Leviathan Falls - spoilers tagged on first page only

[Jace, Extat]

10 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

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

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Tanaka seems like Bobbie through a glass darkly

 

Spoiler

The young Laconian officer, Singh, is made the Governor of Medina after it is *ahem* liberated by the High Consul's forces. Tanaka is the ranking military authority, in charge of the Marines. She and Singh keep butting heads because he doesn't know what he's doing and she's a dead-eyed SS officer. Eventually he tries to dismiss her to hide the blame of his own failures, but at the end she shoots him for killing civilians.

That she has a thing for sexually dominating young men who she outranks (Singh is both) adds something to their scenes together in book 7.

 

[Kalbear]

yay on to the second page and no spoiler tags needed.

To correct a small thing - Tanaka kills Singh when it's clear that Singh was about to order the mass murder of civilians. He hadn't done it yet, but that was precisely what she was tasked to look out for. 

And Singh technically outranks her as well, though she's given more leniency and flexibility as part of this secret mission. 

It's also clear that Tanaka in that exchange does not remotely think what Singh is doing is wrong. She thinks that they will never, ever become Laconian, and it's better to kill them - but she also recognizes that these are her orders and other people above her disagree. 

[karaddin]

One penny that finally dropped for me in this book was the seeding of "acceptance of fascism" in the Martian population. Because Mars was largely offscreen for the early books and we don't see them with the hand as thoroughly in the cookie jar as we do with the powerful Earthers, I'd managed to skate through most of the series with a largely unexamined, somewhat positive view of Mars. This was probably amplified due to the Martians we do see (Alex and Bobbie) being good, and we don't see much of Bobbie's pre awakening attitude in the books. While the show did add on more of her indoctrinated period, that was offset by the addition of the crew of the Donny also giving a positive impression.

It was only while reading LF that it finally sunk in that the big flaw of Mars was acceptance of the military hierarchy pulling evil shit with utilitarian arguments. That flaw let Duarte cherry pick a population of the most obedient Martians along with a small subset that would be on the officers/leaders track and results in the Laconic we see. 

I think it was Tanaka's point of view that hammered it home, and it's because it's well past mere obedience to the point of being enraged that there are people who resist being conquered, that Laconia won therefore it's now legitimate end of story. It's a very different mindset to mine which is probably why it took so long to sink in and needed to be shoved in my face. I can understand not fighting it because you're weak and scared, it's specifically it being a moral imperative to follow those in charge that I miss. And it's kinda ironic that it's Tanaka that gets it through to me given she's actually somewhat hypocritical on this front, but it's very much what she expects from others.

[Rippounet]

30 minutes ago, karaddin said:

It was only while reading LF that it finally sunk in that the big flaw of Mars was acceptance of the military hierarchy pulling evil shit with utilitarian arguments.

Building on this... One thing I loved about this series is that the utilitarian arguments were essentially legit. Too often in fiction, they are shown to be a mere excuse for the bad guy to do evil and take power. In these books however, the line between good and evil was quickly blurred in difficult situations. Jillian Houston couldn't be blamed for wanting to give up Teresa to save her world. Elvi struggled with her using Cara to get information to save humanity until Amos stepped in... etc. Even Duarte turned out to be less of a super-villain than one might think at a glance: as soon as Jim takes his place, he has no choice but to do the exact same thing, and the alternative (which he quickly chooses), as pointed out by Miller, isn't exactly "good" either.
It's a common theme in fiction. Star Trek touched upon this in Wrath of Khan for example. But The Expanse kept presenting its characters with "trolley problems" that had no "correct" solution, driving the point home that one person's worst evil is often the other person's ultimate good.

 

[karaddin]

I'd argue that shows have found ways to do similar even in spots where the books didn't. Show Ashford was acting heroically, looking to sacrifice themselves to save the Sol system. He just happens to be wrong, his plan would have failed and it was unnecessary.

Which I guess is true for Duarte as well. The Goths were a problem that humanity had no solution to, but by trying to solve that problem he instigated the fight a lot faster than it would have come up otherwise and put them with their backs against the wall about to be wiped out if they didn't have the Roman "weapon" to use. And his solution to save humanity would end humanity, although it's hard to say how much of him still survived at that point and how much he'd been coopted as the proto-photo-ice-jellyfish resurrection plan.

I would say his vision of Emperor seemed less... Aware of it's own power hungry nature than we see from Trejo and Tanaka.

[mcbigski]

8 hours ago, Kalsandra said:

To correct a small thing - Tanaka kills Singh when it's clear that Singh was about to order the mass murder of civilians. He hadn't done it yet, but that was precisely what she was tasked to look out for. 

Actually it was Overstreet, Tanaka's replacement, that actually killed Singh.  

[Leofric]

i just finished it and really thought they stuck the landing.  It started slow, but in the end I read the second half of the book all in one sitting.   An excellent read, but agree the closing of the ring space and the isolation of all the colonies was not unexpected.

Amos' survival made me wonder if the dogs made anymore like Amos, Cara, and Xan on Laconia in the 1,000 years since the gates closed.   

