 Okay, so I'm somewhat inebriated on New Year's Eve, but I'm also alone and out of friends or anything because, you know, coronavirus and all that, don't want to kill grandma. So I just figured I would drunkenly recap the plot of the expanse so far for everybody. And there's spoilers and stuff, but I think when I'm sober, I'm editing sober, don't worry. I'll split it up into different sections. So it'll be like book one, book two and all that. And I'll talk about the TV show a little bit too, but like, cause they mostly follow each other, but like I'm just gonna book one, book two, all that. So like in book one section, I should only spoil book one and all that. And I'm just gonna summarize the plot of the expanse. Let's see if I can remember, let's go. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. Okay, so the expanse is like this world. It's a couple hundred years in the future. We don't know the exact year, but we don't need to know it. It's like in the future. And humans have this thing called the Epstein Drive, which allows them to get their ships going a lot faster than we have today, but not like light speed or anything. So they've colonized most of the solar system, but they haven't gone beyond that. And anyways, we got this guy. His name is James Holden. And he is like, he used to be a member of the Earth and Navy, but now he's like just a guy who works on a water hauler. Like it's a ship that goes out to Saturn and like gets ice from its rings and then takes it to the asteroid belt. Because there's a bunch of people who live in the asteroid belt. They're called Belters. Like there's three factions basically. Earth, Mars and the Belt, which is basically just the asteroid belt and the outer planets. Like there's tons of people out there who they're super poor and shit. And he's there, they find his distress call. So they send a ship out to go check it out. And then a ship that was hiding out in the middle of nowhere. It has like stealth thing. It shoots a missile and destroys their whole ship along with the water. And only a couple of people who were on the ship that went to the smaller like lifeboat that went to investigate survive. And it seems like Mars did it. So like everyone in the belt is super pissed cause like they've been oppressed by Earth and Mars for generations. They're super poor and stuff. But holding them, they don't know what's going on. So there's like, oh, what's going on? And then meanwhile we're following this detective on Ceres, which is like the biggest asteroid in the belt. It's a city in the expanse world. But in our world it's actually just a really big asteroid. It's technically big enough to be considered a dwarf planet. Actually, that's kind of cool. But he's there and he's investigating some like murders and stuff. And he's looking for the daughter of this wealthy dude named Jules Pierre Mao. Her name is Julie Mao. And she hooked up with this faction of the Outer Planets Alliance, the OPA. And they're these, basically they want the belts to be independent from Mars and Earth, or well, the belts in the Outer Planets to be independent from Mars and Earth. But it's split into a bunch of different factions. So some of them are just straight up pirates or terrorists and others of them are actual political figures and stuff. They're kind of like the IRA. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, the IRA, you got Sinn Fein, you got the provisional IRA, just stuff like that. Anyways, Julie Mao was up to some stuff with them and then she vanished. So Miller's trying to track them down. And basically Holden gets caught by a Martian warship because they're like, hey, you made it sound like we destroyed your ship. We didn't destroy your ship. But then other stealth hiding ships come up and destroy their ship and Holden and then escape. And they take this warship called the Rosinante, which is super state of the art and all that. But it's legitimate self, which is not stealing. But some Martians are still pissed because they're like, they stole our warship. They didn't steal your warship, bro. And Holden and them go to this faction of the OPA and they wind up hooking up a little. They're like, hey, let's help each other out because none of us want to get shot. And then they wind up going and looking for Julie Mao as well. And then basically them and Miller wind up in the same place on the station called Eros, which is also an asteroid in the belt somewhere. And basically Julie Mao is there and she's dead. She's dead. She was killed by some sort of weird virus thing that they don't understand. And they like leave as soon as they can because they don't want to get infected. But then other dudes show up and they fake some sort of emergency and they herd everyone on the station into these shelters basically. But little do they know, they actually threw Julie's body in there and whatever virus she was infected with infected the rest of them and they filled it with radiation and shit. So the virus goes crazy and the people like actually start coming back to life as like zombies and shit. But they're also like not quite zombies but kind of zombies. And then they all managed to escape and they're like, whoa, what the hell's going on there? And so they managed to track down this other group which was working with whatever the virus or what weapon whatever was that they were using to kill Julie and all that. And they track them down. And they capture the station where it was. And it turns out this company called ProtoGen which was actually owned by Jules Pierre-Mau who is Julie's father. They were the ones who discovered it on a Phoebe, one of the moons of Titan. And they discovered it. That's the thing they didn't invent it. It was actually an alien artifact. It turns out that