The Protomolecule is back and it has evolved and Holden isn’t sure he can deal.
This book by James S. A. Corey starts in a preschool on Ganymede from the third-person limited perspective of a four-year-old girl named Mei Meng. She is informed that her mother has come to pick her up, which confuses her because her mother had left Ganymede months ago.
Turns out the woman waiting for her is not her mother, but she’s with Dr. Strickland, whom Mei knows and trusts, so she goes with them without making a fuss that might have alerted the preschool teacher that something was wrong.
Then we jump to Bobbie’s perspective.
Bobbie is a very tall Martian woman who has spent her life in the marines. On the same day that Mei is abducted, she and her squad are guarding Martian pods on the moon when some sort of monster attacks. Bullets don’t even phase it. The holes they make close up almost immediately, leaving the monster to wreak havoc unchecked, and wreak havoc it does.
It kills all of Bobbie’s squad and almost kills Bobbie before it spontaneously combusts.
Because the monster destroyed both Martian and Earth pods and soldiers on the moon, Mars thinks Earth sent the monster to attack them, while Earth blames Mars. The two planets start fighting, and that fight works its way to Ganymede, which proceeds to tear itself apart as people divide into factions and take sides.
That’s when Prax goes to pick up his daughter from preschool so the two of them can leave Ganymede and get to safety, only to find she’s already been taken. He works very hard to track her down, including getting hold of security video that shows her being taken by Dr. Strickland and a woman Prax doesn’t recognize.
In addition to all the normal reasons a parent would go crazy with worry when their child disappears, Prax is extra worried because Mei was born with a compromised immune system, and if she doesn’t get her medication regularly, she’ll die.
So Prax is somewhat relieved to see that Dr. Strickland is one of the people who took her, because that means he’ll have her medication. But that still leaves the question: why would Dr. Strickland take her in the first place? And why are all the other kids on Ganymede with the same disorder also missing?
Meanwhile, Holden and his crew have been working for Fred Johnson and the Outer Planets Alliance (OPA,) which has a little more recognition since the first book, but is still not an official government.
Holden and his crew are responsible for delivering supplies to various outer planets, and they happen to find themselves on Ganymede just as the situation is devolving into chaos. Prax happens to run into Holden, recognize him from that time his video announcing he his ship had been attacked by Martian weaponry went viral, and ask him for help.
By this time, it’s been two weeks since Mei went missing and the situation on Ganymede has been devolving ever since, including major food shortages. So Prax is starving and exhausted, so he just barely manages to ask for help before losing consciousness.
Once Prax has rested and they get some food in him and hear his whole story, of course Holden and his crew decide to help him because that’s what they do.
They put out another video that goes viral, asking for donations to help Prax find his missing daughter.
They get donations, messages of support, and even the occasional message with information that could help. For example, it turns out that Strickland is not Dr. Strickland’s name. He went by another name when he was working for the company responsible for disseminating the Protomolecule.
So they set off to find him, only to discover they have a hitchhiker in the form of a monster infected with the Protomolecule. They have some interesting times getting rid of that threat, and once they do, Holden is furious because, aside from the Protomolecules that were shipped to Venus, Holden had given the last remaining sample to Fred Johnson. He becomes convinced Johnson is responsible for this new outbreak, and is ready to tear into him, even though they have zero evidence that he’s responsible. His crew tries to talk sense into him, but he’s beyond hearing it.
While all this has been going on, Bobbie has run into an Earth diplomat named Chrisjen Avasarala, who is my absolute favorite character of all time.
Avasarala is a career politician who knows how the game is played, but when Bobbie displays her lack of tolerance for bullshit at a diplomatic meeting, Avasarala appreciates her directness and offers her a job. Bobbie points out that she’s a Martian and Avasarala is a diplomat for Earth, technically making them enemies. How can they know they can trust each other?
Avasarala asks Bobbie if Bobbie wants to kill her. It’s clear she doesn’t expect Bobbie to say yes, so she’s surprised when Bobbie takes a minute to seriously consider it and weigh the benefits. Avasarala concludes she needs more rest to avoid making such a dangerous mistake in the future.
Nevertheless, Avasarala is not surprised when Bobbie ends up taking her up on the offer because they want the same thing: to find out who’s responsible for creating and unleashing the monster that killed Bobbie’s entire squad right in front of her and almost killed Bobbie herself.
A lot of what makes Avasarala my favorite is her ability to be direct when being direct is called for, but also being sneaky and underhanded when being direct doesn’t work. She is a politician after all, and she’s often the smartest person in the room and she knows it. So when people don’t do what she says, she goes behind their backs to manipulate the situation as needed.
I would say she manipulates it to her advantage, but that’s not even true. She wields power deftly, but she isn’t interested in power for the sake of power. She really does care about doing the right thing, and all her work — both underhanded and direct — is aimed at preventing or minimizing bloodshed whenever possible.
My other favorite thing about Avasarala is that it would have been so easy to make her a cold, calculating politician completely devoid of human feeling or connection, but that’s not the case at all. She’s a loving wife, mother, and grandmother. She and her husband are deeply in love, and he doesn’t grumble when she works late or complain about playing second fiddle to her career. He’s there for her when she needs him and he takes her completely as she is.
She plays with her grandkids. When they finally find Mei and Mei demands Avasarala play with her while they’re on their way back to Earth, the first thing the author says is that Avasarala (having just been given a substantial promotion along with a huge mess to clean up) has no time for playing with children. The second thing the author says is that there’s always time for playing with children, so of course Avasarala makes time to play with Mei.
I can’t think of another example of a loving family woman who is also a manipulative and whip-smart politician.
Anyhoo, while I was falling in love with Avasarala, Holden confronted Johnson about how the Protomolecule got out. Johnson neither admits to nor denies being responsible, but he does fire Holden, who is relieved to no longer be beholden to the OPA, even if it means he’s not sure where his next paycheck is coming from.
Once Holden informs the crew of their new employment situation, the question comes up of who is going to be captain, since Holden was only made captain by default because he was the XO when their last ship blew up, making him the highest ranking survivor.
They vote to make Holden the captain, but they also decide that the crew will be voting on all major decisions from now on.
It turned out Mei and the other immunocompromised children had been taken due to a theory that the fact that they were immunocompromised meant their bodies would play nice with the Protomolecule rather than trying to fight it off.
Fortunately, Dr. Strickland recognized Mei’s political value when he saw the plea for help Prax had sent out, so he held Mei back from the experiments. He expects that fact to save him, but he hasn’t dealt with Holden, who is much more likely to shoot first and ask questions later since his first experience with the Protomolecule alongside Miller.
It’s ironic that Holden cut off ties with Miller as a result of Miller’s tendency to appoint himself judge, jury, and executioner, only for Holden to start acting the same way as soon as Miller was gone. I know Holden is dealing with some serious PTSD, but it still seems like a pretty strange twist.
Speaking of Miller, he — or something that looks like him — shows up at the very end of the book, telling Holden, “We need to talk.” And now I can’t wait to read the next book in this series!
Before closing, I should also mention something about the new version of the Protomolecule: everything infected with the Protomolecule is somehow connected with everything else infected with the Protomolecule. When they managed to get rid of the infected monster on Holden’s ship, Venus reacted. They don’t know how they’re connected, or what it all means, but I bet it’s why Miller wants to chat with Holden.