Also, on the Magnetar weapon, it may open  a wormhole so briefly and take a much smaller bit of energy when compared to the 1,300 rings amid the ring space, that it might be ignored by goths, once the main source of their pain is gone. 

I'm not sure if the 30 worlds just represent a subset of the 1,300 worlds that have reestablished communications.   There may be additional colonies that survived but lost their ability to travel in space or have just not established contact with the 30 Worlds.  

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, mcbigski said:

Actually it was Overstreet, Tanaka's replacement, that actually killed Singh.  

You're right - it was Tanakas orders via Trejo, but it was her replacement who did it. Nice catch. 

[Kalbear]

Also that made me go back and reread the epilogue of PR, and its neat how they establish the first aspects of the hive mind for humans there - how Duarte can see thought patterns and see the actual connections people make to each other. It kind of bugged me that the hive mind thing seemed to come out of left field, but they did ser some of it up. 

[Denvek]

1 hour ago, Leofric said:

i just finished it and really thought they stuck the landing.  It started slow, but in the end I read the second half of the book all in one sitting.   An excellent read, but agree the closing of the ring space and the isolation of all the colonies was not unexpected.

Amos' survival made me wonder if the dogs made anymore like Amos, Cara, and Xan on Laconia in the 1,000 years since the gates closed.   

Also, on the Magnetar weapon, it may open  a wormhole so briefly and take a much smaller bit of energy when compared to the 1,300 rings amid the ring space, that it might be ignored by goths, once the main source of their pain is gone. 

I'm not sure if the 30 worlds just represent a subset of the 1,300 worlds that have reestablished communications.   There may be additional colonies that survived but lost their ability to travel in space or have just not established contact with the 30 Worlds.  

The Thirty Worlds seemed pretty clear to me as just the 30 that had re-connected prior to this attempt to contact Earth, and not the whole of humanity.

[karaddin]

On the magnetar weapon - the reason I think it won't work without the gates isn't the energy to open the micro wormhole, it's that the energy is generated by the "water pressure" of an entire universe on the "bubble" of ring space. My impression is that magnetar wouldn't have sufficient energy to open another pocket in the lining of the Goth universe and inflate it in order to then generate the power. It generates a micro wormhole to the existing gate space and then utilizes the energy already being generated there.

The creation of gate space must have taken a phenomenal effort, it just pays itself off very quickly.

[TheRevanchist]

Extremely disappointed with the final book. I was expecting a bit more depth in the main conflict with the goths, not the book being about some old woman chasing them over the galaxy.

I feel a bit sad that the authors didn't explore more the Romans and the goths, feel that the last two books should have been more about that. The epilogue was really good though, and I was expecting humanity to get divided into separate worlds that cannot communicate with each other.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed these years of reading the series.

Edited December 7, 2021 by TheRevanchist

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

9 minutes ago, TheRevanchist said:

Extremely disappointed with the final book. I was expecting a bit more depth in the main conflict with the goths, not the book being about some old woman chasing them over the galaxy.

I feel a bit sad that the authors didn't explore more the Romans and the goths, feel that the last two books should have been more about that.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed these years of reading the series.

How?  Seriously?

Both the Romans and especially the Goths were something so different from humanity that it was next to impossible for us to fully grasp what they were much less communicate.

I think the fumbling in the dark getting hints at the edges based on the actions of the Goths and the Romans was the best we could ever get of another species that wasn’t really “there” to attempt to talk with.  We could only infer what they were about never really knowing.

This story was always about humanity and how humanity was changed by its actions and interactions with itself.  It was never really a “Star Trek” first contact story.  But I do think it is a more accurate description of what a first contact would be like.

Edited December 7, 2021 by Ser Scot A Ellison

[TheRevanchist]

3 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

How?  Seriously?

Both the Romans and especially the Goths were something so different from humanity that it was next to impossible for us to fully grasp what they were much less communicate.

I think the fumbling in the dark getting hints at the edges based on the actions of the Goths and the Romans was the best we could ever get of another species that wasn’t really “there” to attempt to talk with.  We could only infer what they were about never really knowing.

This story was always about humanity and how humanity was changed by its actions and interactions with itself.  It was never really a “Star Trek” first contact story.  But I do think it is a more accurate description of what a first contact would be like.

Possibly my expectations were different.

To be fair, I don't know if I was not paying attention (read books yearly, though no binge-reading), but I didn't see the goths being on another universe, despite that the signs were there. In any case, I was thinking that there will be a bit more of Romans/Goths rather than next to nothing.

It does not mean that it wasn't good, the fact that most people liked it, means that they nailed it. Just that I was expecting to know a bit more about those civilizations after a series of 9 books.

[unJon]

What happened to @Happy Ent? Would love his take on the arboreal experiences. 

[karaddin]

I think you might have missed some of this last book then Revanchist, because I felt we got a much better picture of the Romans in this book than I expected we would.

