Released in 2012, Caliban's War is the second of nine novels in The Expanse series.
Caliban's War contains examples of:
- Amazonian Beauty: Bobbie Draper is described as more than two meters tall (approx 6'7"), and as someone that "couldn't be more than thirty and looked like a comic book illustration, complete with muscles on her muscles". Alex seems very smitten with her, and Bobbie appears to know that she attracts the look of lovers of big, solid women, a development she doesn't seem to like much.
- Artistic License – Physics: Bobbie's suit gun fires 2 mm rounds at "more than a thousand meters per second", which is treated as something awesomely powerful and being able to penetrate an entire ship. In reality, it's actually firing tiny bullets at a normal rifle velocity - the rounds would have roughly an order of magnitude lower momentum and kinetic energy than a modern assault rifle's.Cotyar: "Would the bullets even slow down as they went through both of the ship's hulls and let all the air out?"Bobbie: "Nope"
- Awesomeness by Analysis: Avasarala is able to unravel almost the entire conspiracy simply by noticing Soren biting the inside of his cheek and extrapolating from there.
- Cliffhanger: As if the mass of protomolecule on Venus shooting off into space as a gigantic tendril to become who knows what isn't enough, the last moment of the book is a previously thought-to-be dead character showing up on the Roci to give Holden a cryptic "we need to talk."
- Convenient Terminal Illness: When Holden boards the protomolecule-infested Agatha King, he meets a survivor named Lawson. Half a chapter later, Lawson gets exposed to the protomolecule, so he volunteers to stay behind and blow the reactor while Holden escapes.
- Dramatic Gun Cock: Deconstructed when Prax accidentally turns a Mexican Standoff into a Blast Out by cocking his gun, which he just thought was the appropriate thing to do in the situation from what he'd seen in movies.
- Enemy Mine: The UN and Mars marines on Ganymede are in a tense standoff when one of the monsters attacks the UN patrol. Bobbie and her patrol immediately attempt to reinforce them, but are themselves wiped out. Unfortunately Bobbie's radio is damaged in the fight, and she's unable to tell her superiors or the ships in orbit about the changed situation on the ground.
- Explosive Leash: The protomolecule-monsters are fitted with them. However, after the first one explodes, the others figure out how to remove them.
- Gender-Blender Name: In a highly obscure example, Prax is named after Jupiter's moon Praxidike, which his parents didn't realize was named after a Greek goddess.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Admiral Nguyen's ship gets taken over by one of the protomolecule-monsters he launched at Mars.
- Immune to Bullets: The protomolecule-monsters. Bullets pass right through them, and they heal immediately afterwards.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Holden grows a beard in an attempt to disguise himself. It fools exactly no one.Avasarala: What happened to his face?Soren: The reporting officer suggested the beard was intended as a disguise.Avasrala: Well, thank God he didn't put on a pair of glasses, we might never have figured it out.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Avasarala. When she gets through an entire phone conversation with her boss without swearing, he knows something is badly wrong.
- Starship Luxurious: Jules-Pierre Mao's private yacht, which serves as a Gilded Cage for Avsarala and her entourage via Errinwright's orders to keep her off the board.
- Wham Line: As Prax is reading through his mail after crowdfunding Mei's rescue campaign, he finds this, which is the first clue that someone wants him silenced:YOU ARE A SICK, SICK, SICK MOTHERFUCKER, AND IF I EVER SEE YOU, I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL KILL YOU MYSELF.
- Wrong Assumption: After Holden realizes the protomolecule was involved in the events on Ganymede, he immediately leaps to the conclusion that Fred Johnson must be behind it, as he had given him the last sample of the stuff for safekeeping. He ends up angrily confronting Fred, who, understandably upset at being accused of atrocities he had nothing to do with, promptly fires him. (It's somewhat justified by the fact that the alternative — that there is more protomolecule out there in God-knows-whose hands — is simply too horrifying for Holden to contemplate. Unfortunately, it's also correct.)
