Books: Tiamat's Wrath by James S. A. Corey (2019)

As mentioned last time, there was a thirty year time jump between 2016’s Babylon Ashes and 2017’s Persepolis Rising, which was designed as a kick-off for the endgame of this series. With Tiamat’s Wrath, the penultimate installment of The Expanse, authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (collectively known as James S.A. Corey) put the crew of the Rocinante into more danger as they face challenges from old enemies and new threats that lie within ring-gates themselves.

Good or bad (as Doctor Who has made this part of its formula), for this eighth volume, the crew of the Rocinante are separated, with Holden still on Laconia as he was at the end of the previous novel. Naomi Nagata is hiding in shipping containers trying to coordinate a resistance; former Martian Marine Bobbie Draper and pilot Alex Kamal are plotting strikes against Laconian forces; mechanic Amos Burton is missing in action, somewhere deep within enemy territory. And Chrisjen Avasarala has died (which is literally the first sentence of the book), which may be the saddest thing to read. Then there is Laconia’s leader, Winston Duarte, who has made himself immortal by some of technological advances discovered by ring-gate aliens. He has some lofty goals for humanity, after proclaiming himself to be the High Consul of the Laconian Empire. He and his forces took control of the home solar system, and established a new regime to oversee the colonized systems.  But one thing has become clear: he is convinced that the aliens who killed off the aliens who made the ring-gates are now trying to shut off the whole Sol system, and in typical military response, launches a few first strikes at them. But things don’t go as plan, and things happen that will probably take full measure in book nine.

Still, Tiamat’s Wrath has a lot to set up before the last book comes out (but I’m also thinking that while there will be a ninth and final book in The Expanse series, I think the authors will continue it in some form). In doing so, there is not much that actually really goes on, beyond a lot of introspective thoughts and feelings about leadership and whatnot. In many ways, this makes the book less of a compelling read, as the action is a bit wildly spaced and the reunion of the main characters takes us well over 500 pages to happen. And then it ends.

Also, as much as I continue to roll my eyes at authors approach to making the villains so over-the-top, this is still a wonderful series and look forward to see how it all ends.