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Kindle Notes & Highlights
New Mexican sun pressing against his chest like a hand as he basked in the radiation and heat of an uncontrolled fusion reaction, protected only by distance and the wide blue sky.
Describing the sun as "an uncontrolled fusion reaction" -- so, so perfect for Bull's POV.
None of her attacks were conscious or intentional. The movements came flowing out of a hindbrain that had been freed of restraint and given the time to plan its mayhem. It was no more a martial art than a crocodile taking down a water buffalo was; just speed, strength, and a couple billion years of survival instinct unleashed.
It's that same transition from telling to showing to insight that I love so much in these books.
Two of the techs on the far side turned to look toward her, smiling without knowing what they were smiling about.
Excellent showing! You could say "She really lights up a room" but this is SO much better!
Her stateroom was three meters wide by four meters long. Luxurious by navy standards, normal for a poor Europan, coffinlike to an Earther. Anna felt a brief moment of vertigo as the two different Annas she’d been reacted to the space in three different ways.
There are just SO many layers here -- and this is one of the small ways to build a deep and believable character out of what could easily be a few throwaway lines. It's the attention to detail throughout The Expanse that keeps me coming back.
Really, when had someone screaming ever solved a problem?
So good -- that moment of self-awareness you sometimes experience in the midst of a crisis. And if memory serves, this is from Anna's POV, which makes it even better.
Thing about bad judgment? You got to have good judgment to notice you’ve got it.
I think I first saw this construction in Dennis Lehane's novels. Half a declarative sentence ending with a question mark? Setting yourself up to answer your own question. Don't know why I find it so delightful, maybe just because it's unusual. (BUT if this technique is overused it quickly becomes insufferable.)
“I got a lot of past in my past.”
Ah, Amos, you can tell us so much with so few words. It's a mistake to think of Amos as "laconic" exactly, although he certainly has his Leonidas moments.
You see a room full of bones, only thing you know is something got killed. You’re the predator right up until you’re prey.”
Such a great combination of the visceral and the analytical... So Miller!
“Cheating?” Tilly said with a laugh. “I wish. That would at least be interesting. When he locks himself away in his office at 2 a.m., you know what I catch him looking at? Business reports, stock values, spreadsheets. Robert is the least sexual creature I’ve ever met. At least until they invent a way to fuck money.”
This is literally everything I know about Tilly's husband, and yet it tells me EVERYTHING I need to create a vivid picture: Male pattern baldness, a rumpled button-down shirt, constant low-level anxiety -- a super-wealthy guy who still locks himself in his office to spend time with his spreadsheets.
If the other man’s dead, the judge only has one story to follow.
Exactly the brutal kind of Wild West justice we see across The Expanse... Maybe this is, more than anything, the larger story in the series. Humans go to the stars but they're still humans. The settings change, the technology progresses, but people are people. (That's hardly profound, is it? But it's still important.)
The crew was a muted cacophony. Every station was juggling telemetry and signal switching and sensor data, even though basically nothing was going on. It was just that the excitement demanded that everything be busy and serious and fraught.
We've ALL been there, caught up in performative work. The self-contradicting "muted cacophony" metaphor works just perfectly in this context, too.
“Nothing wrong with a little optimism, long as it doesn’t set policy,”
This is something only a truly terrible person would say.
It was food meant to keep you alive. Everything after that was your own problem.
Oy -- "food meant to keep you alive" really says it all. But the second sentence implies even more context, doesn't it? "If you're eating THIS, you're definitely in the basement of Maslow's hierarchy of needs..."
Her chest hurt so badly she was sure something really was breaking. Aortic aneurysm, pulmonary embolism, something. Sorrow couldn’t really feel like a heart breaking, could it? That was just a phrase.
Telling and reflecting. How the hell do the authors keep getting away with this so spectacularly? It takes the cliche and turns it on its head and sets it spinning...
Show a human a closed door, and no matter how many open doors she finds, she’ll be haunted by what might be behind it.
"haunted" is the PERFECT word choice! Elevates what could be a cliche into an eerily perfect statement of this one constant of the human condition.
Heroism is a label most people get for doing shit they’d never do if they were really thinking about it.”
Love, love this line. You KNOW the person saying it is dismissing praise that they've earned. And you KNOW they've seen some shit.
Nothing ever killed more people than being afraid to look like a sissy.”
“We don’t want to get in a gunfight,” Holden warned Amos as they began moving again. “Yeah,” Amos said. “But if we’re in one anyway, it’ll be nice to have guns.”
Classic Amos.
Bull felt a growing respect for Jim Holden, the same way he’d respect a rattlesnake. The man was dangerous just by being what he was.
I don't understand why the second sentence is so impactful. The comparison to a rattlesnake sets the hook, then that second sentence, "just by being what he was," reels me right in.
memory of a video she’d seen of a drunken soldier handing his assault rifle to a chimp. What had happened next was either hilarious or tragic, depending on her mood.
This is SO MUCH BETTER than the version where the writer took 150 words to tell us exactly what happened in the video -- and the payoff, "hilarious or tragic," is absolutely right. So, so good.
“Amos will make sure you’re not interrupted,” he finally said. “Right,” Bull said. “Tell them why that’s reassuring.” “Oh. Well, when Amos is angry he’s the meanest, scariest person I’ve ever met, and he’d walk across a sea of corpses he personally created to help a friend. And one of his good friends just got murdered by the people who are going to be trying to take this office.” “I heard about that,” Anna said. “I’m sorry.” “Yes,” Holden said. “And the last people in the galaxy I’d want to be are the ones that are going to try and break in here to stop you. Amos doesn’t process grief well.
...more
If we hadn't gotten to know Amos pretty well by this point, all this would sound like overstatement. But we DO know Amos, and we know Holden's right, so it's delightful to overhear Bull prompting him to convince someone else who doesn't know Amos of his capabilities... I think I'm at least partially charmed because I feel like the insider in this exchange -- I get it, but Anna doesn't, not yet.
He was a large man, tall and thick across the shoulders and chest. But with his round shaved head and broad face, he didn’t look like a killer to Anna. He looked like a friendly repairman. The kind who showed up to fix broken plumbing or swap out the air recycling filters. According to Holden, he would kill without remorse to protect her.
“God damn, Red,” Amos said, putting his hand on hers. “You must be hell on wheels as a preacher. You’re making me feel the best and worst I’ve felt in a while at the same time.”
"feel the best and worst" -- SO good! And you know he means it, because it's Amos, and he doesn't do feelings.
Before she could leave, Amos grabbed her hand in an almost painfully tight grip. “No one’s gonna hurt you today.” There was no boast in it. It was a simple statement of fact. She gave him a smile and pulled her hand away. Good-hearted unrepentant killers were not something she’d had to fit into her worldview before this, and she wasn’t sure how it would work. But now she’d have to try.
I love this -- her acceptance, this moment of reflection on her worldview...
