Released in 2014, Cibola Burn is the fourth of nine novels in The Expanse series.
Cibola Burn contains examples of:
- Ascended Extra: Havelock and Basia. Havelock appears, briefly, as Miller's partner in Leviathan Wakes, and Basia appears for a single scene in Caliban's War. Here, however, they are both POV characters who play a major role in the story.
- Asshole Victim:
- Coop masterminded the bombing of the landing pad, which led to the shuttle crashing and killing most of the RCE science team. Unlike the other Belters, he not even slightly remorseful, so it's hard to feel particularly sad when he tries to intimidate Murtry and gets his brains blown out.
- Chief Engineer Koenen repeatedly forces the Edward Israel's engineering team to fight in zero-G, despite their inexperience, and attacks the Rocinante when Naomi, Alex, and Basia try to save the deorbiting Barbapiccola. Alex eventually gets fed up and snipes him, and not even his engineering team is upset.
- Death World: Ilus was already difficult enough, with the settlers having to import soil to grow crops in. After the reactor explodes and inundates the planet's surface with a super-tsunami, slugs that secrete an immediately lethal neurotoxin combined with microorganisms that colonize the vitreous humors of the eye and blind the colonists make matters even worse. And that's before the super-advanced alien defense technology shuts down the fusion plants of the ships in orbit, making escape or resupply impossible. And then the alien technology starts to break down..."Apocalyptic explosions, dead reactors, terrorists, mass murder, death-slugs, and now a blindness plague. This is a terrible planet. We should not have come here.”
- Diverting Power: Discussed when the Rocinante is forced to operate on battery-power. The ship's keel-mounted railgun has its own very substantial set of batteries and capacitors which were already topped off, and they have to consider tapping into those to keep other systems powered. However, the power is only designed to flow into the railgun system, not back out of it into the rest of the ship (for cogent safety reasons) and they do not have the time to effect a workaround, so they abandon that plan in favor of a different solution using the railgun.
- Dying Town: Its suggested by the end of the book that Mars, and possibly various habitats in the Belt will become examples in the near future - with all the habitable worlds outside the Ring network, all with staggeringly abundant resources, they may just become redundant and irrelevant.
- Exact Time to Failure: Subverted The Rocinante's computer calculates exactly how long it will take for the Barbapiccola to hit the atmosphere and disintegrate...only for it to recalculate halfway through and shave off three days. Basia does not find this reassuring.
- Eye Scream: An alien organism starts taking up residence in the Ilus settlers' eyes, turning their vitreous humor green and blinding them.
- From Bad to Worse: Things start off badly, with Holden struggling to investigate the bombing while keeping the colonists and RCE security from killing each other. They get worse when the planet starts waking up and the surface is devastated by a massive explosion. Then the moons shut down fusion power, stranding everyone on the planet. Then come the death slugs, and the blindness plague...
- Gaussian Girl: As part of the aftereffect of the Eye Scream organism that blinded her, Elvi notes that the world is still blurry, and thinks that it makes Fayez look like a movie star.
- Genius Loci: After shutting down all of Ilus' technology, The investigator's task is complete, and Miller and all the people assimilated by the protomolecule on Eros become the planet's consciousness.
- Gravity Sucks: Downplayed to realistic levels. The ships orbiting Ilus / New Tera are in a very low orbit for practical reasons, low enough that there is a very minor amount of drag from the near-vacuum vestiges of the upper atmosphere. But this is normally a non-issue, as any ship with a functioning Epstein drive just needs to do some minor correction burns every few orbits to make sure it stays on station. Unfortunately when the protomolocule-civilization planetary security system simply causes nuclear fusion to cease to function around the planet, falling toward the planet becomes a mathematical certainty.
- Innocent Awkward Question: Avasarala hears of a development involving the protomolecule and shouts, "Son of a whore!", apparently forgetting there's a five-year-old present. The kid turns to her dad and asks, "Daddy, what's a whore?" He tells her it's a type of frost.
- Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Holden finally confronts Elvi about her crush on him...after she's slept with Fayez and finally gotten it out of her system. The moment is so awkward they both agree it's best not to talk about it.
- Madness Mantra: 113 times per second it reaches out it reaches out it reaches out it reaches out it reaches out it reaches out...
- MacGyvering: Basia and Naomi do this several times, in their efforts to save the Belter freighter Basia's daughter is on.
- They design and build a tethering cable to drag the ship into a more stable orbit.
- They design an improvised Escape Pod by combining two emergency airlocks to rescue the crew when the ship starts to enter the atmosphere.
