And so, after nine books, a double handful of novellas, a successful television show (which I need to watch one of these days), and about a billions bulbs of coffee, the story of the Rocinante comes to an end. I’m happy to say that, at least for me, the destination lived up to the journey.
The book started out a little slow to hook me, mostly because I was simply bored by the crew of the Roci, particularly Jim and Alex. I was still very interested in the overall story, though, and that was more than enough to keep me reading until I was well and truly hooked.
As at earlier points in the Expanse, things are at a point where everyone really should be setting petty squabbles aside in the face of a much greater threat. And, as at earlier points in the Expanse, most of the players involved are fundamentally unable to stop playing the game. The good guys (being the good guys) recognize the severity of the crisis; the bad guys (being bad guys) do as well, because they aren’t idiots, but aren’t willing to shelve the goals they were working towards before beings from beyond the universe started messing with the fundamentals of space-time to kill all the humans.
I don’t want to say much in the way of details, because that would be spoilers, but there’s a lot of things coming full circle. This could be said about the story, the characters, the setting, even thematically. The conclusion of Jim’s story is the perfect (and inevitable) one for him; Alex’s and Naomi’s ends are appropriate; Amos is Amos.
According to the Law of Proportionate Consequences™, the cost of defeating an enemy needs to scale with the threat of the enemy. If you’re fighting someone good at killing people individually (e.g., Voldemort), some people you care about need to die for the end to feel earned. If you’re fighting someone that’s a threat on a galactic scale (e.g., the Empire) something on the order of a planet or two needs to die. When you’re up against something that threatens the very nature of reality? There better be a damned high cost to pay to win, and there is.
And then after everything wraps up there is an epilogue that gives us a glimpse of the far future to get a sense of how things go long-term, and it was both satisfactory and made me smile.
Very much worth the read.