Tiamat's Wrath by James S.A. Corey

Tiamat's Wrath is the eighth book in The Expanse series. I love this series and am sad that this is the last one I can read. Apparently there's one more book in the works (Leviathan Falls!), but its expected publication date is next year. This book was so good, such a page turner. 

Shouldn't you be writing your own book, GRRM, and not reading 500 page tomes and writing blurbs for them?

This book is a definite war book.  Holden is imprisoned on Laconia. Amos is missing. Naomi is hiding out in shipping containers.  Bobbie and Alex are on a ship that isn't the Roci.  It has been a bit of a fallback for The Expanse series that the authors separate our crew and we spend the whole book on pins and needles waiting for them to get together again.  I digress.  Meanwhile, the Laconian government has taken over all the inhabitable worlds, there's a resistance that is organizing a revolt, and there's that pesky alien life that is unpredictable and unknowable.  This book is told from many points of view,  as all the books are, from the dictator's teenage daughter to members of our crew to scientists studying the alien.  It's brilliantly done.

I wrote about it before in my review of the seventh book, Persepolis Rising, but reading this in 2020 is one of the craziest things. Sure, there's a rogue *thing* that is slowly killing all of humanity?  People are divided about how to deal with it? People are acting unethically about it?  Huh.  Maybe a bit too on the nose.  Or just plain prescient and wonderful.

Notable lines (so many!):

1) Chrisjen Avasarala was dead. (page 1, line 1)

A helluva way to start a book. I was super nervous in the previous book about this happening and I almost cried when I read this sentence. Avasarala was my favorite character in this series, hands down.

2) Even when the confirmation came to Laconia that the reports were true, Holden still believed deep in his bones that she was out there somewhere, irritated and profane and pushing herself past all human limits to bend history just another fraction of a degree away from atrocity.  (page 1)

The first chapter of this book may be the best first chapter ever written.

3) Her sari was a vibrant blue that was just close enough to the Laconian color scheme to be polite and just far enough to make it perfectly clear that the politeness was insincere. Even if she hadn't looked like her grandmother, the subtle-not-subtle fuck you would have identified her. (page 3)

I love the idea that fictional Avasarala lives on in her fictional grandchild. I also love that I have to remind myself that this old lady named Avasarala is fictional because I kept tearing up thinking that she was no longer with us.  You know, she never was because she was/is a fictional character. 

4) "You could power a planet by hooking a turbine to her right now. That's how much she's spinning in this grave." (page 4)

You guys. We're still talking about Avasarala. We're still on page 4.

5) "Just part of the donkey show."
"Dog and pony," Holden said. Then, seeing her reaction. "The phrase is dog and pony show."
"Sure it is," she said. (page 8)

There's an ongoing theme in JD Robb's In Death books in which the main character, Eve Dallas, always messes up common phrases and idioms. It amuses me when people try to make sense of the senselessness of the English langauge.

6) (describing two characters hugging) It was like watching a polar bear grapple a coatrack. (page 34)

Not exactly a favorable description of either character, but I like animal analogies.

7) It was like a Chihuahua threating an office building. (page 41)

Again with the animal analogies.

8) 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. (page 245-246)

I mean, this is it, right?  I grew up in a time of peace with the biggest issue in the landscape of presidential politics was whether or not Clinton had extramarital sex.  I grew up in a time when I could ride my bike four miles into town without any concerns about my personal safety.  I grew up in a world in which I was certain I could get a bed in a hospital if I was sick.  The world will undoubtedly get better than it is today (Trump is only president for two more months), but it will never be as good as it was when I was young.  

9) "I'm not sure dying free is as attractive when it stops being rhetorical." (page 264) 

People refuse to wear masks and when they get covid they take to the media to tell us it's not worth it to "be free" if you're going to get this sick. Well, sometimes it's worth a small amount of personal sacrifice.

10) She noticed the tension that crept back into her shoulders and made herself release it for the fourth or fifth or twenty-fifth time. (page 311)

I absolutely hold all my stress in my shoulders and I must force myself to move them away from my ears two dozen times a day.

11) "Governments exist on confidence. Not on liberty. Not on righteousness. Not on force. They exist because people believe that they do. Because they don't ask questions." (page 357)

Governments are social constructs. What happens if we stop believing American dollars mean anything? If we stop thinking passports can actually stop us from crossing borders? If we stop thinking that election ballots are more than paper stones?

12) "If I can try and put this all in a wider context?
"Please do," Trejo said.
"It's about the nature of consciousness."
"That may be a wider context than I was looking for, Major." (page 405)

Scientists talking to military types always amuse me.

13) It was like hugging a metal strut. (page 508)

I like this image, especially in contrast with the hug in notable line #6.