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Persepolis Rising, Chapters 36 & 37

Uh-huh, keeping documentation of your security protocols is a good idea, but the down side is that when they’re down in writing they can always leak.

Of course, there’s always the good old steel pipe method of getting information to leak, by which I mean that you can usually get information out of people if you beat them with a steel pipe for long enough.

But the Laconians are a authoritarian surveillance state, so they would notice it if someone who had the information got beaten up, while electronic documentation can be copied without anyone noticing.

In other words, I think this is a legitimate find. The Voltaire collective has actually done a huge service for Saba’s group, because they legitimately are willing to do large scale violence just because they hate the Laconians, so it will be easy to write this attack off as one of those too.

We also get Alex as a point of view character here… and I think this might mean that we’re losing Holden. I was thinking that having Holden captured an working as a point of view character from the prison would be a good reason to have him separate from Bobbie, but apparently we’re replacing him with Alex.

Also, doesn’t Alex, like, think about his son? At all? I would have expected for him to have at least one thought now that they are able to contact people outside of the station. Does his son even know that he’s alive?

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Persepolis Rising, Chapters 34 & 35

So, it turns out that basing your whole plan on technology that was stolen from aliens and that you don’t wholly understand is not a good idea. Who would have thought.

If the solar system faction manages to get the information that this was an unforeseen malfunction in the Laconian technology they might be able to use it, as Drummer outlined here.

There are two sacrifices I can see here. I think it might be a strategically good idea for Holden to start stalling and after some time move on to lying, giving the Laconians as much false information as he can. He has a reputation of being an honest man, and they will have to check everything he says. He should be able to buy the rest of the conspiracists time.

Of course, the issue is that they already have an informant, and what Holden is going to say will be checked against the informant’s word. But Holden doesn’t know that. And when they realize that he’s lying they’re going to hurt him.

The other issue is the communications method. The conspiracists need to know what information they need on the other side, and then it needs to be decrypted. And most likely that will lead to the node being compromised and destroyed.

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Persepolis Rising, Chapters 32 & 33

“If we were someplace civilized, your sad ass would be in the pens.”

I do have to stress that it is the exact opposite, in a more civilized place Holden would not, in fact, be the subject of cruel human experimentation done by someone whose conscience was artificially removed. But these soldiers really do believe that their way of doing things is the “civilized” way.

I wonder if that will be a crack in the occupation. They can’t keep the young Laconians completely separated from people who crew up in the solar system, especially when the official line is that they’re all just Laconian citizens. And we’ve already seen that there have been times when for example Bobbie has been able to talk to the occupying soldiers.

I was definitely expecting this plan to go wrong more, considering that we saw one of the Voltaire collection people sell out. Looks like their plan of keeping everything under wraps worked, because you can’t sell out what you don’t know about.

But it does mean that there will be additional issues among the Voltaire collection that might bleed out to Bobbie’s group.

Also, let’s see if Holden has to face some consequences of his actions finally. He was already taken in by the Martians once during the Slow Zone incident, but that didn’t lead to much, and the Martians in fact shat the bed pretty spectacularly.

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Persepolis Rising, Chapters 30 & 31

Oh, this is viscerally disgusting. I hate how the Laconians are using the language of civility to give their threat of occupation to give it a veneer of legitimacy. Like sure, the conflict would end if nobody opposed it, but it would also end if the Laconians weren’t invading.

They aren’t actually going to treat the common man better than the transport union does, we’ve already seen it. The people outside of Medina station should collectively realize that: if they had nothing to hide then why the media blackout? But at the same time I can see how people want to believe that the invaders are going to be better for them, maybe because they have a bone to pick with the transport union due to their shared past.

I also disagree with Drummer about her thoughts on Freehold. The difference is that Freehold established a colony knowing that the transport union controlled the gates, and entered a contract with them which they then broke. Not to mention that from the point of view of their own ideology the transport union had every right to withhold Freehold access to things they held and controlled.

But the fact that Drummer is capable of this kind of self-reflection says good things about her.

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Persepolis Rising, Chapters 28 & 29

So yeah, unfortunately Amos is not good at showing his emotions, so nobody knows how to calm him down. Or maybe Clarissa does, but that’s basically the issue, isn’t it? He’s losing his closest friend and obviously he can’t do the little processing the usually does with Clarissa with her because she’s the one dying.

