Life gets tough for a person when he gets caged like a bird. It is not cruel atmosphere that makes a person week rather the boredom kills a man faster than anything else in the world. Most of us play games, then there are some who watch movies and there are also those who work hard for money or fame. All of these activities are there to soothe our mind which gets bored when it is left purposeless. James S.A. Corey talks about such a situation in this novel where the prisoners are kept in a cell from which they just cannot see the outer world.
No one from their families come to meet them because they are locked up in a prison which is located in space. Escaping or seeing the world is not possible for them anymore. Not all of them present in the cell are professional criminals; there are some who used to be heroes of wars once. Now the prisoners have each other to spend time with and that’s how they have survived for so long. Telling each other the story of their life and adventures is the daily routine of the men who are in locked up state.
They have become so much pessimistic that they have never thought about freedom. Jefferson Mays shows us through his voice as a narrator that how much calm the prisoners have become, perhaps they are not psychologically normal anymore.
Later the author adds a hero in this bizarre world who brings energy in the story. James stories are never with energy, Babylon’s Ashes, Leviathan Wakes and other such books also get charged up in the later section. Struggles in the stories make the hero and the listeners feel the heat of the moment. At no stage, we get the feeling that the story is not worth to listen.