Picking up where Persepolis Rising left off, we find the crew of the Rocinante scattered across different star systems and doing different stuff. Laconia is consolidating its position as the pre-eminent expression of humanity in the galaxy, but along with that goes a massive dollop of hubris – a scientific mission to survey many of the gate worlds is intended to find new weapons, whilst Dr. Cortázar has sold High Consul Duarte on the unquestionable benefits of life extension via protomolecule. What could possibly go wrong?
What indeed. Laconia’s belief that the gate builders have the same motivations as humans and can be manipulated by displays of force in the same way as traditional human politics suggests blows up in their collective face, just at the same time as the Sol system resistance gets a lucky break. Things go downhill from there.
This instalment definitely kept me reading on into the small hours of the morning to see what happened next! There are some sad surprises and one revolving door, but overall the story is still on target. (Though I did raise an eyebrow where Chrisjen Avarsarala’s grand-daughter commented on the old woman’s likely reaction to her Laconian state funeral and then had to explain – for the benefit of some younger readers, I suspect – the significance of “you could power a planet by hooking a turbine to her right now”…)
I’m also increasingly finding that exploring the logic of Empire is causing the writers to slip some quite important realpolitik lessons into the text, which many people, especially those who would benefit the most from such lessons, will miss because this is “just” science fiction. Sigh.
Deep Waters Reading 