Leviathan Wakes

The beginning of a long, epic sci-fi—The Expanse.

The story is set in the close future solar system where capitalism is still the main driver and the amount of explored space is similar to Red Rising but the society is much closer to modern. So there are some research stations on some of Saturn’s moons and that’s the farthest we get in this book.

There’s a very short intro—compared to most other books where it’s at least a third—after which we get one gripping event after another with very short breaks between them. And also there’s a lot of mystery about what’s happening for like half or two thirds of the story which gets even more mysterious and dangerous. But then it all slows down around 70% mark until almost the very end which feels a little strange and like the authors try to build tension through a lot of text instead of a lot of exciting stuff.

Also the story is told from two points of view: a detective on the asteroid belt and a captain of some transport ship who, at the moment, works for the belt. I think they’re pretty good in showing the story from different perspectives and telling a lot of interesting details about how the world works and how people live on the asteroids. And I mostly prefer the detective here as he shows some real dangers and unpleasant details of that future, while the captain has some good points and decisions in the beginning, he later becomes too naive or strict with his rules (at least he starts to realize this in the end).

So the epically open ending promises some big events and even bigger threats. Can’t wait for the second book.

My review: https://mattstein.com/books/leviathan-wakes

Pros: brilliant world-building, great characters, lots of plot twists, excellent pacing

Cons:

James Holden is the XO of the ice harvester Canterbury. When the Cant encounters a distress beacon, they're the closest ship and must send aid. Holden's sent with a five man crew to check out the damaged ship. But something's not right and things for Holden start to go very, very wrong.

Miller is a cop on the asteroid Ceres. He's given an off the book ‘kidnap' job to send the daughter of a rich magnate home. He becomes more invested in the case than he should, and uncovers more than he was supposed to.

First off, if - like me - you've seen the show and were wondering if it's worth reading the book, the answer is yes. It covers the entire first season (from the POVs mentioned above) and a fair bit of the second, but there's enough new information, nuance, and divergence to keep you entertained. Most importantly, the pacing of the book is brilliant. While not all of the reveals will be a surprise, the novel propels you forward into the next crisis.

The novel is told from two points of view. The opposing chapters help ramp up the tension as you're often given hints that something has happened but switch POV to find out what that thing is.

The world building is brilliant. I love that belters shrug with their hands, because you can't see shoulders move in a space suit. I loved the (unfortunate) realism of racism between belters, Earthers, and Martians. There's a lot of nuance with language - how it's changed and melded by having people from all over Earth living in close quarters outside of Earth. The fact that there's low-brow belter slang and Martian accents was great. The physics were real, aside from the drive that makes interplanetary travel possible (which, while not currently real, is plausible).

I found that some of the motivations and actions made more sense in the book than they did on the TV show (as much as I LOVE the show). It was nice seeing more nuance with character development and gaining a better grasp of who everyone is.

The characters were great. Holden can be a little to ‘righteous' at times, but he firmly believes he's in the right. I did like some of his interactions with Miller, where he's forced to realize that his POV isn't necessarily the right one and that the world isn't as black and white as he seems to believe. The Rosi's crew works together well. Naomi's brilliant! I love her smarts, her intuition, her observations, her skill. I was impressed with how concentrating profanity to Amos's character worked in terms of releasing tension and creating some comic relief. I'm not usually a fan of swearing but this was well handled.

I found the romance sub-plot slow moving enough to feel realistic. It was great when the couple finally got together.

I had high expectations going into this book and it exceeded them. If you like hard science fiction and space mysteries, this is for you.

Happy to be back to The Expanse and the Rocinante crew! After binging the series I knew I couldn't wait until season 5 drops because I adore these characters so so much. Leviathan Wakes is a great start to this outstanding series.

J'ai eu le temps de regarder les trois premières saisons de The Expanse avant de commencer à lire les romans dont la série a été adaptée. Pourtant, les premiers tomes m'attendent sur mon Kindle depuis que j'ai terminé la première saison. J'ai enfin pris la peine de me plonger dans le premier volume, intitulé Leviathan Wakes.

Il faut d'abord préciser que James S.A. Corey est un pseudonyme : derrière ce nom de plume se cachent en réalité deux auteurs, Daniel Abraham et Ty Franck, qui ont entrepris ensemble l'écriture de cette grande saga de science-fiction baptisée The Expanse.

