended. 

[karaddin]

On 7/18/2019 at 9:36 PM, Kyll.Ing. said:

Didn't the cloaked ships basically float around empty space without firing their engines until an enemy had been lured in?

...

Special hulls and internal heat sinks. I don't think they used any sort of revolutionary new technology, they were "merely" using top-shelf military equipment and took the Donnager by surprise with their firepower. The Martians weren't expecting any hostility with that level of organization, as relations with Earth were fairly good at the time and nobody else were supposed to have that type of equipment.

Yeah this is how I remember it as well. They can mess with their signature to look like something else (which they did as part of luring the Scopuli in as per the show), but they're only invisible when on the float. There was only a limited number of them built (8 IIRC - 6 at the Donnager, the Anubis and the one at Thoth) and after Thoth they've all been destroyed and as stated the tech wasn't anything Mars couldn't match for the all out war which followed so no point in building more. And then Mao gets caught and the manufacturer of them is off the board anyway.

The thing that was ahead of everyone else was the self sealing armour their soldiers used when boarding the Donnager, but again - Mao is caught and Protogen shut down after another book and while that armour beats the regular light armour (the type available on the Roci) it still doesn't stand a chance against the power armour of the marines which is much more relevant in open war rather than black ops. Bobbie alone would cut them down. So again, no more was produced.

On 7/18/2019 at 10:35 PM, Jace, Basilissa said:

I might be misremembering, but didn't they get surprised by the amount of ships too? Am I making that up or did the Protogen guys pull some slight of hand shit to knock out the Donnagers drive?

Yup, they were essentially single file for their braking burns so the Donnager could only see the front ones drive plume and that meant the radar dampening of the ships was impactful for the rest. Right up until the fight starts Captain Mao thinks its only 1 ship. Even after they finish their braking burn and spread out she's assuming they're Belter ships and don't stand a chance. It's only once they're into CQB and reveal that they have rail guns of their own that it starts to sink in that they're in trouble. By the time the trap is sprung its too late for her to do anything, but after that point they are known about even if they had more - the Martian fleet wouldn't make the mistake of leaving a battleship hanging out without any escorts.

[RedEyedGhost]

New novella being released on Nov 12th - Auberon.

[Wilbur]

On 7/23/2019 at 7:18 AM, Maithanet said:

Finished book 7.  I liked it for the most part, I'd consider it approximately in the middle of the roster of Expanse novels.

It seems like a requirement to talk about the 30 year gap, and I agree parts of it didn't work.  I personally had a lot of difficulty in believing that Bobbie and Amos were still the biggest badasses on Medina.  Isn't Amos supposed to be a fair bit older than Holden?  Wouldn't that make him at least in his early 70s by this book?  Even assuming that medical breakthroughs have made 70 more like mid-50s, that is still pretty damn old to be taking on three Voltaire guys at once.  Does no one in the OPA practice martial arts or take (surely improved) supplements? 

Other than that, I agree that it seems like Duarte picked Singh with his "benevolent dictator" backup plan in mind.  But wouldn't it have been better to put someone competent in charge of Medina?  Like, Singh wasn't just in over his head, he was actively making the situation worse again and again.  If Duarte had just picked an experienced administrator, he wouldn't have had an entire high-tech destroyer stolen and he wouldn't have looked like an impotent ass in front of everybody, right after their huge victory in Sol.  Wouldn't that obviously be better?  If he wanted to show that Laconians are held to a higher standard, surely he could have found a better way to demonstrate it than this cock-up. 

Which actually made me wonder if the author actually intended the choice of Singh to be indicative that Duarte is losing it.  I certainly interpret it that way, but I'm not sure if that was intended. 

I like these questions!

My impression from reading "The Churn" was that "Amos" is actually younger than Holden given the time period and contemporaneous events mentioned, but I could be mistaken.

