Having finished the 6th installment of James SA Corey's The Expanse series, I have to take a moment to step back a little from the novel itself to consider the whole of the series so far. First, I will say that I have been enjoying the series so far because of the development of the characters, the intricately constructed politics of the solar system (and beyond) that the authors develop and the conflicts between the factions that ensue, and for the local cultural differences that make up these factions. The novels themselves are getting more complex as the series continues as more characters move in and out of the narrative and more story lines weave into one another to form the overarching plot of the novel. Elements and characters from preceding books come back or take on new importance as the series continues, as well. In other words, The Expanse is making good on its early promise.
One of the elements of this series that I enjoy the most is the development of slang, creole, and idioms used by people in different places. Unlike other science fiction novels in which nations still play a key role in economics and politics, the base societal unit in this series is origin. For the characters in the novels – whether they were born in a gravity well such as Earth or Mars, or in reduced gravity such as on the Moon, or in the micro-gravity of the asteroid Belt – where they have lived their lives, and hence what shape their bodies take, is a profound identifying factor. Characters identify themselves and one another by these origins. Those whose bodies have adapted to micro-gravity cannot survive on a planet with stronger gravity or under higher acceleration forces, and this marks them as separate from those whose bodies are adapted to stronger gravitational forces. One of the strengths of this series is identifying this as a source of contention and, eventually, prejudice and discrimination. Because in addition to having, in some ways, more fragile bodies, the Belters (as they are known) have adapted the way that they have because they or their ancestors lived in space and have performed the menial work that permits survival for those living on Earth and the colonies. This new form of colonialism has a new set of victims with grievances that are all too familiar.
This is something that also sets The Expanse apart from other sci-fi stories. There is political strife in a lot of other stories, but they so rarely conceive of a future that seems to be so truly an extension of humanity's colonial past and cultural tendencies. The privileged in this world survive because of the invisible many who provide food, transport, oxygen, and the other necessities of life. Throughout the course of the series the invisible many begin to make themselves seen. Much of the tension of the novels arise because James Holden, captain of the Rocinante and one of the protagonists of the series, is empathetic to the realities that the Belters face. He is from Earth but he sees the iniquities of their treatment and the ways in which his own life has been made possible by the Belters.
The series is getting to the point where the individual novels cannot really stand on their own any more. The first 3 or 4 could stand alone, but too much has happened and there is too much backstory that the reader will need to know to make sense of the story of this novel on its own. Babylon's Ashes opens in the midst of the massive solar system-wide war that had been sparked in the preceding novel. To find the roots of this conflict, the reader will have to go back several novels further, but the immediate causes of the war involved a threat to the survival of the Belters and Marco Inaros' taking advantage of this fact to consolidate a fleet of ships to oppose the powers in place. Specifically, the alien gate that allows ships access to further reaches of space may prove enough to render the Belters obsolete.
As Inaros sees it, and as he pushes to make other Belters understand, their lives hang in the balance of colonies needing their work to survive. Inaros believes that the opening of nearly endless new planets will provide cheap and easy access to resources that only Belters could provide, up to this point. And because the Belters would be unable to survive on a planet's surface, he argues that their way of life and their own purpose is coming to an end. But Inaros is a demagogue, a criminal and pirate who takes advantage of the Belters' actual plight in order to make a name for himself and to build his own power. Inaros' true power seems to be his own rhetorical mastery. He successfully mythologizes himself and the Free Navy, as his fleet of pirated ships in known. He also deftly re-narrativizes events and shifts his plan so that even defeats are recast as feints or deceptions meant to lull his enemies into a false sense of security. Inaros keeps his goals abstract so that he can never be pinned down to specific aims. He is defeated in the end, but his actual fate is unknown due to an anomaly the gate's physics. He isn't nor definitively dead, which means that he may still return.
Inaros is an interesting villain because his motivations are at least partially noble. But he is also vain and petty to balance out a bit. What makes Holden appealing, then, is also what makes Inaros appealing as his foil. They both are complex reflections of human nature. They both intermingle their private and selfish desires with their broader aims. They both mix in just enough of bad with their good, or good with their bad to inspire common identification with the reader. Corey draws naturalistic character traits for these characters to heighten the drama of the series. This does tend to keep things interesting.
In the end, this novel is enough to keep me reading the series. I recently wrote a post about sci-fi series and the trouble that they can run into when the source material has seem to run its course. This series is not there and the strands that are coming together are enough to make me think that the entire arc of the series has been more carefully drawn than I had initially thought. I suspect that the authors have in mind where this is going to end up and are deliberate in their choices in taking us there. This, for me, is a great place to be as a reader. This feeling of trust that I have in the authors is exciting because I don't know where it is all headed but I think that I am going to like where it leads. This is something that may also separate the good series from the bad.
