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Ceres the expanse books12/21/2023 Unsurprisingly, Mars - a place where military culture has reigned supreme for generations - is ready to strike back, with a plan to put Marco’s strategically crucial Medina Station out of commission and take back control of the Ring itself. They also know the Belters left on Ceres won’t easily turn on Marco. These folks know the mining charges, which killed several people from all sides, were Belter in origin - more than likely set by Marco Inaros and his Free Navy on their way out the door. Station administrator Nico Sanjrini is trying to keep the Belter faithful in line, while also noting there’s no telling who actually caused the disaster, and then begins leading the assembled in a rousing chant of “Beltalowda!” The camera pulls back and we realise we’re watching a news report alongside the Ceres-adjacent Mars and Earth leaders, including Admiral Kirino and UN Secretary-General Avasarala. Speaking of uh-ohs, Ceres Station is in turmoil after the water tank explosions we saw last week. There’s a shot of the glowing blue thing orbiting Laconia, and then we see Cara wheeling Xan’s body into the forest, and, well… you just know she’s hoping the “ strange dog” will be able to resurrect her brother like it did the dead bird. When you think about it like that it doesn’t fix anything, but it makes losing them hurt less.” Laconia is helping him fill that void, and Duarte’s job, he says, is to “keep us safe, or at least try.” This tender but seriously cryptic moment is interrupted by the entrance of Cortázar - the protomolecule scientist, frantically chaotic as always - who bursts in tell Duarte “my new coordination protocol returned a coherent reply pattern,” which is big enough news that the admiral hurries away to see for himself. I needed to make it a sacrifice… it’s to give something up and make it sacred. He soon steers the conversation toward dealing with grief, equating Cara’s sadness over losing her brother to his own sadness over losing “the dream of Mars,” because “having something you love that you can’t protect is terrifying.” To cope, he tells her, he “needed something to make it more than just death. Duarte says he hasn’t been to Earth, either as book readers well know, he is from Mars. O of course, that’s not happening now… is there even a Paris left? - but the little girl says she’s never been to Earth, and she doesn’t care about not going there. He breaks the ice by talking to Cara about Paris - she was supposed to be heading there with her scientist parents after their time on Laconia. After all that build-up, he turns out to be… sort of odd, but rather friendly. (We learn he was hit by a speeding car - perhaps driven by the same person who almost mowed over Cara back in episode one? We also learn that the culprit will almost certainly face a firing squad as punishment.) As a melancholy Cara watches over Xan’s body, she’s suddenly approached by Admiral Duarte, someone we’ve heard mentioned along the way but haven’t met until now. So far its connection to the main events of season six has been tangential, but in “Redoubt” we meet an important figure from The Expanse books in an exposition-heavy scene that takes place as Cara’s family mourns the sudden death of her little brother, Xan. What follows is a wonderful pastiche of space battles, alien horror, and heroic deeds.By now, it’s no surprise we begin with the Laconia storyline. This plot point ties together the Rocinante crew with a noir-like police detective named Joe Miller, a Belter on Ceres Station pursuing a missing girl. Dropped into the middle of all this is an alien substance, or proto-molecule, of unknown origins. At the center of it all are the main characters, the multinational crew of a gunship called the Rocinante: James Holden from Earth, Naomi Nagata from the Belt, Amos Burton from Earth, and Alex Kamal, a former Martian Navy pilot. The details and politics can get quite complex but they make sense and are easy to follow. A cold war exists between the Earth’s United Nations and two other factions: Mars and the OPA, or Outer Planets Alliance (basically anyone who is not from Earth or Mars.) that mostly inhabit the asteroid belt and moons. While Earth, itself, is unified under the banner of the United Nations, the age old squabbles have pursued humans into space. The opening premise of The Expanse is quite simple: humankind has populated the Sol system and reached the limits of its ability to expand beyond it. Corey is the pen name used by co-authors Daniel Abraham and TY Franck and they have created an exciting, intelligent, scary and, most of all fun adventure set in a quickly expanding universe. Corey called The Expanse, Leviathan Wakes, appeared in a very crowded field. In 2011, the first novel in a new science fiction series by James S.A. Corey are some of the best SciFi literature in a long time.
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