Phoebe was just a rock that some aliens put the thing on. They call it the proto molecule. They put it on and they just threw it towards earth but it somehow got caught up in Saturn's gravity and so it became a moon. And so it just infects whatever living thing it is. They don't know what it's for or what it could do but they were trying to experiment with it. And anyways, they kill most of the scientists. Miller actually kills one of the scientists and kind of pisses off everybody else but like the dude kind of needed to die so it's understandable. And also everyone on Eurosis dead and they don't want anyone like getting infected with the proto molecule and spreading it. So they're like, okay, we're just gonna get a ship going real, real fast and smash it into the asteroid and then send it on a course where it'll hit the sun and just burn up. And so they try doing that. And Miller actually gets stuck on the station while it's there and cause he's like kind of suicidal and stuff like Thomas Jane does a really good job of playing him in the show. So Miller gets stuck on there and he's like, okay, I'm about to die but it's okay. And then just as the ship is about to hit it the asteroid just moves. Like there's no thrusters or anything, it just moves because turns out the proto molecule makes the laws of physics bitch. Like they just do whatever they want. I'm trying not to be extra while I'm drunk, I'm sorry. But the proto molecule just does whatever it wants and doesn't understand us. And then because Julie Mao is kind of in control of it she says, I wanna go home. And so she starts heading towards earth and Miller manages to find her and he convinces her, hey, let's not go to earth. We can't go there. We'll kill everybody. So let's go to Venus. And so it crashes into Venus instead. And that's basically where book one ends. Book two is Caliban's War. That one actually starts with this Martian Marine named Roberta Draper. But everyone calls her Bobby because Bobby sounds cooler. And she basically, she's on Ganymede, one of the moons of Jupiter which earth and Mars still hold in conjunction because it's super important. And they haven't given it up to the OPA yet because the OPA has managed to gain control of a lot of the belts in our planets over the course of the first book. And Bobby and them notice that these earth marines are like running away from something and they're like, hey, what's that? And then they think the earth marines attack them so they start shooting. And then it turns out it's actually this humanoid thing which is infected by the protomolecule but she doesn't know that at the time. And then it self-destructs and Bobby's entire squad is killed but them shooting at each other causes a war so like other earth and Mars ships start destroying each other in orbit and shit. Meanwhile, James Holden and the crew of the Rosinante, that's the ship they, that's what they named their Martian warship that they took, the Rosinante. That was Don Coyote's horse actually which is kind of a weird obscure name like cool, whatever. Anyways, they've been like hunting down pirates and stuff for the OPA which is cool. That's honest work and all that but Holden's also kind of a dick cause he has not quite PTSD but he's like freaked out from the protomolecule stuff cause they're like, oh, there's aliens out there and we don't know anything about them or what they want. And their thing is on Venus and it's like doing stuff. We've been watching it. We don't know exactly what's going on but it's doing stuff. And anyways, Holden's kind of a dick and eventually that gets him fired from the OPA but that comes later. This is also where we get introduced to an earth politician named Christian Avasarala who is Indian in the books. She's played by a Persian lady in the show which like, I don't know, I'm white. I don't have a dog in that race and like on one hand the actress does a really good job but on the other hand like maybe we should just have people of that race, play people of that race but like whatever else, race is a social construct. It's not that important I don't think but anyway, she's on earth and she's trying to deal with like the fallout of the Euro's incident and like trying to reign in the OPA and trying to and like earth and Mars are kind of at war now so she's trying to help prevent that or wind that down, you know that sort of thing. And anyway, she hears about Bobby and her squad and everything and they get brought to earth to like, or rather she gets brought to earth to like just testify and give her account of what happened and all that. Then there's also this guy on Ganymede named Praxit like Meng, Meng, Meng, Meng, M-E-N-G Meng. Cause space is colonized by the world. It's not colonized by white people and you know you got like Indian people and Chinese people and all them and like actually most of Mars has an east Texas accent even though a lot of them are like Indian in the sense so like that's kind of funny actually. And anyways, Meng's daughter went missing cause during the battle during all the fighting between earth and Mars like there's some like satellites and shit just crashed down to the surface of the moon and destroyed a bunch of stuff and his daughter went missing and he assumes she's dead but then it turns out she was actually kidnapped by someone for some reason. And it turns out they were actually working with Protogen and they're doing experiments with the protomolecule. We don't know about the experiments until later at least not in the books in the show they tell us pretty early on but anyways, she was kidnapped and so he winds up on a refugee ship and then he hooks up with Holden and the crew of the Rosinante and they're like hey, let's go look for your daughter and so they do. Meanwhile