{"id":2081,"date":"2019-03-30T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2019-03-30T01:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/?p=2081"},"modified":"2019-12-31T19:02:06","modified_gmt":"2019-12-31T08:02:06","slug":"book-review-tiamats-wrath-james-s-a-corey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/?p=2081","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Tiamat’s Wrath \u00e2\u20ac\u201d James S.A. Corey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Expanse <\/em>is back. It may have been delayed four months, but four months is as nothing when you realise that fifty years of story time have passed since Leviathan Wakes <\/em>was published in 2011. Tiamat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Wrath <\/em>is the second entry in the third and theoretically final trilogy in the series, but it is not a bridge, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a ramp: everything is dialled up to eleven in anticipation of book nine, and things are ready to explode. Tiamat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Wrath <\/em>takes the reader on a wild, crushing journey, and is sure to upset devoted followers for all the right reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

A Laconian science team travels between the ring gates to perform tests with the protomolecule; Teresa Duarte learns that being the daughter of a dictator is like living in a gilded cage, and she wants to test the boundaries; in the Sol system, Naomi, Alex, and Bobbie work in the resistance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Styled as a palace intrigue novel by the blurb, Tiamat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Wrath <\/em>covers a lot of space besides. It opens with a sucker punch as the first sentence, an inevitability given the passage of time, and stretches across more vacuum than anyone could cover. The thing is that despite its obvious structural similarities with A Song of Ice and Fire<\/em>, The Expanse <\/em>is not merely about space politics: it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always been about space family (spamily, if you will; especially<\/em> if you won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t). The Rocinante <\/em>crew, despite having been separated from each other and the Rocinante <\/em>itself for years at this point, are still firmly intertwined, and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re here as much for them as the machinations of space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tiamat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Wrath <\/em>boasts one <\/em>fake out, but contains several other events that you will only wish <\/em>were elaborate pranks. There comes a chapter where you can see exactly what is happening, what is going to come, and you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t look away. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an elaborate heart breaker, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing that can be done about it. Inevitability is crueller but more fair than arbitrariness. The Expanse <\/em>is not the sort of storytelling where a person gets wiped out by a space bus (unless that space bus was set very specifically into motion): they do what they have to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Corey has crafted a delicate character ecosystem over eight books, and it pays off. The modularity and interdependence are perfectly balanced, and Tiamat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Wrath <\/em>is legitimately thrilling despite its constantly shifting scenarios \u00e2\u20ac\u201d with the juggling act finally paying off with a superlative coalescence of elements, making for what feels like an almost literal space opera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tiamat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Wrath <\/em>contains many significant events that are interesting in their own right while still lining up the ducks for the as yet untitled final entry in the series. Everything that has been escalated may finally come crashing down in 2020 and, unless Corey follows the trajectory of other recently concluded major franchises, it should be well worth the burn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Expanse is back. It may have been delayed four months, but four months is as nothing when you realise that fifty years of story time have passed since Leviathan Wakes was published in 2011. Tiamat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Wrath is the second entry in the third and theoretically final trilogy in the series, but it is not a bridge, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a ramp: everything is dialled up to eleven in anticipation of book nine, and things are ready to explode. Tiamat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Wrath takes the reader on a wild, crushing journey, and is sure to upset devoted followers for all the right reasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2083,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-sci-fifantasy","has_thumb"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/keep\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Tiamats_Wrath-banner-2.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1HLZ6-xz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2081"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2086,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081\/revisions\/2086"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/batrock.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}