Taking him to do a dangerous job might not be the best idea. But on the other hand, their pool of talent is unfortunately small so they might not have many other options, as they don’t want to get more people involved and at least Amos won’t try to purposefully sabotage the mission.

The plan introduced here is not going to go as well as the previous one did, I bet. We know too much about the details of the plan, so just seeing it go well would be boring, especially when this time it won’t be done and out in one chapter.

The fact that they’re taking with them one character who’s not a part of the crew that the readers care a lot about is not a good sign. There’s a convenient sacrifice if the plan needs to go catastrophically wrong and the authors don’t want to sacrifice Amos or Holden.

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Persepolis Rising, Chapters 26 & 27

Well. Looks like Amos is not taking Clarissa’s imminent death well. It makes sense, he’s never had that many people he’s ever cared about, and this is the first time he’s had to see one of them slowly die.

When Lydia died there was something he was able to feel like he could do some violence to do what she would have wanted, in getting Erich to pay for her husband’s housing. But that was after she was already dead and there was nothing he could have done, not to mention how she wasn’t dying right in front of him.

There’s very little that violence can do for Clarissa. If need be, he could maybe fight his way into Rocinante to get her the standard medical care that she’s been getting thus far, but that only slows her decline down, and one burst of violence only gets them there that one time and then they are definitely getting shot.

Anyway, the first Solar system vs. Laconia skirmish happened and the Solar system fleet got their asses handed to them, makes sense because they wouldn’t have come out of the gate if their weapons didn’t work outside of the Slow Zone.

It’ll be interesting to see how they’ll be defeated, in light of all this firepower.

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Persepolis Rising, Chapters 24 & 25

Singh’s chapter feels like it’s foreshadowing his incompetence getting his daughter killed the moment she sets foot on Medina station, what with the focus on how he’s trying to make the world fit for his daughter while making one huge mistake after another, but on the other hand Holden’s chapter is a classic way of making the story more exiting by giving the character a deadline. And Singh’s daughter isn’t going to come before the second war ship.

Sure, it’s possible that whatever Holden and company try to do about the second ship fails, or that their plan ends up being something that’s only triggered once the ship arrives, but I think I’m misreading the foreshadowing on one of these storylines.

I liked how Singh’s chapters show that he’s somewhat aware that the people under him distrust him and think that he’s making one giant mistake after another, but it’s still possible to see how they think it way more than Singh himself is aware of. It’s really good writing.

Singh’s issue is that he needs to make himself the smartest person in the room by limit everyone else’s intelligence to his level. And he doesn’t even understand why that is an issue, even after he was told that the plan is for him to learn.

What an idiot.

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Persepolis Rising, Chapters 22 & 23

“I honestly thought that would be harder.”

I agree, the plan was introduced and pulled off in the same chapter, and nothing went wrong. Is this one more way of showing how incompetent the occupation and Singh in particular are? Or are we getting the consequences in another chapter?

Bobbie’s character arc seems to be about her finding her place as the second captain of the Rocinante, and... there’s still two whole books after this, and I don’t think she’ll be able to do it without Holden out of the picture. Not necessarily dead, but she needs to be in a situation where she can’t just use Holden’s fame when things get difficult. And that isn’t Holden’s fault, it’s everyone else around them who won’t let Bobbie do the same things as Holden has been doing, because she as known as he is.

But there’s still two more books left after this, and I don’t think the authors are going to be willing to write Holden out.

 Maybe there would have been a way to use that with Laconia the way they had with the Free Navy. Except that the fucking thing was already through the gate.

But they knew the the Laconians could have at any point come from the gate, why weren’t they ready for it? Someone should have sat at the gate, ready to send the ship to hammer space as soon as it started coming out of the gate.

Sure, it would have felt unsatisfying because they already used that method to get rid of their enemies, but I have to say that the characters acting this irrationally is even more unsatisfying.

They could have just given a reason why it wasn’t possible, this is fictional technology.

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Persepolis Rising, Chapters 20 & 21

Things could only get better from here.

See, this is why the whole operation is doomed. Their leader has no head for strategic thinking. This is precisely the point where he should be actively taking steps to stop the next assassination attempt or sabotage or whatever comes next, and instead he just assumes that things will go well for him, without him taking any steps.

