#idk how your political system works or whatever but can a miracle still happen!?!

[star-spangled-man]

guys…what the fuck…

[michiopa]

Persepolis Rising thoughts WITH HELLA SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE BOOK 

OKAY HERE WE GO

ROCI CREW THOUGHTS

i wish so much that naomi and holden could have actually retired and been happy, if anyone deserves it it’s those two

Captain Bobbie Draper is everything i didn’t realize i wanted until holden was talking about it. I’m really gald she did get a ship in the end, even if it wasn’t the Roci

Amos’ singular chapter was so good, one of my faves tbh. The fight with him and bobbie was good and the fact that she WINS was perfect.

I cannot WAIT to see how his dynamic with Bobbie evolves, the fact that she will actually make him deal with his shit where no one else ever really has is just perfect

I do wish the writers would spend more time with alex and his emotions. i did like how they acknowledged that he held the crew together in a way

alright it’s gotta be talked about

Clarissa

i saw her death coming but that didn’t make it hurt less. I wish she would have died, not better because her death had the weight an impact it should have, but i wish amos could have been with her, that more of her family could have been with her.

speaking of clarissa and amos holy SHIT i wasn’t expecting their relationship to be exactly what i wanted but it happened

the fact that of all the crew it was naomi, the one clarissa nearly killed, that was with her when she died fucking BROKE me

Other characters

the fact that chrisjen is still alive and kicking was very important and such a nice surprise. I really want her to live through the series if only out of spite

i loved all the brief mentions of past characters, it was nice getting confirmations that they are okay

WHERE IS FILIP NAGATA. WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM

It’s been so long since i read CB that i don’t remember a lot of the protomolecule stuff but BOI. duarte might be the WORST but he needs to stop fucking around with this stuff. I genuinely wonder if we’re going to see the beings that killed the creators of the protomolecule

Structural stuff 

not going to lie reading this book felt like watching a disaster in slow motion, and that’s not a knock on the writing. it was that feeling of helplessness, knowing everything is going to go wrong but not being able to look away. i’ve never really had a book make me feel like that before

this one was absolutely a step up in quality again, not that i didn’t like BA but it was weak and PR imo was much better (still not the strongest book but that’s just because it was setting up the final arc of the series)

I made a post about it earlier but god acting like duarte’s theory about ideaolgically conquering a place would mean more stability is like, THE most obvious thing to any first year poli sci student. literally was a question on my intro politics class test in college. OF COURSE soft power is more effective if it can be pulled off, it doesn’t take a political genius to see that. it’s like boiling a frog, it won’t jump out if it doesn’t realize it’s dying.

THE QUOTES I LOVED

There were kids old enough to vote now who’d never known what it meant to have only one sun. She didn’t know what Earth or Mars or Sol would be to them.

I need a POV from a kid like this. Singh was one thing, but he still remembered Sol. 

The vast alien intelligence that had engineered the ring gates and the massive ruins in the systems beyond them had found ways to manipulate distance , but the speed of light was the speed of light , and seemed like it always would be .

one of those, idk it’s just neat quotes. 

Anytime a few like - minded people could put together the resources for a colony and the fees for passage through the ring gates , the seeds of a new society could be sown out there among the stars .

i just love this one too, so hopeful BEFORE EVERYTHING GOES TO SHIT

In Holden’s experience , humanity’s drive out into the universe was maybe one part hunger for adventure and exploration to two parts just wanting to get the hell away from each other .

#mood

Alex , the best friend she’d ever had , and the person she’d realized recently she had every intention of growing old with , in spite of never having seen him naked.

this was honestly so important to me? like it’s clear they love each other but not really in a romantic way and as someone who is somewhere on the aro spectrum this meant so much.

The images from the seedpods could be the encrypted records of the fallen civilization that had built miracles they were still only beginning to understand . Or they could be the spores of whatever had killed them . Or they could be lava lamps . Who fucking knew ?

drummer’s humor is so on point i love it

In the dream , she knew all of that . But what she felt was relief . Saba was dead , and so he was safe now . Nothing bad could happen to him anymore . She couldn’t fail him or abandon him or feel the weight of his disappointment.

this CRUSHED ME 

In his opinion , faith was generally for people who were bad at math .

Singh’s one (1) funny line

“ There has to be a way to come to a final decision . ” 

“ No , there doesn’t . Every time someone starts talking about final anythings in politics , that means the atrocities are warming up . Humanity has done amazing things by just muddling through , arguing and complaining and fighting and negotiating . It’s messy and undignified , but it’s when we’re at our best , because everyone gets to have a voice in it . Even if everyone else is trying to shout it down . Whenever there’s just one voice that matters , something terrible comes out of it . ”

god this was one of the most impactful lines in the book. but then, that’s just jim holden. i love him

If she died here , would Saba see it ? Would the official Laconian newsfeeds be how they said goodbye ?

i nearly cried at this. drummer and her love for saba was so good, reminded me a lot of chrisjen and her husband tbh

It was always strange to remember that she knew things that other people didn’t . Not just about power - and signal - routing protocols . What it was like to murder someone who’d only ever been kind to you . How it felt when the people you’d dedicated your life to killing took you in as family . Even though she knew better , she always defaulted to the idea that her life wasn’t singular . That whatever she’d done must not have been that odd , because after all , she’d done it .

so this is where i started crying and pretty much just didn’t stop for the rest of the book. clarissa means so much to me

Some sins carried their own punishment . Sometimes redemption meant carrying the past with you forever . She’d gotten used to that over the years , but it was still pretty fucking inconvenient .

This is tied with holden’s thing for the best line in the book, so good

“ It’s the reward of old age , ” Avasarala said . “ You live long enough , and you can watch everything you worked for become irrelevant . ”

just a g8 chrisjen line