Tiamat's Wrath (The Expanse Book 8)

A hundred people, more or less, waiting for a tube car on a moon above a planet that circled a sun that hadn’t born them, and jockeying to be the first ones through the door so that they could get a good seat. Maybe the most human thing possible.

IF LIFE TRANSCENDS DEATH, THEN I WILL SEEK FOR YOU THERE. IF NOT, THEN THERE TOO.

Chrisjen Avasarala was dead.

That’s the thing about autocracy. It looks pretty decent while it still looks pretty decent. Survivable, anyway. And it keeps looking like that right up until it doesn’t. That’s how you find out it’s too late.

Growing older was a falling away of everything that didn’t matter. And a deepening appreciation of all the parts that were important enough to stay.

There was no better way to seem trustworthy than to be liked by a dog, and there was no better way to convince a dog to like you than bribery.

In a fight like this, unless you’re willing to lose everything to win, you lose it all by losing.”

There are people I love. There are people who have loved me. I fought for what I believed, protected those I could, and stood my ground against the encroaching darkness. Good enough.

This was the problem with thousand-year Reichs. They came and they went like fireflies.