I think I understand why he’s bee chosen as the leader of this operation. They think it’s so easy that even someone making stupid mistakes can do it. That it doesn’t matter that he’s making those mistakes.... and why is that? Is someone else coming later, who they think will be able to fix everything? Do they just trust Duarte’s plan so much?

I still think it’s a bad idea, they should have had a step in the middle where the chosen leader got, you know, leadership experience in a less hostile situation, if only to see if the person they’re trying to train to be the next generation has the right temperament to be a leader.

Holden’s chapter doesn’t have much in it, mostly we’re being shown what his place in the resistance is, and the existence of Bobbie’s plan, which is pretty obviously going to be the focus for the next few resistance chapters. Once again the most plot important things are happening in Bobbie’s chapters.

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Persepolis Rising, Chapters 18 & 19

Ha, “it’s in the hands of professionals” and immediately Amos pulls a few threads and finds them for Bobbie. He did, after all, grow up in the Earth criminal underground, and after living on a ship and stations this long it makes sense that he’d have and idea of who to turn to if you need a dependable criminal.

It’s interesting that Holden and Bobbie ran into each other this soon, considering that they’re both point of view characters. I don’t think the resistance needs two whole point of view characters when the opposing side has only one, so most likely in a few chapters they’ll end up doing different things again.

Or maybe Holden still is the special little boy of the authors, and they didn’t want to get rid of him even though Bobbie’s point of view is more illuminating. We’ll see, I don’t think anything that has happened from Holden’s point of view has been that important or something that couldn’t have been squeezed into Bobbie’s point of view, other than his relationship with Naomi.

In Drummer’s chapter we see how the transportation union is also noticing weird protomolecule related happenings. That might be foreshadowing for something that lets their side bridge the technological cap with Laconia.

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Persepolis Rising, Chapters 16 & 17

[“] We knew something like this was possible, and—”

“We did?” Singh said, his voice sharp. “We knew that, did we?”

Did anyone tell Singh that? Because to me it looks like he was both emotionally and materially not ready for that to be the case. Was he supposed to intuit the fact that the Belters would be willing to risk their lives and even walk into certain death to inconvenience the invasion by killing him?

It really looks like they assumed the people they need to actually  interface with the real world would disregard their propaganda, or something.

In any case I can’t see Singh’s choice here not blowing up in his face. Many people who would have just wanted to go along with their lives are going to be pushed over the threshold of wanting to do something about the situation on Medina station.

I don’t think Holden is one of those people. He was never going to keep his nose out of this mess, not when it happened while he hadn’t internalized that he was supposed to be retired.

On the other hand, this crackdown shows that these are not going to be benevolent invaders, where it’s one and the same for the common man who’s in charge, and it’s the morally correct thing to do to oppose them.

The group that thinks like this is the group that Holden belongs to.

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Persepolis Rising, Chapters 14 & 15

I think we see here the first issue with the invasion. Singh and others who have been brought up in the Laconian system genuinely believe in Duarte’s plan, and because of that they expect that the world will conform to their beliefs. Unfortunately their beliefs are pure untested ideology, and reality will do as it pleases.

Like, Bobbie is right here. Duartes had a good plan, using Marco to destabilize the solar system while they ran to a resource rich planet and built up their protomolecule technology with a scientist stolen from Protogen. But it doesn’t fit with what he’s been preaching, not really. Sure, he’s been able to massage everything to fit in the eyes of his followers, but in reality he’s just doing what he needs to do to get power.

The issue is that Singh doesn’t have Duartes’s charisma. So, he’s going to fuck up talking to the people he’s supposed to govern because they can see his contempt towards them. Hell, even in this chapter he lost the game against Tanaka by having to pull official rank and I don’t think he can see that.

Placing him in charge was a very interesting choice from Duarte or whoever chose him. It’s pretty clearly because he’s a stickler for rules, but that doesn’t always work.

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Persepolis Rising, Chapters 12 & 13

Oh hey, Avasarala is still alive and active in politics when she absolutely needs to be. I love it, she’s still my favourite. And she’s right about her being the person with the most experience with what Drummer is going through. I don’t think she can automatically make things right, but she can help them with fucking up in new and exiting ways instead of old boring ways.

