Tiamat's Wrath by James S.A. Corey

Every book in The Expanse series brings a different feel to it, and Tiamat’s Wrath was no exception. Usually the crew of the Rocinante–Jim, Naomi, Amos and Alex–are fighting together, and if they’re separated, it's for a brief time. They’ve been joined by others: Clarissa Mao in the past, and now Bobbie Draper. But here, they’re apart. It feels lonely, even as a reader, to see this found family scattered across the system.

*Mild spoilers ahead* 

A battle with Laconia was fought, and it kind of seems that Laconia won. Protomolecule-enhanced Duarte won the battle certainly, but perhaps not the war. The war continues, with Naomi leading a scattered underground, Alex and Bobbi on the Roci, and Jim a prisoner of Admiral Duarte on Laconia. And Amos? He’s missing.

I ended my review of Book 7, Persepolis Rising, with the question it raised for me: in a multi-system universe threatened by a powerful enemy, is there an argument to be made for an autocratic government rather than a messy democracy? Tiamat’s Wrath goes a long way to answering that, and the authors come down on the side of democracy, even though democracy looks at the moment like a disorganized bunch of underground cells carrying out anti-Laconian actions.

“That’s the thing about autocracy. It looks pretty decent while it still looks pretty decent. Survivable, anyway. And it keeps looking like that right up until it doesn't. That's how you find out it’s too late,” says Jim’s voice in Naomi’s head while she’s working things out in isolation, hidden on resistance ships.

Naomi plays a significant role in Tiamat’s Wrath, dragged reluctantly into the spotlight as the de facto leader of the resistance forces, determined to use negotiation as her method rather than force. But the best laid plans have a way of not working out, and one of the most interesting arcs here is seeing Naomi forced to concede that sometimes violence is the only play.

I’m also detecting a move towards this series ending in this second to last book, embodied by the thoughts and feelings that the crew are having regarding the nature of time and aging. It feels appropriate. Witness some of these statements:

“Growing older was a falling away of everything that didn’t matter. And a deepening appreciation of all the parts that were important enough to stay.” (Naomi)

“Maybe it was something that happened with every generation, this sense of displacement. It might be an artifact of the way human minds seemed to peg ‘normal’ to whatever they’d experienced first and then bristled at everything afterward that failed to match it closely enough.” (Alex)

“She still had decades in her, if she kept her treatments and exercise regimen up. The universe she died in might still be better than the one she lived in now, but she had a hard time believing it would be better than the one she’d been born into. Too much had been lost, and what wasn’t lost was changed beyond her ability to understand it.” (Bobbi)

I like that last sentiment: “what wasn’t lost was changed beyond her ability to understand it.” Certainly the protomolecule and all the change it has wrought in this universe–not least of which is bringing 1300 solar systems into proximity and bequeathing to humankind strange and unimaginable technology–is astounding, but in Tiamat’s Wrath there’s a next-level threat: the entity that killed the protomolecule life. Weird things with time and space are afoot, and that makes this book super compelling.

With so many unknowns and existential threats, it’s understandable that humans continue with their wars both on a large scale; on smaller, interpersonal fronts; or in the battlefields of their inner selves. But after one devastating example of the protomolecule-killing enemy’s threat to human existence, the whole standard war schema breaks down. One of the pivotal moments for me came when Naomi considers what’s left in the aftermath. She’s conversing with a shipmate about the devastating loss, and the huge unknowns in the ring space:

“She and Chava weren’t the only ones having this conversation. Thousands of other people in Auberon were thinking about these same things in restaurants and bars and on ships traveling through the vast emptiness between this sun and gate. It was how the shock started to wear off. How the moment after that moment created itself.

And it wasn’t only Auberon either. Every system with a ring gate was looking at the same questions, fearing the same possible futures. Every system including Laconia.

The thought landed with a weight. Her grief at the loss of Saba and Medina and her unexpected hope in seeing the Typhoon destroyed. The dread of the mysterious enemy and its escalating body count. They all led to the same conclusion.

It was like a nightmare where you spend the whole night running from something and ended up in its lap all the same: No one’s in charge.”

Seriously, I just love that idea: there’s no one in charge. It’s a horribly terrifying thought: there’s no adult in the room! It’s also a liberating thought. Naomi, though, has a plan to put herself in charge, and the action continues apace. And thus the arc of this book turns towards the meaning of war, and of how to bring peace. Is it diplomacy, or might in battle, or something in between? Again, as often in this series, the answer is a tricky balance of both, and here is perhaps something to take to heart: “Wars never ended because one side was defeated. They ended because the enemies were reconciled. Anything else was just a postponement of the next round of violence.”

The ending of Tiamat’s Wrath brings a reunion of sorts, with some of the Roci crew missing, some changed, and some just terribly battle-worn and weary. It sets the stage for what will hopefully prove an excellent last book in the series that I’m excited to read: Leviathan Falls.