Jump to content

TIAMAT'S WRATH - Book 8 of Expanse (SPOILERS)


Kalbear

Recommended Posts

This is also interesting:
"After The Expanse, they do have some other projects in the works: A new, three-book series. They haven’t begun working on it just yet, but with The Expanse coming to a close, they’ll be devoting their attention to that shortly. “It’s a very different project [from The Expanse],” Abraham said. Where The Expanse drew its inspiration from authors like Larry Niven and Alfred Bester, “the new ones will be much more Frank Herbert.”"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ever since we saw what was on the other side of the gates, I've had a feeling that Leviathan will indeed fall in the end: Humanity will spread to a bunch of planets all over the galaxy, and suddenly and irreversibly lose the means to travel between them. It will no longer be a multi-solar civilization, but hundreds of individual, single-solar civilizations with no means to communicate. Humanity will be fractured for thousands of years at the very least, building entirely new societies that will eventually no longer remember their common past. Many of them may eradicate themselves over time, but all will know there is intelligent life to be found elsewhere in the galaxy. It will be an epoch shift in humanity's history, or rather, histories. A nice place to end the series.

By the way, I really like the title. Tying it all back to the beginning of the series.

Oh, and if I were to guess what destroys the gates, I'll place my money on them being destroyed intentionally to cut all contact with the "gate builder eaters". Deactivating the gate network will remove their link to our (corner of the?) universe, preventing them from destroying humanity but removing interstellar travel. Kind of like tearing up that vital highway that crossed the haunted Indian burial ground. Losing a capability, but probably being better off compared to the alternative.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

59 minutes ago, Kyll.Ing. said:

Ever since we saw what was on the other side of the gates, I've had a feeling that Leviathan will indeed fall in the end: Humanity will spread to a bunch of planets all over the galaxy, and suddenly and irreversibly lose the means to travel between them. It will no longer be a multi-solar civilization, but hundreds of individual, single-solar civilizations with no means to communicate. Humanity will be fractured for thousands of years at the very least, building entirely new societies that will eventually no longer remember their common past. Many of them may eradicate themselves over time, but all will know there is intelligent life to be found elsewhere in the galaxy. It will be an epoch shift in humanity's history, or rather, histories. A nice place to end the series.

By the way, I really like the title. Tying it all back to the beginning of the series.

Oh, and if I were to guess what destroys the gates, I'll place my money on them being destroyed intentionally to cut all contact with the "gate builder eaters". Deactivating the gate network will remove their link to our (corner of the?) universe, preventing them from destroying humanity but removing interstellar travel. Kind of like tearing up that vital highway that crossed the haunted Indian burial ground. Losing a capability, but probably being better off compared to the alternative.

So humanity is Leviathan and not the Goths? Humanity is the least advanced of all the species in the series...

I like the title too.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I thought Leviathan was the gate builders. The first book it awakens after being dead for 2 billion years. The last book it is not just put to sleep - it dies. It is killed. Meaning (to me) the entire system is destroyed - all the gates, all the protomolecule-active items, everything that relies on the tech that pisses off the Goths. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Kalibear said:

I thought Leviathan was the gate builders. The first book it awakens after being dead for 2 billion years. The last book it is not just put to sleep - it dies. It is killed. Meaning (to me) the entire system is destroyed - all the gates, all the protomolecule-active items, everything that relies on the tech that pisses off the Goths. 

 

Yeah that's my interpretation as well - Leviathan is the Romans or more specifically the "beast"/tool they left behind. Sounds more like the Goths win than Humanity, Humanity just survives. Look forward to finding out how accurate that is!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with Kalbear about who Leviathan refers to. In Book 1, Leviathan is definitely the protomolecule.

That said, as a mythology/history buff, the titles for these books, while they always sound cool, very often break down when you think about them too long and consider who's supposed to be an analogy for what. So while the title definitely suggests that the protomolecule technology will collapse in some way by the end, I wouldn't take the title as Gospel for what's going to happen. Besides that, I'd think Franck and Abraham wouldn't want to give away their ending so clearly with the book's title- but maybe I'm wrong about that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Kalibear said:

Persepolis Rising/Tiamat's Wrath were pretty spoilery if you knew who Persepolis was in the book or what Tiamat was. 

I honestly still don't know what the hell Cibola Burn refers to.