With respect to picking Singh as a leader, my impression is that Duarte is a "refurbished" human, like the little brother in "Strange Dogs" after the dogs bring the little boy back to life.  The first chapter of Persepolis Rising from the Paulo Cortazar perspective led me to believe that while Cortazar is experiementing with the human-protomolecule hybrids in the pen, there is also strange dog-related technology under control on Laconia as well.

Duarte is very old at the beginning of Persepolis Rising, yet he is also amazingly fit and vigorous.  Cortazar definitely thinks of him as having had some sort of alien treatment to extend his life, but not the result of the work in the pens.  Given the lack of affect from the post-dog-treatment sunbird mama in "Strange Dogs", I assumed that Duarte is similarly affected.  Singh had made a "logical" decision to turn in his immediate superior, and thus Duarte picked him because Singh has a track record of by-the-book behavior.

Another contributing factor to my mind is the totalitarian society Singh comes from, where blind obedience and loyalty to the state is the correct point of view.  The cultural clash between this worldview and that of Belter society is too great for Singh to resolve, and perhaps Duarte could not predict how parochial the younger generation had become.

[red snow]

On 10/29/2019 at 5:47 PM, RedEyedGhost said:

New novella being released on Nov 12th - Auberon.

Looking forward to it. I missed not getting one between the last two books.

[Kalbear]

Auberon is...wow. Damn. 

[shortstark]

5 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Auberon is...wow. Damn. 

Seriously? gotta get it now 

Just read the blurb on Amazon, is that the same Erich? 

[Kalbear]

19 minutes ago, shortstark said:

Seriously? gotta get it now 

Just read the blurb on Amazon, is that the same Erich? 

I believe so, yes. 

I don't know that it'll hit everyone as hard, and it doesn't exactly have a ton of worldbuilding, but it's an incredible character study. 

[Jace, Extat]

On 10/29/2019 at 6:08 PM, Wilbur said:

I like these questions!

My impression from reading "The Churn" was that "Amos" is actually younger than Holden given the time period and contemporaneous events mentioned, but I could be mistaken.

With respect to picking Singh as a leader, my impression is that Duarte is a "refurbished" human, like the little brother in "Strange Dogs" after the dogs bring the little boy back to life.  The first chapter of Persepolis Rising from the Paulo Cortazar perspective led me to believe that while Cortazar is experiementing with the human-protomolecule hybrids in the pen, there is also strange dog-related technology under control on Laconia as well.

Duarte is very old at the beginning of Persepolis Rising, yet he is also amazingly fit and vigorous.  Cortazar definitely thinks of him as having had some sort of alien treatment to extend his life, but not the result of the work in the pens.  Given the lack of affect from the post-dog-treatment sunbird mama in "Strange Dogs", I assumed that Duarte is similarly affected.  Singh had made a "logical" decision to turn in his immediate superior, and thus Duarte picked him because Singh has a track record of by-the-book behavior.

Another contributing factor to my mind is the totalitarian society Singh comes from, where blind obedience and loyalty to the state is the correct point of view.  The cultural clash between this worldview and that of Belter society is too great for Singh to resolve, and perhaps Duarte could not predict how parochial the younger generation had become.

This is well said about Singh. His first, second, and third point of qualification was absolute, unquestioning, obedience. In totalitarian systems this type of people are rewarded for obvious reasons. It doesn't matter if he's unfit or out of his realm of expertise or utterly incompetent. He's loyal. And that's all the strongman at the top cares about. 

[shortstark]

19 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I believe so, yes. 

I don't know that it'll hit everyone as hard, and it doesn't exactly have a ton of worldbuilding, but it's an incredible character study. 

This is incredibly well done, and yeah Kal, it works for me too, this Erich is a much  more 'solid' version of himself than we have become accustomed to, and yes it is he, the whole arm thing gave it away. 

Who else got the Andat mention? 

This one was Abraham's I think. 

 

[unJon]

Really enjoyed that novella. 

I’m missing where we saw the one armed man before. Can someone remind me?

[Consigliere]

1 hour ago, unJon said:

I’m missing where we saw the one armed man before. Can someone remind me?

The Churn and Nemesis Games.