Tiamat's Wrath recap

Years into Laconian rule, Holden is a prisoner in the high consul's capital, Naomi runs the resistance alone from inside shipping containers, and Bobbie and Alex raid the empire from a captured destroyer. Winston Duarte, remaking himself with alien technology, sets out to make humanity strong enough to face whatever destroyed the builders of the ring gates, and conscripts the biologist Elvi Okoye to find out what that enemy is. Elvi's work leads her to the remains of the gate builders and to the conclusion that the enemy exists outside normal space and is provoked by the gates themselves. On Laconia, Duarte's isolated daughter Teresa befriends a stranger living in the woods, and slowly learns what her father has become and what his chief scientist intends to do with her. The underground's largest strike costs Bobbie her life. Then Duarte forces a confrontation with the entities and loses: his flagship is destroyed and his mind is shattered, leaving Admiral Trejo to rule in the name of a man who is no longer there. Teresa flees the planet with Amos Burton and Holden, and the attacks from beyond the gates keep getting worse.

Previously: the crew of the Rocinante spent decades at the center of humanity's transformation, from the alien protomolecule's destruction of the station Eros through the opening of the ring gates and the settlement of more than a thousand worlds. A rogue Martian admiral, Winston Duarte, took a fleet and a protomolecule sample through the gates to the world of Laconia, and thirty years later returned with warships built from alien technology that nothing human could fight. Laconia took Medina Station and the ring space, destroyed the combined fleets of Earth, Mars and the Transport Union, and made itself the single government of the species. Medina rose against its occupation; the Rocinante escaped, taking a Laconian destroyer with it, but Clarissa Mao died in the escape and Holden surrendered himself to buy it, and was taken to Laconia as Duarte's prisoner. Bobbie Draper took command of the ship. Naomi went underground. Camina Drummer publicly surrendered the Transport Union and quietly supports the resistance. Amos Burton was later sent to Laconia and has not been heard from since. One other thing changed: when Laconia used its heaviest weapon inside the ring space, ships began vanishing in transit and every mind in the ring space went briefly dark. Something on the far side of the gates has noticed humanity. This book opens several years into Laconian rule.

Laconia governs a quiet, orderly, unfree humanity. The biologist Elvi Okoye and her husband Fayez have been conscripted into the empire's science service and given a ship, the Falcon, with orders to investigate the civilization that built the ring gates and whatever killed it. Naomi Nagata runs the resistance from inside shipping containers shuttled between ships, never seen, never registered, communicating only in delayed messages. Bobbie Draper commands the captured Laconian destroyer with Alex Kamal flying it, hitting supply lines and gathering intelligence. On Laconia, the high consul's fourteen-year-old daughter Teresa is educated for a role she will inherit, surrounded by staff and security and no friends. Holden lives under guard in the capital as Duarte's captive guest. And Duarte himself, changed by the treatments his chief scientist Cortázar has given him, is thinking on a timescale nobody around him can follow.

Elvi's investigation turns concrete: the ships lost in transit through the gates are not accidents, the losses correlate with how much traffic and energy the network carries, and something outside ordinary space is responsible. Her research takes her toward systems where the gate builders left remains, including an enormous alien artifact that appears to hold what is left of them. Bobbie and Alex escalate the resistance's raids, and the empire begins allocating real resources to hunting them. Teresa, slipping her security detail on her walks, meets a man living rough in the woods outside the State Building who treats her as an ordinary person, and starts visiting him. Cortázar continues his work on the high consul, and takes an increasingly clinical interest in the high consul's daughter.

Elvi reaches the gate builders' remains and finds a record of a civilization that was destroyed rather than one that failed: something reached into it and ended it, and the ring gates were both its greatest work and the door its killers came through. Laconia now knows it is being hunted, and Duarte's response is to accelerate. Teresa learns more about what her father actually is than the court intends her to, and less about what is planned for her than she needs to. Naomi, still isolated, designs the underground's most ambitious operation to date, one that requires the resistance to spend nearly everything it has, and Bobbie accepts the risk of leading it.

The operation goes forward and it works, at a price. Bobbie Draper is killed leading it, covering her crew's escape, and Alex brings the survivors out without her. The resistance has hurt Laconia in a way that matters, and it will not be able to do it again soon. Naomi, who planned the strike from inside a container and had to hear the result days later, is left to absorb the cost alone. On Laconia, Duarte commits to a direct confrontation with the entities beyond the gates: he intends to demonstrate that humanity can be struck at and can strike back, and he has spent decades making himself into the instrument for it.

Elvi's team is ordered to support the confrontation and can see clearly that nobody understands what is being provoked. Teresa, now certain that her father is no longer a human being in any ordinary sense, discovers that Cortázar regards her as the best available experimental subject for understanding what was done to him, and that no one in the State Building will stop him. Her friend in the woods becomes her only ally. The empire's fleet moves into position, and the high consul prepares to reach through the gates himself.

Duarte's strike is answered. The empire's most powerful warship is destroyed outright, and the counterstroke reaches the high consul: his mind is torn apart, leaving him alive, present and effectively absent. Admiral Trejo hides his condition and governs in his name, because an empire founded on one man cannot admit that the man is gone. Cortázar is killed before he can take Teresa. Teresa escapes Laconia with the man she knew as Timothy, who is Amos Burton, returned from whatever was done to him on that world and no longer entirely human, and Holden gets out with them; the Rocinante recovers all three and Naomi finally leaves her containers. Bobbie is dead. Laconia still holds the gates and still cannot be beaten by human means, but it is now run by a deputy in a dead man's name, and the enemy beyond the gates has been provoked twice. Ships keep vanishing, and the intervals when every human mind goes dark are growing longer.

Duarte's attempt to strike at the entities beyond the gates ends in catastrophe. The empire's most powerful warship is annihilated, and the counterstroke reaches the high consul himself: whatever he had made of his own mind is torn apart, leaving him present but hollowed out, unable to govern or to speak for himself. Admiral Trejo conceals his condition and rules in his name, because an empire built entirely on one man cannot survive the news. Cortázar, who had decided that Teresa's body was the most promising remaining source of data on her father's transformation, is killed before he can act on it. Teresa, having learned what her father is and what the state around him intends for her, escapes Laconia with the man she knew as Timothy, who is in fact Amos Burton, changed by whatever was done to him on that world and no longer entirely human. Holden gets out with them, and the Rocinante recovers all three. Bobbie Draper is dead, killed leading the underground's most dangerous operation. Naomi, out of her containers at last, is back with her crew. Laconia still rules and its fleet is still unbeatable by human means, but it is a state run by a deputy in the name of a ruined man, and the thing on the other side of the gates has now been provoked twice: ships continue to vanish in transit, and the moments when every human mind goes dark are getting longer.