I do have to admit that Avasarala bailing everyone out is not the most satisfying way this plot could go. She’s old and while she can still help with this specific crisis what about the next one? At some point there needs to be someone who can take over from her. It can’t be about experience, either, she didn’t have this much experience when we first saw her and she learned.

And you can say anything you want about Duarte being good at this and that, but what he’s actually winning with is protomolecule technology. And that’s, for example, stealable by someone who becomes disillusioned by him and the whole faction he’s running and other human sabotage.

So yeah, the invasion has started well for the invaders, but I bet that things will start going wrong in five chapters or so.

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Persepolis Rising, Chapters 10 & 11

Never mind, both sides are self-assured and think the other side has done nothing for the last thirty years. At least the Laconian side has some intel on what’s been going on in the Medina station.

Anyway, this is Holden’s fault. He and Monica Stuart are the only ones alive who knew about the protomolecule sample being lost, and they should have escalated that to somebody who could have anticipated this. But instead Holden… what, wanted to protect Fred’s honour? He should have talked about it at least with Avasarala after Fred’s death.

I don’t think anyone else could have anticipated this, so I’m giving them some slack. Going out there with two gun ships is pretty pathetic, but it’s the best they could have done in this short window. This is something they would have needed to plan for way in advance and they didn’t know that they needed to do that.

I wonder if Holden will realize that too, and that’s what will bring him out of retirement immediately. Like I already said, I doubt that he’ll be able to stay out of it when his friends and his ship are in danger. Maybe he could do it if they had had a year of experience under them, but like this immediately after he left? I don’t think so.

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Persepolis Rising, Chapters 8 & 9

Ah, looks like the book is going to be about the contrast between how the Laconians would lead the Belters, as oppose to how the Transport Union leads them. That’s why Holden had this mission at the beginning, it’s to show how the Union deals with the people who break their rules.

It’s so funny how the Laconian high command keep talking about the perfect world they want to make, in this book and in Strange Dogs, when they’re the ones who gave a loser terrorists like the Free Navy ships and resources. Like sure, the plan was to make Earth and the rest of Mars weaker, but I think it loses you any moral high ground that you might think you have.

They are, frankly, annoying. Both in their self-righteous moralizing and the way they assume that they can take over the station easily. I doubt they’re right, because it feels like they’ve been written as being annoying on purpose, and also we already had one fight to take Medina station back. The series doesn’t need another one, even if the tactics would be different.

The station just isn’t important enough to any of main characters that it would make sense to pay so much attention to who has the station, no matter how strategically important it is.

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Persepolis Rising, Chapters 6 & 7

Oh look, Holden got an immediate comeuppance! It turns out that holding hostile people with unknown abilities is not, in fact, a trivial thing to do! I doubt he’ll learn anything about this.

But the discussion that Holden and Naomi had about the Transport Union was interesting. It was established to give the Belters more agency, but as time has gone on and the Union hasn’t changed it turns out that there isn’t enough agency there. But because of how the things were right after the Free Navy was defeated, they couldn’t have done a straight vote because there was always the danger that a Free Navy minded person could have won, which Mars and Earth would have never allowed.

But maybe they could have an election, now, over ten years after the war when there are children voting who have only ever heard of the embarrassing defeat of the Free Navy, and haven’t lived in a world without the Union.

As for Holden retiring and selling the ship to Bobbie… There’s still three whole books to go, that isn’t going to happen until the last five chapters. Also, I don’t think Holden’s the kind of person who could sit a war out.

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Persepolis Rising, Chapters 4 & 5

This was a shitty thing of Holden to do. If he thought that the orders he got were immoral or illegal he could have had a discussion about that with his superiors. Instead he unilaterally decided that he wasn’t going to do as he was told, and in a way that explicitly made it impossible for Drummer to give her opinion on his choices.

How the hell did he manage to keep his job, if he randomly pulls shit like this? I mean, he’s clearly unreliable, why would anyone hire him to do anything when there’s the danger that he’ll decide to go completely off-script and ruin everything.

I hate this, for a small moment I thought that Holden was actually holding the moral high ground, and instead he pulls shit like this. I bet the authors let him get away with it, when Drummer would be completely justified to say that Holden had gone against orders and that they are, in fact, enforcing the ban as they initially said and firing and fining Holden on top of it all.

I wonder how much of the meeting Drummer has in her chapter is specific foreshadowing, and how much of it is just telling the reader about the current political climate. It could go either way.

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