on earth, Avasarala and Bobby they go out into space cause Avasarala and Bobby both know something fucky is going on. Like it seems at first like okay, earth started shooting first therefore it's their fault but at the same time Bobby tells them about like the protomolecule creature and no one really believes her. Anyways and her and Avasarala agree to talk to Jules Pierre Mal remember he's in charge and they go out into space to like his private yacht because he's super fucking rich. He has a yacht but instead of a boat it's a spaceship. That's really cool but God I'm jealous but anyways they go out there and like oh it's a trap. People in Christians earth government are in league with people and Christians earth government are in league with protogen and they're doing experiments cause like you know you could maybe do crazy stuff to humans and the human body and allow for space travel outside of the solar system and stuff that would be kind of cool but anyways they're in league with that and they try and capture her and Bobby but they fail and her and Bobby run off in a racing ship that they capture and they manage, while they're running out they manage to run into the Rosinante along with Holden and Praxidike Meng and all the others and they're like hey they meet up and they're like hey some shit's going down and they're like oh yeah some shit's going down that's crazy dog and anyways eventually long story short they go to Io and they rescue Meng's daughter and they arrest Jules Pierre Mal and that's it, days saved, happy ending all that except for the ending cause that bit where the protomolecule and Eros crashed on Venus it wasn't hurting anybody cause no one lives on Venus but like it was building something and then at the end it comes out it's a big ring like a couple kilometers across comes off of the planet and then just goes off into space and they don't know what it's for or what it's doing but it goes off into space and that's the end of book two book three is called Abaddon's Gate and that one the ring that came off of Venus just parks itself outside the orbit of Uranus like Uranus like the planet and it's just out there it's not doing anything weird they don't think but they have all these ships parked around it and they're looking at it and checking it out like oh there's something weird going on there and then some dipshit kid from the belts who just like has a ship and they're doing this weird sport like slingshotting where they have to calculate everything and then they like fire off and then they orbit around Jupiter and stuff and they have to calculate everything so that they hit their target with like the least amount of fuel and air and everything possible and whatever it's a sport and anyways he aims for the ring and they have a blockade around it and everything so they're like hey kid go away and he's like okay I'll go away but he's actually not going away and anyways he hits the ring and as soon as he goes through it it activates it's a wormhole and it actually kills him when it activates but yeah it's a wormhole and it leads to this big space like outside of space like extra dimensional or something which is a space full of there's a big space station in the middle and there's a whole bunch of other rings just like the one they came through which are they lead to somewhere who knows anyways every major military faction in the belt or in the solar system you know so the earth the belt Mars they all go there and they check it try to check it out and it's like well there's something fucking going on here and anyways Jules Pierre Mao's other daughter who's Julie Mao's sister who remembers dead her name's Clarissa she hates James Holden cause like he exposed her dad's crimes even though her dad committed all the crimes James is just the one that exposed them and anyways she hates him so she like blows up a ship that was in the fleet and then blames it on him and so he has to flee into the ring gate and they go in there and it's like this you know it's this alien space like I described and a bunch of other ships come after him and they're like whoa there's some weird shit going on here and then Holden goes to cause like remember this was all built by aliens they don't know anything about the people who built this whether they're hostile where they are what they're like and Holden goes to the space station there and he's actually accompanied by the ghost of Miller now remember Miller was the detective dude who died on Eros but turns out the protomolecule sort of assimilated him and then in order to communicate with Holden it's it just uses the hallucination essentially of Miller like it's a hallucination of Miller like pokes his neurons in the correct order and all that and it makes him see or and hear stuff but anyways it communicates with him using Miller and he's like hey we need to find out what happened to the people who built me and Holden's like okay let's go and they go to the space station there's nothing there everyone there is gone and basically it turns out the people who built the ring gates they're usually just called the builders or the protomolecule creators and anyways they were around and they built all this shit like they took the long term form of colonizing where they would just take a big rock and put protomolecule on it and then hurl it at a planet which had life and then it would just assimilate all that life and you know build ring gates that was its purpose and anyways they were around for a long time but two billion it's B billion with a B years ago something came around and killed them and so they tried cutting off all the ring gates like to prevent it spread but it didn't work and so they all died and so all their shit has just been sitting around for a couple billion