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Leviathan Falls - spoilers tagged on first page only


Kalbear
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As we've done in the past this will be a spoiler thread for those who have read the book or want spoilers. The first page should be spoiler tagged in case someone accidentally stumbles in. 

So it's really good! I think LW and NG are better, but this is definitely a good finale. 

And again, these are super spoilers. So be warned. 

Spoiler

Miller coming back the way he did and holdens reaction was brilliant. A great bookend to the series, to LF and mao and the protomolecule. 

I do feel that it started slow and the roci and Tanaka stuff early on wasn't that interesting to me. The kit chapters felt like filler too. I kept wanting to get back to elvi. But once they started finally getting into some of the widespread goth hunting and finally joined up, it was a crazy good ride. 

Wish we had more about what the goths are. I still don't get how shutting the gates off stops the goths from killing, especially since prototech and the magnetar ship are still around. Maybe I missed where they could only enter through the gates. The theories of the gates actually causing harm to the goths seemed to pan out pretty nicely.

More background on the Romans was great. While the gates being destroyed was an easy call, I don't think anyone expected Duarte to come back or a hive mind sickness spread by memory to be in there. 

Amos being the last man standing rocks. 

 

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I liked the book too, and found it a worthy ending. 

I think I managed to predict the ending quite early in the series, but it did not detract from the experience: the "Goths" being hurt or annoyed by the gate network, which had to be shut down to preserve peace between universes, without any direct human-Goth encounters. Humanity being spread across the galaxy to form multiple separate civilizations was also an ending I always had in mind ... and the thing about them reuniting after a thousand years was a nice touch too.

One thing struck me as odd, though: What happened to Filip Inaros? The last we saw of him, he ditched his father's crew right before their final voyage, and got a new life under a false identity (using his mother's name, if I'm not mistaken). And then what? Naomi has become quite a celebrity in the thirty years that followed, and it didn't feel like they were directly hostile towards each other (Filip's guilt over his participation in the devastation of Earth notwithstanding), so why did he never reach out? Surely Naomi must have grandkids by the end.

Then again, I guess it would be kinda difficult to write him into the story in a way that felt natural, without spending undue amounts of pages to tie up that one loose end. It's presumably the same reason we never heard from Mei Meng again, even though her father retained a role in the late middle of the series.

I loved the return of Miller, though. Particularly the way Holden greeted him.

Oh, and lastly: did we actually see a hint of the gate-builders as early as the introduction chapters? Holden and company were said to hide out in a system where the only sign of life was a planet with "continent-sized sheets of slime mold". Doesn't that more-or-less fit the description of the original form of the gate-builders, before they started doing all that technology stuff? I guess they could have had their own form of Amish community that survived the purge by the Goths by virtue of not being connected to the same network as the others.

 

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Yeah, on Naomi

Spoiler

I really wish she had gotten filip back as some kind of karmic recompense for everything else she has gone through. I was vaguely thinking that she could have been aware of him being alive through the hive mind, hearing the voice through the others, and realizing he was alive. This even makes sense contextually given that it spreads to people via shared experiences!! We don't need to see the reunion, just we know that her next step is to find him. 

Heck, have the deep hive mind make the pitches to people by using the person in the hive who they care about most. That would have been creepy as shit. 

 

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Yeah solid landing.  They kind of spoiled the main thrust of it just with the title though.  On the other hand, it was already pretty clear that's how it would go down, in the broadest strokes.  And just to make it absolutely clear, they hammered the dandelion seed imagery at least one more time this book.

All just idle speculation, but of course I have to wonder about the Thirty Worlds.  First snap take is that only 30 systems had enough resilience to survive the fall of the gates.  But then there are also some systems with multiple habitable planets, and how would they be counted?  And then if you FTL that isn't ring space dependent, not all of the 30 worlds would need to have been hooked up to the previous gate system anyway.  And did other systems survive but stay independent of the 30 worlds.  Now that they've gotten back to Sol, does that make 31?  Or 32?  I liked the Epilogue a lot though, maybe because it was specific in some ways and open ended in others.

 

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17 hours ago, Kalsandra said:

 

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Wish we had more about what the goths are. I still don't get how shutting the gates off stops the goths from killing, especially since prototech and the magnetar ship are still around. Maybe I missed where they could only enter through the gates.

 

Spoiler

It wasn’t just shutting off the gates, it was completely shutting down the ring space so there is no longer any intrusion from our universe into theirs. No connection means they can’t interact any more.

I think the prototech and Magnetar are separate things that are unrelated to the goths.



 

Edited by Maltaran
To try and fix the spoiler tags
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@Maltaran - 

Spoiler

IIRC there's a mention that the reason the Goths went after the Magnetar when it fired its cannon and obliterated the station was that it uses gate tech to take energy from that alternate universe into this one; the antimatter primes the system, but it isn't sufficient by itself to do that power.

And that's why the goths tried to kill it. 

Similarly, we know on Ilus that prototech was used to do something that the goths didn't like in that one room in particular. No idea what, but that tech is also still around. 

