Prelude to War | Two, which is the third chapter in the prologue is the introduction to a very specific character, Commodore Forest. This character is written to be more of an anti-hero than your typical black and white hero or villain. The major over-arching theme throughout the book is that in war there often are no true "good guy or bad guys". Now the book is written to be a political commentary on United States politics during the Cold War, and one of the major themes surrounding Commodore Forest is that he is extremely nihilistic. He grew up on a backwater colony and was essentially trained to hate their enemy, the Alliance.
The Expanse Sovereign Union is supposed to be a communistic/fascist authoritarian government. It's never exactly stated what it is, but this is supposed to be the USSR in this future. They are training their young through propaganda to essentially be cogs in the war machine. You can think of it how the Nazi's indoctrinated their children via the Hitler Youth which gave them this idealistic world, yet they were completely unaware of what was happening behind the scenes.
However, after breaking free of this is becomes quickly apparent that the world that Forest had been trained to hate is just as alien as you would expect. It has a different culture and society than what he grew up in. It's extremely regimented. However, the biggest thing that annoys him and almost infuriates him is the fact that people are either oblivious or ignorant to the war.
This is supposed to be a look at how people in the United States often ignore issues going on in the world. Here in the US where I am from, we tend to put an emphasis on news only happening in the United States. People have described it like living in a personal Disney land. Probably the best example of this was when Jamie Lee Curtis was posting images of people who were killed or injured during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine. People were angry and found the images disgusting saying, "why are you posting this" and someone said "It's because we need to see what is happening on the outside. We hear about it, but we don't really know it's true until we see it. We can't be living in our own little bubble, because it really makes us oblivious to what others are going through".
I think it's part of why in the United States we have their extreme xenophobia and more so isolationist mindset that is happening again. It's an extreme tribalistic issue, and really ignores why people are fleeing her in the first place.
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Last of the Brave: Divided We Fall (Authors Commentary)
General FictionIt's the same book, but with commentary about the background and certain scenes. Think of it like a director's commentary, but for a book. It also will clear up some of the confusion surrounding the book, which does later get brought up. This also w...