years and Holden's like whoa that's crazy and then some more shit goes down in the ring gates which is kind it's cool it's cool the third book is the best in my opinion but it's not that important really in the grand scheme of things so basically some shit goes down they manage to fix it and then they open all the other ring gates so there's like 1300 new gates which lead to new worlds which is really cool it's good for humanity and all that but at the same time there are well whoever built these is dead and they have technology far beyond our own and something killed them and we don't know what's going on there and that's the end of book three book four is Sibola burn now this one starts off with like this group of not even really belters they're outer planets people they're from Ganymede originally which is I don't know the word belters only really works for people from the asteroid belt but like people from the outer planets they're also kind of belters physically, culturally, all that but like they aren't part of the asteroid belt that's kind of weird but anyways they manage to go to a planet through one of the ring gates called Eilis or Eelus I think they say Eelus in the show I always read it as Eilis I'm not sure anyways they go there and they start their own little colony little business and all that and it's pretty great for the most part but because they grew up in such low gravity some of them just can't adapt and so they cannot live on the planet it sucks but they just can't do it but at least people on the surface have their own colony and they're making money and stuff that's pretty cool but then there's also this group of earth scientists from a corporation who was given rights to like study the planet and everything who come there and the belters think they're gonna take it over so they become terrorists and they just blow them up like I mean I understand not wanting to give up what you've taken what you've rightfully stolen but like the belters there are terrorists let's be honest anyways there's a big conflict going on there because a bunch of people die because again terrorists and but also the head of the earth security is this guy named Murtry who is a psycho he's played by one of the scientists from Pacific Rim I don't remember his name but he's the one who's not Charlie Day but dude's a psycho and so Avasarala remember the politician from earth she sends Holden and his crew over there to mediate and shit and they mediate and but while they're there the protomolecule like the ghost of Miller protomolecule also wants Holden to investigate some of the shit going on on Eilis I'm gonna call it Eilis that sounds better it wants him to investigate some of the stuff going on Eilis and just you know figure out what happened to the builders because he's basically a computer program and he doesn't know and so while Holden's there he the situation between the belters and the earthers escalates a little and then this big crazy thing happens he activates some of the protomolecule technology which is on this planet and then there's a big explosion and a tsunami and all that and also its technology just makes the laws of physics stop working so their ship drives won't really work in orbit and they all have to hide underground for a little while but then Holden manages to go over to this other area where he can shut down some of the technology and he sees this big like floating orb which is a leftover from whatever or whoever killed the protomolecules and again we don't know what it is it's basically an unexploded bomb but it's whatever killed them and so they managed to use it to shut down all the technology I hit the wall they shut down all the technology and the day is saved you know the earthers and belters work together they manage to solve the problem everything's great but then in the epilogue it turns out that Avasarala wanted Holden to fail because like the story he winds up getting is that like oh the inners and the outers managed to put aside their differences and work together to tame this new alien world and so now there's this whole new frontier out there which she thinks people are just gonna go to without thinking and a bunch of them are gonna get killed and it's gonna cause a lot of problems and so she's like well shit he succeeded the one time I don't want him to succeed and that's the end of book four book five is called Nemesis Games now that one starts off not that long after the Rocinante's crew got back to our solar system and they are getting their ship repaired and stuff but every member of the crew kind of has their own business to deal with so like one of them Naomi Holden's girlfriend finally makes contact with her son who she kind of abandoned like 15 or 16 years earlier when he was just a baby and so she has to go and see him and the pilot Alex has to go back to Mars to kind of make amends with his ex-wife and stuff cause you know he kind of sort of abandoned her cause he's kind of an asshole when you think about it like Cass Anbar gave that character a lot of charm and charisma and all that but then it turned out that Cass Anbar is also an asshole so I'm not sure how that works out and then there's a guy named Ert and then there's a guy named Amos who's from Earth and the woman who raised him is kind of a surrogate mother died and so he's just going back to take care of some of her stuff and Holden just kind of stays behind with the ship while it's getting repaired and meanwhile while all this has been going on after they went to Islas a whole bunch of people realized oh hey there's all these other planets out there why should we stay in this solar system this solar system sucks so let's just pack up and leave which while it is good for the individual people who are able to