- Mercy Kill: At the end of the book, the recreated Miller incorporates all the consciousnesses trapped by the protomolecule before diving into the dead zone, which finally allows them to die.
- Mood Whiplash: For most of the book, the Investigator interludes are pure
Nightmare Fuel, with the minds of those "eaten" by the protomolecule subjected to a horrifying And I Must Scream scenario. Then the protomolecule makes an (accidental) pun, and we get a hilarious moment of the mind of an old woman rolling her metaphorical eyes at it... - Mundane Utility: The Rocinante's railgun gets repurposed as an ersatz thruster, to stabilize their orbit.
- Naming Your Colony World: The refugees from Ganymede name it "Ilus" while the RCE charter names it "New Terra." Neither party is particularly fond of the other party's name choice.
- Negative Space Wedgie: The "Dead Zone", described by Elvi as "the eye of an angry god." To humans, it appears as a small dark area in space with seemingly infinite depth, surrounded by a halo of 'light' that illuminates nothing. Protomolecule constructs, such as Miller's robot body, can't even perceive it, and can only deduce its existence by the effect it has on them. It is immediately fatal to the protomolecule, but humans only suffer altered consciousness when they touch it. Miller exploits this to shut down Ilus' defense systems and free the people trapped by the protomolecule.
- No Biochemical Barriers: Averted, the biosphere on Ilus / New Tera might superficially resemble some Earth analogues but their protein structures are completely different. The colonists there cannot eat any of the local flora or fauna, and likewise some of the local biting insects promptly drop dead when they try to take a tiny nip out of humans. Of course while they may be biologically incomparable both still operate on the same laws of chemistry and thus humans might be subject to infection by, say, algae-analogues that thrive in warm saline solutions, such as are found in human eyeballs.
- Phony Veteran: In the prologue, a homeless Martian is panhandling on the tram, asking if someone can spare change for a veteran of Ganymede. Unfortunately for him, the one he asks is Bobbie Draper, who served on (and lost comrades on) Ganymede:Bobbie: "Find. Another. Story."
- Punch-Clock Villain: Wei is a perfectly nice person. Too bad she works for Murtry, and believes in the importance of doing her job...
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Bobbie's first scene in the book involves her scaring off a beggar trying to pass himself off as veteran of Ganymede, which as a Ganymede survivor herself, she probably took way more offence to than she implies. The last three words she says to him before he scurries away:"Find. Another. Story."
- Ragnarök Proofing: Both played straight and averted. Straight in that Ilus still has a mostly working orbital defense network, underground transport system and structurally sound above-ground skyscraper ruins after two billion years, averted in that most of the tech works barely if at all, and some of it fails spectacularly."What is that?""One of the moons.""What's it doing?""Melting."
- Rapid FTL Proliferation: Avasarala sends Holden to New Terra in hopes that he'll stave this off. Instead, he proves that colonization of planets on the other side of the Rings is viable and everyone starts rushing through them. Depopulating Mars.
- Space Western / Settling the Frontier: The overall theme of the book. The central location is a small shanty town of cobbled-together buildings, and the main (human) villain is a thug with a badge who thinks of himself as a frontier sheriff and acts accordingly.
- Springtime for Hitler: Avasarala and Fred Johnson's reason for sending Holden as the ambassador in the New Terra conflict was for him to be the Spanner in the Works they knew him to be; i.e, to show what a mess the whole space colonizing business to be. Instead, the colonization efforts prove successful, and now everyone's flocking to the wormholes and seeking their fortunes on other Earth-like planets; this in turn will lead to the collapse of Mars and the terraforming project they heavily invested in. And the one valuable resource that the Mars government has that they'll be able to sell to recoup their losses is their massive stockpile of nuclear weapons.
- Starfish Robots: The tunneling robots left behind by the Protomolecule civilization have a variety of arms mounted to a central platform, all of which can be reconfigured quickly to perform whatever specific task needs to be done.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Later in the story, Alex shoots Chief Engineer Koenen with a ship-to-ship railgun. The kinetic energy of the slug vaporizes him instantly.
- Wham Line:Elvi: In about four days everyone in the colony is going to be blind.
- Writers Cannot Do Math:
- A 2kg slug shot out of the railgun at 5000 m/s will impart a net recoil on the firing ship of 10,000/[weight of ship in kg]. Which is to say, essentially nothing.
- Zerg Rush: When Miller links himself to every system on the planet, the protomolecule immediately realizes that he's about to plunge into the dead zone, and sends every functioning robot on the planet to destroy him.
