The One Where the Earth Dies

As I’ve noted before, I’ve come to The Expanse via the TV series, having watched through the show multiple times before finally biting the bullet to read the books. The books are great, I’m really enjoying them, but there is an instant gratification for the shows that’s hard to beat. In my brain I know that the ten hours or so I spend watching a show is probably the same amount of time I’d spend reading a book, but it feels so much longer when you sit down to do one over the other. Maybe it’s because I can have the show going while I also do something else on the side but reading is all-consuming. It’s different.

Still, coming into these books I was looking forward to taking part in all these adventures again, to see all these stories from slightly different perspectives. To see what changed and what stayed the same. I enjoyed each of the seasons of the show and I wanted to see if I would enjoy the books just as well. And, in the process, I was really looking forward to book five, Nemesis Games, because it’s also my favorite season of the show. It has a different feel, a different pace, and I like how that season took the characters from the show and sent them off on their own adventures. I really wanted to see if that was the format for the book and just how it played when you could be in the perspective of the characters themselves.

The book does, in fact, split them up, setting the format that the show would follow. But it feels even more interesting and dynamic in the book because, for the first time in the book series, we get to actually be with each of these characters from their perspectives. The previous books had let us see the story from Holden’s perspective, but the other main characters of the Rocinante – Naomi, Alex, and Amos – were only ever viewed from other characters, not as the leads of their own chapters. This book changes that and it gives the book a very different feel from what we’ve seen before,.

In the novel the four crew members of the Roci end up having to take four very different adventures. It starts when Amos gets a notice that someone from his past, a woman very dear to him in his former life, died. He has to go back to Earth to pay respects and make sure everything for her is in order, and then, while he’s there, he decides to pay a visit to Clarissa Mao (aka “Peaches”) in her Extra-Super-Max prison cell. Alex then takes a leave from the crew so he can go back to Mars to visit his ex-wife and try to patch things up for some kind of closure. It doesn’t go well, but he does reconnect with Bobbie Draper, and she ends up pulling him into a conspiracy she’s been looking into. And then Naomi has to head off after she learns that the son she’s had (and never told Holden about) is in trouble and she needs to see what she can do to save him.

That leaves Holden alone on Tycho Station, overseeing the repairs on the Roci (after the adventures in book four, Cibola Burn). However, events there take a turn, with an attempted terrorist attack that nearly destroys the station. That attack fails, but the perpetrators do make off with the lone protomolecule sample still in the Solar System. And then this is followed by a massive attack on Earth, with stealth-coated asteroids being flung at the planet, followed by an attempt on the Martian prime minister’s life. All of these events, back to back, point to a coordinated attack, and soon everyone knows who’s behind it all: Marcos Inaros, self-appointed leader of the new Belter Free Navy. And if events keep spiraling, it’s possible everyone in the Solar System could soon be under his heel.

What I like best about Nemesis Games is the shift in perspective that we get. Each of the previous books focused on two-to-four characters (Holden always being a steady presence from book to book) letting us see the events of the books from different perspectives, all of which built to a unified story. You weren’t sure why we were introduced to characters Chrisjen Avasarala, Bobbie Draper, or Praxidike Meng in Caliban's War, but by the end of the story their tales were brought together to create a unified perspective. That’s been the way of things for the previous books, but that’s not exactly the style here in book five. It’s kind of the opposite.

Here, instead, each character goes off from the main crew to then have their own experiences. Amos is our eyes on Earth, seeing the destruction after three massive world killers are hurled at, and land, on the planet. Alex is our perspective of the events over on Mars, seeing the conspiracy unfold in the Martian military only to then get swept up in trying to protect the prime minister. Naomi is dragged into the story of the Free Navy by her son and her ex, an unwilling participant in the destruction they’re causing. And then there’s Holden, the eyes across the system, the one person there to view it all across the various planets. Yes, they do all come together by the end, but that’s only because the book is wrapping and it’s time to move on to the next adventure.

Being able to view the story through the eyes of the four main characters is also a nice touch. We’ve seen what people think of Amos and Alex and Naomi, what their actions say about each character even if we haven’t been able to get into their heads. This time, though, we can really see who they are, feel when Amos has to rein himself back because he wants to fight someone and find that calm bliss that comes from not thinking and just doing. We get to see Alex try to do right by the people around him even as he realizes his actions aren’t always the smartest. And we finally get to dive into Naomi’s secrets, which she’s kept hidden this whole time across all the previous books, so that we can understand what she’s been through to make her who she is.

With that said, and as much I enjoy these characters and their perspectives, there is just a little too much convenience in the setup for this book.The previous books gave us seemingly random characters who, we knew eventually, would come together to work side-by-side. But this time around we already know these characters and their functions. Sending them off to each of the major zones of the conflict makes sense, but at each turn it’s a convenience. The plot has them go to those other areas so that they can then be drawn into the events on Earth, on Mars, with the Free Navy, instead of it being an organic growth of their characters. Amos felt the need to go to Earth but he wouldn’t have been there already if his friend hadn’t died. She died so that he could be on Earth when the rocks fell. That’s a narrative convenience, not something organic.

It’s weird because I didn’t really notice this when watching the show even though the construction is exactly the same. Each character goes off to deal with a loose end, and then magically gets caught up in the story. It should have bothered me then, too, but maybe it was because I was reading a book and (at least it felt like) I had more time to mull over the story that the narrative convenience stood out to me more. It wasn’t a deal breaker for me per se as I still liked the journey each of these characters takes, but it does feel overly convenient.

Still, I do like this book in general, nearly as much as I liked the story when it was adapted into the show. It’s fun to get these new takes with the characters, to see the world through their eyes and their experiences. And it changes up the formula, diverging them away from the Rocinante, their home base, for the first time since they got the ship. That gives this book its own feel, a change of the formula, adding depth to The Expanse overall.