start a new life it's not great for the governments they left behind particularly Mars because you see Mars they're trying to terraform it but it's not it takes generations upon generations to do it they have to like make a magnetosphere and then they have to make an atmosphere and then they have to put an ocean out there and they have to fill it with like bacteria and shit at least I think that's how they do it they don't go into a lot of detail in either the book or the show but either way they have to do all of this work but by having this one big project that their citizens can build towards they're able to foster this sense of patriotism and they're able to build up this really big powerful economy but then like suddenly a whole bunch of their citizens leave I think in the book they mentioned it's like a fifth of their citizens just leave the planet over the course of a couple of years which is a huge deal because again that was one of the big military powers of the solar system so their economy collapses their government is destabilized and their military has to downsize a lot they have to get rid of a bunch of their equipment and stuff and over the course of the book we learn that that equipment a lot of it got stolen and got sold to a radical faction of the OPA the outer planet alliance led by this guy named Marco Inaros now Marco Inaros runs a faction of the OPA which he calls the Free Navy and basically he and a lot of others like him saw Mars' economy collapse when people realized they could just go to the other worlds through the ring and they realized that Belters don't really have the same economic niche that they used to have because most of them grow up in low gravity so they don't really have the option to go to these bigger planets a lot of them just cannot adapt it sucks but it's how it is and so he realizes we're going to go extinct if we keep this up so he and his faction which they call the Free Navy wait did I say they call it the Free Navy already I don't remember but they just coat these big asteroids in Martian stealth tech and get them going really really fast and they throw them at Earth and they hit it and it kills literally billions of people and it destroys it's a bad time for everybody and then he comes out and says yo Earth and Mars you control your own planets but everything else is controlled by us and no one's allowed to go through the ring gates anymore and then people just try to deal with that for most of the rest of the book and eventually the crew of the Rosinante gets back together and they're like okay so shit now what and that's the end of book 5 book 6 Babylon's Ashes is just a continuation of the fight against the Free Navy cause you know they're gonna take over everything if you let them and so we gotta take care of them before they get their footing and everything and so they basically that's the most of the book they go off and fight them and Marco and he's a charismatic leader is the thing but he's not a particularly intelligent leader so like every time he loses or anything he makes it seem like that was his plan all along and so even though they're driving ships that were stolen from Mars or bought from Mars depending on who you ask cause in this book and somewhat in the first book you find out that they actually bought all this decommissioned technology from Mars from this Admiral named Winston Duarte Duarte that's every time I read that I think it says Duterte for a second and I'm very confused cause I'm like what the fuck does he have to do with this isn't he president to the Philippines but like whatever whatever they go through all this and also while it's happening it turns out ships that go through the ring gates are just disappearing like just add no one knows what's happening to them and so basically the forces of Earth and Mars push the free Navy back further and further and further and the crew of the Rosinante goes to the ring and into the ring space and they managed to take it back from the free Navy who had taken it earlier and Naomi while she's looking through some of the records and stuff she realizes that most of the ships that disappeared disappeared when like energy had spiked really high while the ships were going through various rings and she realizes okay so all we have to do is put a whole bunch of other ships through it right before the free Navy comes through and so that's what they do and so Marco and his friends all just disappear when they go through and then they're dead and that's the end of it and they realize though that Marco did have a point when he's like okay Belters are gonna straight up go extinct if we continue on this current course even the ones that don't die out are just gonna be way too poor to live so how do we deal with this and so they come up with a compromise they create this agreement where the Belters and the outer planets people they will be the ones who control all transport between solar systems so they're the ones that control the ring space and they're the ones that control commerce and everything between every other space and like okay that's yeah all right that's it seems weird to give a job to one race of people race pseudo race I don't know like I said race is a social construct and so what we think of race of as race and what they think of as race is different like a hundred years ago the Italians and the Irish weren't white but now they are so it seems weird to give one race of people that kind of control over such a important economic thing because like that's what the Jews had for many hundreds of years and that didn't work out super well for the Jews but okay it is a fitting compromise for the time being and anyways Babylon's Ashes cool book cool war story that's the end of it book seven Persepolis