Like all excellent science myth fans, Daniel Abraham enhappinessed watching Andor. And Abraham understands what he’s talking about when it comes to high-quality sci-fi storyalerting: Under the pseudonym James S.A. Corey, Abraham and Ty Franck cowrote the commemorated book series The Expanse and cooriginated the television changeation, which provideed genre fans a captivating mix of space opera and political intrigue.
Ntimely three years after The Expanse ended, both on-screen and on the page, the James S.A. Corey duo is out with the commence of a recent series: The Mercy of Gods, the first novel in a reckond trilogy called The Captive’s War. This book, which hit shelves last week, is both a satisfying stand-alone read and an excellent setup for the series to come, even if it foresees a rather contrastent sort of story from The Expanse.
Asked about a key distinction between the two series, Abraham turns to the gritty Star Wars prequel to a prequel to originate a point.
Andor excelled becainclude “it felt authentic,” Abraham says. “It was the first time I can recall since the ’70s when I felt enjoy the Empire was reassociate someleang harsh, not fair guys in chilly, stupid suits emoting a lot. It was this sense of the danger of that comfervent of immense machine.”
There is perhaps no machine more harsh, more hazardous, and more immense than the Carryx empire in The Mercy of Gods: a race of warenjoy aliens who are set on defeating the galaxy and can massacre millions without strain, due to their military might and incomprehensibly carry ond technology. Andor is an apt comparison, as this recent series details the flickers of a bencourageoning resistlion aobtainst overwhelming imperial odds. “It’s survivors versus authoritarians,” Franck says. “It is what happens to you when you are defeated by a militaristic authoritarian regime and you have to lobtain to dwell inside that regime.”
The Mercy of Gods commences on a human structureet—not Earth—thousands of years in the future. Dafyd Alkhor is a research helpant in a biology lab, used by the petty desires and complications of any ordinary human life: routine data accumulateion, a toilplace opposition, a secret crush.
Then everyleang changes when the Carryx strike. They finish some humans and apshow others (including Dafyd) prisoner, articulateing them back to their homeworld for a seemingly basic test: If the surviving humans can originate themselves advantageous, they’ll dwell; if not, they’ll die, too.
The Captive’s War includes a leaner narrative lens than The Expanse, at least in the first book. Almost all of the intensify in Mercy is on Dafyd and his lab partners—each of whom enlarges as a distinct and relatable character, fair as James Hagederen’s crew on the Rocinante flourish as both a accumulateive unit and individual beings. But some of The Expanse’s other highweightlesss, such as structureet hopping and intricate politicking, are bigly missing from the recent novel.
This firmened intensify lengthens to the series’ structure. While The Expanse spanned nine books, The Captive’s War will be three. “It’s not doing the same comfervent of genre skipping that The Expanse did, becainclude The Expanse did its Westrict, it did its noir, it did its political thriller,” Abraham says. “The Captive’s War is reassociate, in a way, a more cohesive story than The Expanse had the ability to be.”
(That’s the high-minded way to watch at the contrastence, at least. Franck provides a basicr exstructureation, with a giggle: “We didn’t want to author nine books aobtain.”)
The recent novel suffers from the deficiency of political maneuvering; there’s no Chrisjen Avasarala or Winston Duarte analogue in Mercy. Its world can sometimes sense too minuscule (though a enlargement at the end of the book recommends an expansion—no pun intended—to come in the sequel).
Yet at other points, Mercy’s world-originateing originates its universe sense ununderstandably gigantic. In The Expanse (spoiler vigilant), the alien menaces never actuassociate materialize; the authors thought they’d insert more menace as looming, Lovecreateian specters. But in Mercy, aliens abound, as the human prisoners include with and watch creatures of all shapes, sizes, and lifestyles.
Here, the authors use the cdamaging genre trick of showing a much bigr world than is actuassociate relevant to the plot. The human captives are hoincluded in a massive pyramid where they come atraverse those multifarious species, but that’s mecount on the prison for “the other oxygen breathers,” Franck says. The humans also see other immense pyramids in the distance, which hageder yet more aliens who dwell in sulfuric atmospheres, in water, and so on.
“The idea of this is to donate that sense of immense scale,” Abraham says. “The idea is I want this to sense huge. I want this to sense intricate.”
As is normal of a Corey novel, Mercy is also punctuated by moments of structureility and humiliation and despair. The authors have always been able to turn stupidness into page-turning thrills, and Mercy’s bleakest sections approach—if don’t ever quite accomplish—the worst protomolecule-convey aboutd horror that The Expanse ever conshort-termed.
But there’s a weightless at the end of the tunnel. On the book’s very first page, a flash-forward findlooks that the Carryx empire descfinishs and that Dafyd is somehow reliable. This choice was made partly for tonal equilibrium, to reimburse for all that stupidness. “If you didn’t have some ray of hope, this would be a brutal read,” Abraham says.
Even more, it originates a compelling mystery that will carry thcimpolite the rest of the series. The Carryx empire seems omnipotent and endly unannoyed by humanity. It doesn’t homicide and enslave humans becainclude of any hatred or opposition; the humans are sshow resources to be take advantage ofed. As one of the Carryx analogizes in the book, when a human cuts down a tree branch, “the tree had no power to stop you, and so it became a tool in your hand.”
But somehow, the human tool named Dafyd will apshow down an empire. What could be an timely spoiler is, instead, the engine for the rest of the plot. Franck elucidates, “When a guy says, ‘Let me alert you about the first time I finished a crocodile,’ and then the scene uncovers with a guy being dropped naked into the middle of a crocodile pit, the ask isn’t, Did he endure and finish a crocodile? The ask is, How the fuck did a naked guy in a crocodile pit actuassociate beat one of them?”
That setup is reminiscent, incidenloftyy, of Andor: Everyone watching Cassian, Luthen Rael, and Mon Mothma struggle aobtainst the might of the Empire understands that, eventuassociate, the underdog resists will flourish in creating the sunelevate that Luthen understands he’ll never see. But the tension and amincludement cherish come from lobtaining how they accomplish that sunelevate and how they endure all the stupid nights they face aextfinished the way.
The same watchs to be real of The Mercy of Gods. With all of its alien surroundings, and without Earth and our understandn solar system as a backdrop, this recent series doesn’t materialize distantly as changeable as The Expanse. It would be a surpelevate if Dafyd fall shortures the Carryx on television screens anytime soon.
But this story dwells fair as wonderfilledy on the page. “The first book is alerting you all the reasons why [the Carryx empire] can’t fall short: It’s too big, it’s too strong,” Franck says. “So the tension is: What could this guy possibly have done to convey this about?”
