#Cibola burn

[luulapants]

- Amos Burton after finding out Holden assaulted and stole from a blind man

[souldagger]

some quick cibola burn sketches from the last couple of days (ft. the roci crew & an elvi)

[youwontbelievethethingsiveread]

Tag yourself I'm Amos

[yes-we-exist]

I think I had memory-holed how emotionally devestating both Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth were because I decided to read Nona the Ninth as a fun little break between Abaddon’s Gate and Cibola Burn

Anyway. Bad call

[elan-morin-tedronai]

I feel really, incredibly called out by how Elvi's crush on Holden is written.

[downbadfordraper]

So I've started reading Cibola Burn

[mikimeiko]

Books I read in 2024

Cibola Burn - James S. A. Corey (2014)

[battlestarbones]

I love cibola burn so much but also they should have let amos kill murtry. as a treat.

[songofsaraneth]

the first two books had me suspicious but after book 3 of the Expanse i KNOW this writer is from New Mexico

[spacekozak]

Greetings, All

So i’m fairly new to Tumblr, and despite skimming through the How-To section of this website, I’m still not entirely sure how it works, and what the ins and outs are, so bear with me.

I spend a lot of time thinking about The Expanse as a series. Mostly this is because i work at a job where I’m given a lot of autonomy and minimal supervision, so i can repeatedly listen to the last three books (the only three my cheap ass has opened his wallet up for so far), but also because its just So Damn Good.

The pacing, the dialogue, the themes explored. I love it all. Sure, I could do with a few less times when they explain how the ships or stellar objects are not to scale on a display, and that they wouldn’t be visible to the naked eye if they were, but other than that, I’d say I’ve got no complaints. It’s also refreshing to read a sci-fi series written by white guys who (so far as I know) haven’t done anything racist, fascist, or what have you. It’s a lot easier to enjoy something when there’s no guilt involved.

So yeah, I’ll mostly be talking about The Expanse. Some observations about the news and other things will be included as well, so if that isn’t your cup of tea, I’m genuinely sorry. As the name spacekozak suggests, Ukraine will probably feature prominently in that. Which, while I’m on the subject, if you have a few spare dollars, consider giving them to Razom (https://www.razomforukraine.org/donate/). They are a good organization doing good work, and your money would be greatly appreciated.

And that’s it for now I guess. Stay tuned.

[luulapants]

Shoutout to the folks that adapted The Expanse for the show, because Elvi in s3 is great but Elvi in Cibola Burn is a fucking hate crime. It's like the authors wrote two big notes under her name that said

1. Science girl

2. Haha big embarrassing crush on Holden she thinks he's so dreamy she wants to fuck him so bad

Then were like, oh yeah that's definitely enough to base a POV character off of. But maybe let's swap those around and make her crush more important because when she's just survived an unimaginable natural disaster and is surrounded by neurotoxins and learns she's going to go blind, we definitely still want to make every thought in her head be Horny For Holden, that makes sense to us because that's just how chicks are right?

[gunkreads]

So I'm finally far enough into The Expanse to see where the show really deviated. I only watched through... maybe 4 episodes into season 4. I'm currently about 3/4 through Cibola Burn, which is a little past that point in the show.

I totally see what everyone was saying about the show being remarkably faithful to the books, especially in the first 3 seasons. With one notable exception, almost everything is identical, just abbreviated. It starts to deviate more from book/season 4. Like... a lot more. Obviously, the end of S3/Abbadon's Gate starts to veer pretty far off, given how the mutiny plotline got thrown into a blender, but Cibola Burn is much less of a jarring tone-shift from Abbadon's Gate than S4 is from S3. The book is still freaky protomolecule shit all the way down, but it does the same deep-dig into the question of "how fucked up can people be to each other?" as the first three books do. I felt, just a little, like S4 wanted to veer away from that in favor of focusing more closely on protomolecule stuff. All the changes it made to keep the cast together, keep the protomolecule reveals chugging along, and retain tension felt like deviations from the spirit of the earlier seasons. The books are a little more cohesive in that regard.

Also, holy shit, Elvi? Talk about an amazing lens of a character through which to view the changing-yet-unchanged political landscape. I love the way she's used to show that a person who only wants the best for everyone is completely taken in by Murtry's narrative and shifts to see the world in a completely stark us-versus-them light. Awesome.

[doolallymagpie]

guy who has only watched/read The Expanse watching Colony in Space: getting a lot of Cibola Burn vibes from this

[dzelonis]

James S.A. Corey - The Expanse #4-6

[owlbear33]

Cibola Burn was good, so good, very very good, I've finished it

the epilogue was amazing, Avasarala is fun to read, and I love her interactions with Bobby, it's not as idk shippy as it is in the show but it's still great

not sure I have more to say other than it's good, it's interesting to see more of the precursor nonsense that I love so much, but really the best thing about about these novels is the characters

not sure what I'm going to read now, I'll need to get Nemesis Games so I can't go on to that straight away, I should probably attack my tbr pile but hmmm what to read, I probably want more precursor nonsense space opera, I love me an ancient dead alien civ

[number63liveblogs]

Thoughts on Cibola Burn

You know, I don’t think I’ve remarked on it yet, but it sure was a choice to name the ship that was used to do horrible colonialism “Israel”. That was not at all subtle.

I also don’t think any of the books before this have been about one thing as much as this book has been about colonialism. The conflict between the Belters and Earth, and Mars and Earth have had a strong component of colonialist past, but there have been other things going on. This book was, like, 60% strictly about colonialism.

And it was really good! My biggest issue was that Burtry was such a horrible person that at times reading about things he was doing was no longer entertaining, it was starting to just become infuriating. Especially when it seemed like Holden wasn’t willing to do anything to stop him, and the “realistic” ending for him might have been that he gets away with everything because of the company that is backing him up.

I also liked that it felt like Basia really was terrorist (neutral). Yeah, he had an epiphany that what he did wasn’t for a higher cause but because he was hurting, but he didn’t get any other consequences. It was, like, slightly bad.

Unlike horrible colonialism, which apparently is going to get you unpersoned.