rising this one weirdly enough jumps forward 30 years yeah it's just 30 years later so it turns out that Winston Duarte and his big chunk of the Martian Navy and a bunch of other people that he was able to convince to go along with him just left their system and went to one of the ring worlds which they call Laconia which like real subtle Winston real subtle Laconia was the name of the area around Sparta back in ancient Greece like or Lacodemonia depending on the translation I think or the dialect something like that but anyways Laconia yeah those there was the area around Greece like the people or the area around Sparta like the people of Sparta were usually referred to as Laconians so clearly they think a lot of themselves anyways they've gone there and they've like built up their own planet civilization and everything they have a sample of the protomolecule which they used to experiments on people it's a total dictatorship Duarte runs it, excuse me, by himself and he's having experiments done on him to make himself immortal which like he kinda has a point when he says it he's saying like he's a philosopher king you know he doesn't need to deal with like popularity contests or board of directors or congress or anything like that he's just gonna run shit by himself and he'll be the best at it because he's just the best but at the same time he's not gonna have to worry about like his son or anything taking over and fucking things up cause he'll just be in charge forever cause again he's just the best at it anyways he and his ships announced that they're coming through and everyone in the rest of human space is like okay they're just some banana republic they don't have particularly powerful ships or anything whatever we'll take care of them no, it turns out their main ship is crazy alien technology stuff that they built cause that's why they went to Laconia is cause there were orbiting platforms around it which were built by the protomolecule builders and they used that to create these powerful crazy awesome ass ships and they come in and they just completely fuck everyone to pieces the earth navy, the mars navy the transport union and the belters like just everyone is fucked they have no way of standing against these things and over the course of most of the book Laconia kinda sort of conquers everything cause like the soul system which where we live, where earth and everything is that's still where most people live and where most of the economic activity is and everything and they conquer that but they also conquer the ring space which leads to all the other worlds and so they're like yeah we're in charge now whatever and so the crew of the Rosinante obviously isn't just gonna sit back and take it but they try and take like gorilla tactics and shit and they manage to steal a small Laconian warship which is also like super advanced and shit and they manage to take off with it but during all of this James Holden is captured and he's actually dragged away to Laconia and when they use one of their weird weapons it kinda turns everyone in the soul system off and what I mean by that is like every human being just at the exact same time passes out and I don't mean like there was an epicenter and people passing out spread out at the speed of light it was instantaneous which is crazy in terms of physics at least it was absolutely nuts and it seems like whoever or whatever destroyed the protomolecule creators not only are they the ones that are eating the ships that go through the ring gates too fast but they are the ones that shut humanity off for a couple of minutes and when Holden gets to Laconia he's like yo guys what the fuck this is your fault you're fucking with things you don't understand you're gonna get us all killed and then the other crew members take the not the Rosinante the ship they stole and hide it somewhere and they're like okay we're gonna be the leaders of the resistance and then that'll be it that's on to book eight book eight is called Tiamat's Wrath and this one by the time this one starts Laconia rules over everything it's a total dictatorship Winston Duarte rules everything himself and there's still a lot of people who are pissed about that and so there's an underground resistance and everything but they cannot meet the military in open conflict because they tried and even with a bunch of warships and everything it just completely fucked them to pieces is their technology is too great what are you gonna do and including Winston Duarte's daughter who is also getting the immortality treatments which seems to suggest that Winston doesn't just think that he's above everyone else he thinks well no he thinks he's above everyone else that's the gist of it he and his daughter both get to be immortal why because they're special it is not really fair but his daughter also is not really rebelling but she really doesn't like her father and the control in her life and everything and so she's meeting up with this guy named Timmy who's hiding off in the wilderness and he's pretty obviously Amos from the beginning we can tell that but he's hiding off in the wilderness and he's like yo your dad kind of sucks and she's like yeah my dad kind of sucks and Holden's held prisoner and he's like yo your dad kind of sucks and she's like yeah my dad kind of sucks meanwhile Naomi is kind of sort of helping to run the resistance they have to be really secretive about it and everything but yeah Naomi is helping to run shit she's helping to conceal information and all that and she's getting information where it needs so that they can disrupt the Laconia and they can do damage to it whenever possible it's still not great but you know whenever possible and eventually some of her old friends in the resistance managed to steal some