r/TheCaptivesWar

fetus 55? It seems like it's setting up something.

Is the Deathless Enemy a species or an idea? It seems like if you restarted humanity a thousand times, every time we don't wipe ourselves out, we end up with AI and nanobots.

The Carryx aren't just anti AI, they are anti technology in general. They don't have guns with bullets, they have nodes with bees. They don't have computers, they have half minds.

They've had to come across aliens with nanobots helping augment their bodies dozens, if not hundreds of times. Is there a single sentient mechanical society that makes livesuits, or are livesuits an emergent thing in the universe that the Carryx are fighting, over and over?

This year my newfound hobby is audio books. I’ve breezed through 30 already. Anything written by James S.A Corey is at the top of my list. I love the way they build the world, dive deep into characters and thoughts, etc.

Here’s what I’ve completed (or didn’t) so far with my likes and dislikes

The Expanse:
- great world building, mystery, character development (Amos my favorite), epic, romance is mature but not graphic. etc 15/10

The Captives War:
- same likes as the expanse, definitely loved the shock factor at the end of livesuit, the wittiness of that one slug like alien calling the characters bones with meat on them, 15/10

Murderbot:
-funny, ART is hilarious, I love the inner dialogue, world building not as big but still fresh and fun

Dune:
-loved the first 4 or 5 books, towards the end though I quit. It lost its allure. I loved the dynamic, political factions, new ideas (mentats, the voice, the Bene Gesserit, etc)

Now what I couldn’t get into

The Children of Time:
-too broad for me, lacking the character development I’m really into. Interesting ideas but really would have preferred more depth, it felt like whiplash most the time

Red Rising:
- too young adult for me, immature type of relationships, interesting concepts but the tone wasn’t fit

Can anyone please please recommend some good books based off this?? I’m open to exploring less space opera / sci fi and more fantasy too if it’s worth it. I just prefer the world to be pretty different from our own. No graphic sexual parts, but still mature enough to not feel like it was written for a teenager

Shower thought from the other day. This may be kind of a shallow analysis but I thought I'd throw it out there.

The Carryx rule more like a traditional colonial empire - subject people's are expected to conform themselves to the expectations and needs of the dominant species. Their culture is only tolerated to exist if it brings value to the colonizer.

The deathless enemy are a bit more like a neo-liberal regime where participation in the war is technically voluntary, but includes a bargain where the participants are gradually hollowed out and reshaped to serve the ends of the war effort. Like in Capitalism we are technically free to choose to opt out and be poor, but in practice most of us have to choose to conform our lives to the needs of the market and gradually give up little pieces of ourselves.

Carryx rule is obvious and brutal, but it includes an honest choice - serve us or die. The Deathless/Livesuit side implies that you will get to live and continue to be you, but gradually turns you into a mockery of that life.

What do you think?

I inhaled the second book during the last few days and really enjoyed it and am looking forward to seeing how the series will conclude.

While reading the book I had some thoughts on a few things that I expected to go in a different direction and I would love to hear some other peoples views on them

##The death of Tonner Freis: He definitly was an arrogant prick, don't get me wrong but he also was my second favourite human POV after Dafyd. I liked having a view into the human moiety from a "normal person" and getting an outside look into Dafyd. The mix of his personal dislike for him and simultanious recognition of the toll that the job as a leader and the necessasry actions that come with that role takes on him made him a much more interisting character than Bran or most of the other new humans on the Carryx planet who all seemed a bit naive to me (with the exception of Tomos)

The way the swarm developed:

I was really surprised how quickly the spy ditched Jellit and turned into some new person of its own creation. A fairly big plot point of the last book was the spy sacrificing Else and switching over to Jellit so that Jessyn would not lose her brother but then they never really interact again. I am sure the dissapearance of Jellit will be adressed in the third book but it does make the sacrifice of "Else" a bit pointless I think it would have also been an interesting story to see how the relationship between the Swarm/Else and Dafyd deals with the Swarm inhibiting the body of Jellit but that also fizzeled out really quickly and seems to be completly over now