The Not a Book Club Club discussion

Section 3

Please keep all discussion and speculation to the events of Chapters 21-31.

No spoiler tags required. Though it would be highly appreciated if you Uncheck Add to my Update Feed to avoid accidentally spoiling this for your goodreads friends.

Please do not discuss events from later chapters/books. Referring back to events from a previous section/book is fine.

So I was expecting someone to die in this book. If it has to be anyone, I'm glad it was Fred. He's important enough to have an impact on the direction of the story, but I don't like him as much as the crew, Bobbie and Avasarala. That isn't the say I was rooting for him to die, just that I was happier with the choice than with others. Honestly I had thought he was going to die at the end of his POV chapter, so I was kind of expecting it already.

Of course his death doesn't mean that the others are safe, but I hope so!

Marcos is a GREAT dad. Blaming his son for the Rocinate getting away. He's a great leader too. Nothing is ever his fault, and everything is part of the plan. I'll be curious to see what he says when they find out they were partially successful with the death of Fred Johnson. It's interesting that Filip is hearing his mother's voice in his head. Is there hope for him? Probably not.

I'm also interested to see what comes of Pa's meeting with this other guy. I forget his name now. The guy smuggled in. Was he another of Marco's leading 5? And where is Anderson Dawes in all of this? I like that someone is focused on long term impact of destroying the ecology of earth inside the belt.

I thought it was going to be hard to top Nemesis Games, but so far this book might just be doing it.

Finally, I continue to love when Avasarla shows up. Her comments to Fred during his chapter had me cracking up.

I did NOT see that happen (Fred) but when the medical alarm went off, I thought it was Holden, and then when the next chapter was his POV and he was experiencing all these physical symptoms, I REALLY thought it was Holden. So Phew. I think bad things could happen with the loss of Fred though - I don't know that he has a backup.

And Marcos...not only blaming Filip for that, but deliberately putting him into the position to kill his mother....gah - so evil.
I continue to love Avasarla too - and I liked her reaction to Fred's death.

I really hate shifting POV books, yet I'm ok with this one. It's really good!

I never once thought something would happen to Holden. I guess because I consider him to central to the story. Who would become the main character? Naomi maybe?

I just finished up and I don't feel like any of the POVs detracted from the story. I think they just had a larger story to tell and couldn't have a reasonable way to cover all that distance without using a bunch of one off POV characters from time to time.

Of course it's not just that, but I feel like they all added something to the story. I'll be curious to see if they keep doing that in future books, or if they go back to a tighter number of POVs next book.

Even though I've been ok with the many POVs, I hope they go back to fewer. I tend to get more invested with the characters when I see them more often. It helped with this one that I'm already pretty invested with many of them, from previous books.

I viewed most of those one off characters as a camera and little else. I prefer good character driven stories where I care about them, but thinking back I'm hard pressed to list most of the PoV's from previous stories beyond Miller, Bobbie, Avasarala, and the crew during Book 5.

I sort of remembered Prax and Bull, and Anna. Most of the others were a blur. When I made that list I had to look them all up.

As soon as they were talking about a medical alarm I was thinking Fred. Particularly considering they'd been pulling 10Gs.

The next chapter with Avasarala finally accepting Arjun's probable death was just gutting.

Yes! Seeing her human and devastated, but still Avasarala....so sad. She is such a great character. Her POV chapters were my favorites.

She continues to be my favorite character.