anti-matter bombs from the Laconians and they use them to blow up one of their ships now the thing about blowing up their ships is that they only have like three of them so when you blow up one in the soul system that's when and they have to keep one in Laconia at all times and they have to keep one in the ring space at all times in order to control everything and so they realize oh shit we don't have one in the soul system anymore and so if people decide like oh okay let's rise up they won't be able to do much against it which is exactly what they were counting on and so long story short they managed to just get a bunch of other people in the rebellion together they actually take a bunch of battleships that were taken apart into a bunch of pieces and reassemble them and they managed to take back the ring gates and then they go to Laconia and even though their ships are way more powerful the resistance just has so many more of them and they can get resupplied and everything and so they managed to fight them really well and then through a daring maneuver they managed to destroy the orbital platforms which they used to create and maintain their alien space technology ships and they also managed to rescue Holden and they take Duarte's daughter with them and oh fuck, thinking is hard and they win at least for the time being however while all of this is going on Duarte and the Laconians are kind of experimenting and trying to figure out how to hurt or kill the people or the race or whatever that killed the protomolecule builders and so basically they investigated a little but basically they send a bomb on a ship which will go through the ring gates at the exact moment which they're gonna eat everything and then they try and set it off and see if that'll hurt them and it doesn't seem to hurt them that badly but it does seem to piss them off because they destroy two of the ring gates and one gate leads to a solar system full of people who actually live there and then the gates destroy it so they're just cut off from the rest of humanity now good fucking luck guys, excuse me but also during their experiments the creators seem to keep turning people off the way they were before like people will just pass out for a couple of minutes at a time and it seems like they're experimenting with damaging human physiology so that they can wipe us out the way they wiped out the protomolecule creators and so Holden and other people are like Duarte what the fuck are you doing and Duarte instead of getting turned off his immortality treatments involved use of the protomolecule so they seemed to make him kind of like the people who created the protomolecule so the treatments just kind of destroyed his mind I think cause he just kind of sits in a chair and babbles to himself now and he doesn't seem to know what's going on anymore and that's not good and also the creators they still have some of their technology running around and on Laconia specifically they have these machines running around and if they catch any people who have died for one reason or another they will bring them back to life but they'll bring them back to life slightly different and while this is going on Amos gets killed but then later he comes back and saves the day except his blood is black now his eyes are black and his personality seems mostly intact but we're not totally sure what's going on and even though Laconia's power is broken and the power of the earth and Mars who were kind of controlling everything still is also broken so all the systems seem to be mostly independent there whoever built the protomolecule the things that killed them they really should come up with a name for that but sometimes they call them the Romans and the Goths but like the Goths didn't destroy the Romans guys that's overly simplistic but anyways the Goths are still out there and so they're like well how are we gonna deal with this I don't know so that's where we are as of the end of book eight and book nine is the last one there's one more to go it's gonna be called Leviathan Falls the Leviathan Falls and I'm not sure what's going on but honestly the expanse up to this point has been fucking crazy I mean most of the books have had at least one crazy thing that has happened and made me go whoa what the fuck the only one I didn't really like was Caliban's War actually Caliban's War and Sibola Burn to an extent are both not that great but even if the storylines aren't that great the characters and everything are still fun so like the expanse is fun and I know I spoiled a lot of stuff spoiled a lot of stuff in my summary but the characters and action and stuff are still fun so if you haven't read it you should go read it if you don't feel like reading it watch the show the show is really good it's on on Amazon anyway that's it bye okay thanks to everyone who watched my ramblings that I insist on calling a career and especially thanks to all my patrons and the $10 up guys are Appo Savilainen, Eris Targaryen, Ava Tumor, Brother Santotys, Christopher Quinten, Deanna Dayhem, Mbis, Emily Miller, Joel, Carcat Kitsune, Lawrence Hicks, Liza Rudicoba, Madison Lewis Bennett, microphone, Reeze Yerola, Sad Martigan, Tobacco Crow, Tom Beanie, Vacuous Silas and Vaivictus you guys are great and if you wanna get your name anywhere on this list then consider going to my Patreon and becoming a patron you know that's how that website works and all like you get your name on here you get to vote on video topics you get to see stuff early it's great, it's amazing and if you're too poor to afford that then well I hate you but as long as you like the video comment, subscribe and continue watching my stuff then well you know I'm fine with it you know you're okay if you can do that anyways I'll see you later bye