They started their evolution as sea slugs on an ice coated planet drawing energy from volcanic vents and had an extremely slow metabolism and perception. They formed a symbiotic relationship with another species which lived even closer to the vents and learned communication from that species, and proceeded to improve themselves through acquiring additional traits through other species. Over time they become more akin to jellyfish, and learnt to communicate with each other via light and eventually formed a superorganism with the light speed communication between individuals allowing them to function as neurons in a larger brain.

At some point they broke the ice crust, took to the stars and continued their expansion. They figure out that they can open a bubble within the lining of another universe and use this bubble as 1) a source of an effectively limitless supply of energy being siphoned from the other universe and 2) to break the rules of physics in our universe by doing things in the bubble where our physics don't apply due to not being in our universe. With the gate network established they started throwing out globs of protomolecule across the Galaxy with new nodes extending both their biological functions with new traits where desirable (this is the only part I'm inferring rather than it being explicitly stated), along with expanding their brain with ever more processing power.

Eventually the occupants of the other universe, the Goths - them being from another universe is definitely explicit - objected to all the energy being siphoned from their universe either due to direct damage being caused or something like accelerating entropy, so they figured out how to reach into ring space and through the gates and eventually killed the Romans. As the Romans were a single organism they never even went through a gate into a system the Goths killed so verification it had worked was very simple, which led to the Goths being ignorant when they actually managed to kill a system of humans by changing salt ionisation rates - humanity was saved by it's individualism at that point.

[TheRevanchist]

4 minutes ago, karaddin said:

I think you might have missed some of this last book then Revanchist, because I felt we got a much better picture of the Romans in this book than I expected we would.

They started their evolution as sea slugs on an ice coated planet drawing energy from volcanic vents and had an extremely slow metabolism and perception. They formed a symbiotic relationship with another species which lived even closer to the vents and learned communication from that species, and proceeded to improve themselves through acquiring additional traits through other species. Over time they become more akin to jellyfish, and learnt to communicate with each other via light and eventually formed a superorganism with the light speed communication between individuals allowing them to function as neurons in a larger brain.

At some point they broke the ice crust, took to the stars and continued their expansion. They figure out that they can open a bubble within the lining of another universe and use this bubble as 1) a source of an effectively limitless supply of energy being siphoned from the other universe and 2) to break the rules of physics in our universe by doing things in the bubble where our physics don't apply due to not being in our universe. With the gate network established they started throwing out globs of protomolecule across the Galaxy with new nodes extending both their biological functions with new traits where desirable (this is the only part I'm inferring rather than it being explicitly stated), along with expanding their brain with ever more processing power.

Eventually the occupants of the other universe, the Goths - them being from another universe is definitely explicit - objected to all the energy being siphoned from their universe either due to direct damage being caused or something like accelerating entropy, so they figured out how to reach into ring space and through the gates and eventually killed the Romans. As the Romans were a single organism they never even went through a gate into a system the Goths killed so verification it had worked was very simple, which led to the Goths being ignorant when they actually managed to kill a system of humans by changing salt ionisation rates - humanity was saved by it's individualism at that point.

Thanks for the recap. To be fair, I understood this from the book. Just that my hope was that we might see something more than this.

And while I was not a fan of another universe, considering the breaking of the laws of physics, it kinda made sense.

Nevertheless, the goths should had just initiated a vacuum decay and destroy our universe, rather than killing some people there

Did anyone else feel that the goths not liking the opening of the universe is kinda similar to those ghosts/shadow in His Dark Materials?

[karaddin]

8 minutes ago, TheRevanchist said:

Thanks for the recap. To be fair, I understood this from the book. Just that my hope was that we might see something more than this.

Guess it just comes down to difference in expectation then, because even just that first part of them living on an ice planet was probably more than I expected, so it felt like a feast to me lol.

For what it's worth I really liked the other universe explanation for how the tech was generating power and breaking the rules of physics because it simultaneously 1) has a very easy to understand analogy to map onto with water pressure on a deep sea bubble, 2) a second easy to understand analogy with "siphoning energy from another universe" = windmills to link up with the Holden = Don Quixote thing, and 3) gets it further away from most real life attempts at theoretical frameworks for this stuff which tend to be anchored in the rules of our own universe and needing to abide by them. It gives some protection against "but that's not how it works" 

[Liffguard]

20 minutes ago, TheRevanchist said:

Nevertheless, the goths should had just initiated a vacuum decay and destroy our universe, rather than killing some people there

I think Okoye stated at one point that this was a definite concern? The only thing that seemed to save humanity was that humans, and the rules of our universe, are as strange and incomprehensible to the goths as they are to us, so they had no idea what would or wouldn't work to kill us. So all they could do was randomly tweak things and see if that stopped the gate activity. They couldn't see humans directly or even really know what it actually was they were doing to our universe.

[karaddin]

12 minutes ago, Liffguard said:

I think Okoye stated at one point that this was a definite concern? The only thing that seemed to save humanity was that humans, and the rules of our universe, are as strange and incomprehensible to the goths as they are to us, so they had no idea what would or wouldn't work to kill us. So all they could do was randomly tweak things and see if that stopped the gate activity. They couldn't see humans directly or even really know what it actually was they were doing to our universe.

You could say they were simply seeing buttons and pressing them to see what happened?