Cibola is the mythical city of gold that many explorers searched for. Book 4 has a frontier style atmosphere and conflict. Ilus was a planet that was entirely terraformed by the Romans to suit their needs. Then Miller's actions essentially kill the planet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, Kalibear said:

Persepolis Rising/Tiamat's Wrath were pretty spoilery if you knew who Persepolis was in the book or what Tiamat was. 

I honestly still don't know what the hell Cibola Burn refers to.

For Tiamat, I was mainly confused with the analogy because of Babylon's Ashes title. Babylon is earth (or maybe the old solar system order), Persia/Persepolis is Laconia, and I assumed Tiamat was supposed to refer to the Goths, except Tiamat is a Babylonian god and so should be associated with Earth. Except maybe, now that I think about it, Tiamat refers to the rebellion against Laconia led by Naomi? Or maybe I'm just overthinking all this.

Yeah, Cibola being Ilus is kind of a hard sell...

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Kalibear said:

Guess it's just not possible for me to equate the shithole that Ilus was with the deathslugs and blindness and massive fusion reactions as 'city of gold' 

Cibola was more the dream though, wasn't it?  I'm not sure it truly existed, but the chase of finding a fabled city of gold and making one's fortunes...isn't that essentially the goal of the settlers of Ilus? Finding their fortunes by chasing impossible dreams...?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Cibola was more the dream though, wasn't it?  I'm not sure it truly existed, but the chase of finding a fabled city of gold and making one's fortunes...isn't that essentially the goal of the settlers of Ilus? Finding their fortunes by chasing impossible dreams...?

That being said, it did have massive quantities of pre-refined lithium lying around, so there was a fortune to be made there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/17/2020 at 1:54 PM, Caligula_K3 said:

I agree with Kalbear about who Leviathan refers to. In Book 1, Leviathan is definitely the protomolecule.

That said, as a mythology/history buff, the titles for these books, while they always sound cool, very often break down when you think about them too long and consider who's supposed to be an analogy for what. So while the title definitely suggests that the protomolecule technology will collapse in some way by the end, I wouldn't take the title as Gospel for what's going to happen. Besides that, I'd think Franck and Abraham wouldn't want to give away their ending so clearly with the book's title- but maybe I'm wrong about that.

I think the ideal ending (for me) would be to use a weapon left by the Romans against the Goths at the cost of losing the Gates.  I think Elvi is on the verge of finding it.  And then you have the great dispersal a la Dune (or is it Foundation?).  

 That would be the fall of a Leviathan (the Goths) or at least sheltering humanity from them.  Isn't a Leviathan a beast greater than which no beast can be imagined? That would seem like the meaning of the term has shifted from the gate-builders (who are dead in any event) and the protomolecule to the Goths.  

Also Tiamat is a primordial goddess of destruction.  So I'm not sure why it doesn't work to associate the Goths with her. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 hours ago, Gaston de Foix said:

Also Tiamat is a primordial goddess of destruction.  So I'm not sure why it doesn't work to associate the Goths with her. 

I agree with Tiamat being the Goths, and it was their wrath that removed everything in ring space and damaged Duarte.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

On 9/18/2020 at 4:08 AM, Caligula_K3 said:

For Tiamat, I was mainly confused with the analogy because of Babylon's Ashes title. Babylon is earth (or maybe the old solar system order), Persia/Persepolis is Laconia, and I assumed Tiamat was supposed to refer to the Goths, except Tiamat is a Babylonian god and so should be associated with Earth. Except maybe, now that I think about it, Tiamat refers to the rebellion against Laconia led by Naomi? Or maybe I'm just overthinking all this.

Yeah, Cibola being Ilus is kind of a hard sell...

Yeah I very much read Tiamat = Earth/Sol's wrath and felt the book pretty much delivered on that. I didn't think it connected into the Goths in any way at all, but now some of you have said it I can see why you might try read it that way.

On 9/18/2020 at 2:13 PM, Jaxom 1974 said:

Cibola was more the dream though, wasn't it?  I'm not sure it truly existed, but the chase of finding a fabled city of gold and making one's fortunes...isn't that essentially the goal of the settlers of Ilus? Finding their fortunes by chasing impossible dreams...?

Yeah this was exactly it for me. Colonists chasing the dream of the city of gold, not the reality of actually being in the city of gold.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...