The Not a Book Club Club discussion

Section 3

Please keep all discussion and speculation to the events of Chapter 21-29.

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 good read friends.

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

Alex wrote: "I'm seeing hints of the security guy, Havelock, being fundamentally good"

I had that sense too. He's mostly just a follower of Murtry, who's a terrible person.

So i still don't like anyone, but I'm warming up a little.

I totally didn't realize Havelock is Miller's old partner. I'm surprised no one brought that up. If he hadn't told Naomi, I might never have made that connection.

Miller did right by him despite the prejudice of the rest of the department. Maybe that's why he eventually did right by the belter whose stuff people kept peeing on.

I still don't really like Basia, but I enjoy his chapters more now that he's on the Rocinante.

Evi still annoys me. Her priorities are way out of whack and the subplot of her obsessing about Holden is dumb.

Bring back the strong women! I miss Bobbie and Avasarala. Maybe give Naomi her own chapters.

Yup, He was in LW. In all the early Miller chapters. He's discriminated against by most of his belter coworkers.

So I am enjoying the book so far, but not as much as the first 3 (having just read them back to back). I agree with Rob, I'm not liking the non-Rocinante characters as much as I did in previous books. They all seem either a bit dumb, naive, or one dimensional. There is impending doom, but i'm just not feeling the impending doom as much as I did in the previous books. Maybe it's that the all the characters are flawed, but nobody is just really evil? This book so far just lacks some good ol' vilification i guess.

I think Murtry is pretty evil. Certainly psychotic. He may be protecting company interests, but I also think he takes pleasure in hurting people.

Yeah, he is evil, but not on the scale I am used to from the previous books. Maybe I am just missing an evil corporation so far.

I also think that the plot was tighter in the first 3 books. You have 2-4 disparate characters, with separate plots in different locations, and slowly the all converge in both location and plot as the action becomes more and more intense. Cibola Burns isn't quite like that, all the characters are already together, there is no surprise in the way the plots converge and how the characters interrelate, and the plot just kind of muddles along.

That being said, I am still enjoying the book!

Yeah, this is a very different book than the first three, that's for sure.