So unless the magnetar's ability interacts with the gates in some way and derives power from the station at the center - something that's plausible! - I don't see how destroying the ringspace shuts the goths out completely. 

 

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7 hours ago, IFR said:

I personally think it was a satisfying and well earned ending.

The books have earned their place as one of my favorite scifi series.

Oh, definitely. I will look fondly back on its various depictions of space battles the most, I think. Star Wars-style dogfights may have their place, but nothing beats the submarine-like tension of battles in The Expanse. 

(I still maintain that its depictions of railguns is a little unrealistic, though - they are portrayed mostly as "hole punchers" creating a neat hole through the entire ship and exiting on the other side without slowing down much. That's a huge waste of kinetic energy for a weapon. Realistically, you'd want the round to fragment and start knocking parts of the ship about in a huge cascade, so a good hit would end up turning the ship inside out. But anyway, hole punchers work too for tension)

And of course, the ending was good too. Overall, I really liked this series, and if I ever nitpick about it it is with the understanding that what I don't criticize, I really like.

Speaking of nitpicks, though ... or perhaps just a general observation, as I don't really dislike how it was done: 

Spoiler

I think the Tanaka character was an idea created a little late in development. Don't get me wrong, she is a great character and her chapters are fun to read, but it felt a little strange to have a character with such a major role in the end, be introduced as late as the last book. I wonder if originally another character was intended to play her parts, but that it somehow didn't fit and they had to create Tanaka for the role instead. Perhaps they intended for Anton Trejo to be the one chasing Holden and eventually offing Duarte? While Tanaka came a little out of left field, he remained a major-enough character who amounted to little in the end. I guess that he fit poorly as a "field operative" and couldn't display the proper level of personal, violent threat to make the story exciting enough. Sure he could have obliterated Draper Base, but it would be by ordering an underling to fire a cannon rather than tearing through it in a mech suit. Or maybe Colonel Ilich was intended to make a comeback somehow? Either way, I think adding Tanaka was the right choice, but it seems to me that her role was a little too big for the amount of build-up she received. 

 

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On 12/2/2021 at 10:04 AM, Kalsandra said:

@Maltaran - 

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IIRC there's a mention that the reason the Goths went after the Magnetar when it fired its cannon and obliterated the station was that it uses gate tech to take energy from that alternate universe into this one; the antimatter primes the system, but it isn't sufficient by itself to do that power.

And that's why the goths tried to kill it. 

Similarly, we know on Ilus that prototech was used to do something that the goths didn't like in that one room in particular. No idea what, but that tech is also still around. 

So unless the magnetar's ability interacts with the gates in some way and derives power from the station at the center - something that's plausible! - I don't see how destroying the ringspace shuts the goths out completely. 

 

I'm pretty sure that it does

Spoiler

The same explanation of how the magnetar's main gun worked also implied (bare minimum for me) that it hooked into the gate network to create the mini wormhole that powers the weapon. My interpretation is that the ship may still work fine, but the main gun won't work anymore.

I also had assumed the gate network was harming the Goths in some way, but didn't anticipate it being essentially parasitic and directly stealing energy from another universe. Love how the concept worked out in the end.

Overall I thought it was an ending worthy of the series, with hindsight it felt like everything fell into the only places they could possibly have felt so it was all well set up and foreshadowed. And when it feels satisfying like that it doesn't need a twist.

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I thought it was a fitting final volume. Hit the right notes. 
 

Spoiler

Bringing Miller back was perfect. Mostly happy with the endings all the various characters got. The metaphysics of the universe hangs together enough if you don’t squint too hard at it. 
 

I’m in the camp that the Magnetar weapon won’t work now that the ring space is gone. 
 

I was waiting for the Romans to show up once they got described as such a slow moving species that time didn’t matter so much. Thought they might come through BFR or maybe we’re converting Duarte. Maybe they were turning humanity into them through Duarte. Dunno. 
 

Tanaka was a well realized “baddie”  I agree with the person upthread that said it would have been nice if she appeared in a prior volume.

In the ending from the Holden POV, there was a moment when the VisGoths attacked that showed it going from the ring space through the gates  so I think the ring space and gates was the only contact point the VisGoths had.

 

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24 minutes ago, unJon said:

I thought it was a fitting final volume. Hit the right notes. 
 

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Maybe they were turning humanity into them through Duarte. Dunno. 

 

Yeah that was my interpretation as well.

Spoiler

They were clearly much less intrinsically connected to their bodies, so a networked biological species functioning as a single mind with their knowledge and memories recovered onto it is functionally a continuation of their species/civilization.

16 minutes ago, Babblebauble said:

Tanaka was in Persepolis Rising

I did think she felt like I was supposed to remember her, but I couldn't actually remember her.

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2 hours ago, Babblebauble said:

Tanaka was in Persepolis Rising

What part?  Just saw your prior answer.  I recall she was a basass in that book too.

Spoiler

Tanaka seems like Bobbie through a glass darkly

 

Edited by Ser Scot A Ellison
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