Literature / Tiamat's Wrath

Released in 2019, Tiamat's Wrath is the eighth of nine novels in The Expanse series.

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Tiamat's Wrath contains examples of:

• Apocalypse How: "Stellar" scope, "Physical Annihilation" severity. The neutron star at the center of the Tecoma system is so massive it is just on the edge of collapse, while the rest of the system is unnaturally clear of mass. All it takes is a relatively small addition of mass to the star to cause it collapse, emitting such high energy rays that the gate linking to it and the gate on the opposite side of slow zone from it and everything in a line between them besides the spherical station are all reduced to atoms.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: The Laconian strategy to deal with the Precursor Killers is to keep trying to hit them back, regardless of the damage that has been done to them in response. Even after the counterattack against them destroys an entire star system, two gates, and then annihilates every human ship and structure in the slow zone, the Laconians keep looking for a way to hit back and don't consider backing down.
• Back from the Dead: The repair drones on Laconia occasionally resurrect the dead as protomolecule zombies. This happens to Amos after Ilich kills him. Fortunately, he seems to be the same old Amos, just with a otherworldly skin tone and some new knowledge from the protomolecule builders.
• Big Damn Heroes: Amos comes out of nowhere to save Holden, Teresa, and Muskrat from a furious Colonel Ilich and his escort.
• Bittersweet Ending: The Underground destroys the Magnetar construction yards, preventing Laconia from maintaining their domination over mankind and the surviving members of the Rocinante crew reunite. However, Bobbie is dead, Amos might be a a protomolecule meat puppet that is very good at impersonating the original Amos, millions of innocents have been killed by the aliens's retaliation and the aliens are now intent on wiping out humanity.
• Came Back Strong: Amos, who earlier had the entire top half of his head removed by multiple gunshots at short range, comes back to rescue Teresa and Holden as they wait for rescue. In doing so he takes multiple pistol rounds to his bare torso without slowing down.
• David Versus Goliath: A recurring motif explicitly called out in the text itself, as a metaphor for Bobbie's crusade against Laconia. She has command of one of their smaller ships, which is powerful on its own, but would be little more than an annoyance to one of Laconia's Magnetar-class battleships in direct combat. When her crew intercepts some of the Laconian-produced antimatter and replacement parts that suggest one of those battleships has a sensor blindspot, "David" finds a way to make his slingshot fatal.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him:
  • Chrisjen Avasarala died of natural causes four months before the events of the book.
  • Subverted when Ilich and his men gun down Amos with little ceremony. Death can't keep Amos down.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Bobbie, having released her anti-matter charge and knowing she won't have the delta-v or thrust to Outrun the Fireball, decides that the best thing she can to is to distract her target from firing at her crew on The Gathering Storm. She dies facing down the deadliest battleship known to humanity in only her Powered Armor. The characters who mourn her after agree this was probably exactly how she wanted to go.
• Empty Room Until the Trap: Tecoma System is noted as being almost completely empty, with a massive neutron star at the center. When the Laconians cause a bomb ship to go dutchman, quantum effects go off the scale and start generating hydrogen ions, which adds just enough mass to the neutron star for it to collapse and fire a gamma ray burst through the slow zone.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: After the experiment in Tecoma System, the crew of the Falcon is fascinated by the sudden uptick in quantum activity and the generation of hydrogen ions, until they realize that the ions are adding mass to a neutron star that was already on the verge of collapse.
• Gilded Cage: Discussed between Holden and Teresa. Holden is kept in a very comfortable room at the Laconian State Building, given free run of the grounds, and generally treated as an honored guest who isn't allowed to leave. Gets a lot less gilded after Ilich finds Amos camping out on the nearby mountain, though.
  • Teresa Duarte is the daughter of Winston Duarte, who loves her with all his heart and plans to make her immortal. She's provided with a top-notch education and virtually anything her heart desires. When Winston Duarte gets rendered catatonic by the aliens, she learns that her father was the only one who cared about her, and everyone else is interested only in using her to keep up images, not caring how stressful she finds it.
• Hermit Guru: "Timmy", an older man who lives by himself in a cave on the mountainside overlooking the Laconian Palace. Teresa visits him when she sneaks out, where he dutifully listens to her and delivers unfiltered wisdom whenever she asks. He is of course, Amos, and is using his mountain hideaway to reconnoiter the Palace for the Underground.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Bobbie gives her life to destroy the Heart of the Tempest.
• Left for Dead: Being shot several times in a close range firefight that literally removes the top of a person's head is generally a good way to ensure they are Deader than Dead, which happens to Amos after Teresa accidentally leads Ilich and his men to him. But bodies left around Laconian-native repair drones don't tend to stay dead...
• Made of Indestructium: The sphere at the center of the Slow Zone is directly hit by a gamma ray burst from a collapsing neutron star, a beam which is sufficient to even annihilate the ring gate it came through and the ring gate on the opposite side of the Zone. However, the sphere suffers no damage, successfully absorbing all the energy directed upon it. It does take several weeks to disperse all that energy though, during which time it glows like a sun before gradually fading.
• No-Sell: While humans are resistant to the consciousness-breaking super-weapon of the Precursor Killers, the enemy has shown an ability to begin adapting the weapon to more effectively break human minds. On the other hand, the humans whose corpses were rebuilt by the repair drones seem to be entirely immune to the effect.
• Out of Focus: Holden, who has been one of the main POV characters in every prior novel, is only the POV character of the prologue, epilogue, and a single intermission chapter. This is to prevent the audience from learning that Holden tricked Cortazar into attempting to murder Teresa until Elvi and Teresa learn this on their own.
• Perilous Power Source: The magnetic beams on Laconia's Magnetar-class battleships require an immense amount of energy to fire (understandably as their output is on-par with a small pulsar neutron star.) This energy is provided by a matter/anti-matter reaction, with the anti-matter produced in their Protomolocule-driven shipyards. It would be a shame for them if the underground got their hands on some of it...
• Pink Mist: Duarte's developing abilities with the protomolecule cause him turn Cortazar into this, despite his mind being damaged by the alien attack, due to the threat the latter represented to Teresa.
• Real Name as an Alias: The pseudonym Amos uses when talking to Teresa, Timothy, is actually his birth name.
• The Siege: The Underground lays siege to the Laconian system towards the end of the book.
• Time Skip: Roughly five years have passed since Persepolis Rising.
• Wave-Motion Gun: The ultra-high magnetic field projectors on Laconia's Magnetar-class ships return, and are then thoroughly outclassed when the Goths collapse a neutron star to fire a gamma ray burst through the ring system. Two gates are destroyed by the blast.
• Wham Line:
  • The opening line of the book:
    Chrisjen Avasarala was dead.
  • When the reader learns exactly why everyone's been having trouble communicating with the slow zone:
    They found out why the repeater on the slow zone of the gate wasn't responding. It was gone, and so were all the other repeaters like it. And the Eye of the Typhoon. And Medina Station and all the ships that had been quarantined inside the ring space. Only the alien station at the center remained, glowing bright as a tiny sun.