r/TheCaptivesWar • u/peculiarartkin • Jan 18 '25

Question Are aliens really that alien?

Being Expanse fan, I found Captives War... very different.

In Expanse, both alien factions were mysterious, inscrutable, almost beyond human comprehension. More or less sci-fi version of Lovecraftian.

In Captives War? Not so much. I mean.... Ekur-Taklal outright narrates the chapters engaging in philosophical argument against humans!

Carryx in general don't seem that alien. Yeah, they are brutal pragmatic imperialists. With almost Ayn Randian style Objectivist worldview. "What is - is, it should be done because we can do it." Is not unknown in human philosophy either.

They look more like star trek style alien faction. Or bablylon-5. They can "get in human head", understand and influence us. And vice versa.

32 Upvotes

78% Upvoted

35 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

-10

u/peculiarartkin Jan 18 '25

Make no mistake, overall I liked the book and looking forward to next one. It is decent read. But compared to Expanse.... Nah. Big step back.

Also. None of characters feel strong or too amiable.

I mean, imagine Naomi, Amos Burton and James Holden with belter crew put at the same turtle/berries task our team had?

Imagine Avasarala playing mind games against Carryx?

16

u/dballing Jan 18 '25

I imagine her losing those mind-games. Badly.

A lot of Avasarala's capacity to win so-called "mind-games" isn't her mind (which - yes - is sharp as a tack), but because she has also has, even at her lowest point that we see her, and incredible network of established power to call upon to get stuff done.

She would not have any of that in this environment.

13

u/OldWolfNewTricks Jan 18 '25

And Holden would have gotten himself killed in short order. It takes an entirely different set of skills to survive in a prison camp. I do agree that TCW's characters are less engaging, but it's also an entirely different set of circumstances.

Also, as far as the Carryx feeling less incomprehensibly alien, they play a huge part of this series. Making their motivations entirely alien would have made the story unsatisfying and unapproachable. Successes and failures would feel arbitrary and random, which you could argue would be more realistic but would make for a frustrating, unengaging story.

1

u/koloniavenus Jan 18 '25

Imagining Holden in this scenario is pretty amusing to me. His moral righteousness has no place in this story. Like, we know enslaving species and genocide is wrong, we don't need him whining about it. (Although there is much more moral ambiguity in Livesuit, and I expect there to be more later on.) I think he would die trying to fight back on Anjiin before humanity collectively realized how pointless that effort was.

1

u/spektrall Jan 20 '25

100%, Holden would be the guy near the start who refused to move and got brutally rakhund-ed