L'action se déroule dans un futur plus ou moins proche : suffisamment proche pour que l'environnement nous soit familier, avec la Terre, Mars, la ceinture d'astéroïdes, bref notre système solaire ; mais suffisamment éloigné dans le futur pour que la science-fiction soit bien présente : l'humanité a colonisé le système solaire et est désormais plus ou moins divisée en trois blocs à la fois concurrents et interdépendants : la Terre, a priori dotée d'un gouvernement mondial sous l'égide des Nations Unies ; Mars, une république qui dispose d'une technologie plus avancée que celle de sa planète soeur-mère ; et la ceinture d'astéroïdes, sorte de colonies dépendants de la Terre mais dont les habitants méprisés par les Terriens aimeraient prendre leur indépendance.

C'est dans ce contexte que nous faisons la connaissance de deux personnages très différents :

- James Holden est l'officier en second et l'un des rares rescapés de l'équipage de son vaisseau-mineur de glace abattu par une mystérieuse navette furtive après avoir tenté de porter secours au Scopuli, un autre navire en détresse

- Joe Miller est un détective sur l'astéroïde Ceres, dont l'une des affaires dont il est en charge est de retrouver Julie Mao, fille d'un puissant homme d'affaires terrien, qui s'est engagée pour l'indépendance de la ceinture d'astéroïdes

Les chapitres alternent les points de vue des deux personnages et si les deux récits sont d'abord indépendants, on se rend vite compte qu'ils sont liés et que Holden et Miller sont destinés à se rencontre à un moment ou un autre. Cela finit évidemment par arriver, et c'est là que le livre devient passionnant, d'autant que les auteurs ont la bonne idée de ne pas attendre les derniers chapitres pour en arriver là.

Le récit lui-même est intelligent, captivant à suivre, avec des enjeux forts. On ne s'ennuie pas du début à la fin, grâce à des chapitres courts et un sens du rythme évident. On peut parfois se demander si cela n'a pas été écrit dans l'optique d'être adapté sur le petit ou le grand écran, mais c'est suffisamment efficace pour que je ne n'en fasse pas un défaut impardonnable.

Ce premier volume est en tout cas riche de promesses pour la suite de la saga, je ne vais clairement pas tarder à me lancer dans le deuxième tome.

A Great First in a Series that You'll want to Finish

You grow to love the crew and become invested in all the characters. The minimum you need to know abot the world while leaving SO much more to build on.

NEW REVIEW
I was right, the series feels like a carbon copy of the book. Still a good read if enough time has passed since you last saw the first season.

OLD REVIEW

I saw the series, doesn't feel I need to read this

Not the best book ever but it made me feel like I was in space having fun so it's exactly what I was looking for

Just read the whole series (and all the short stories.) Really great near-term, solar-system-only Space Opera. Weird alienness and familiar human politics and great characters that I actually cared about. I want the series to go on and on.

Wow

This book had just about everything that I enjoy! I loved the space opera feel, the elements of horror, and a detective on a case.

Looking forward to the rest of this series!

This put me through an emotional wringer! At first it was a bit of a slog, and the detective story didn't really draw me in. But then the overall mystery and the political machinations really got me interested, and I couldn't wait to find out what happened next. Then it seemed like every time we were closing in on a climax and resolution, there would be a new, more difficult threat or challenge. The repeatedly rising tension eventually drove me to look up the plot summary of the last 15% or so, because my nerves just couldn't handle any more “What NOW?!” revelations.

Despite my anxiety, the ending brings together the emotional threads of the story in a pretty damn satisfying way. And the plot elements are resolved, though I found it a little confusing. Or unsatisfying, or something. Without giving spoilers, a big issue that drove the plot in a very urgent way suddenly gets treated as relatively trivial, and it didn't sit right with me, but I guess I can see the argument in the other direction (that it truly became relatively trivial given what develops).

Anyway, this was a really good story with some wonderful characters. Still, I'm not sure I'll read the next one, since the pacing wasn't a terrific match with my tastes. In addition to the ratcheting spiral of tension, there was a lot that could have been trimmed and suited me fine - less navel-gazing by the characters and more economical action scenes would have been nice. But I can also see why people love this book, and might welcome the slower pace and investment in detail. The characters you get to know are beautifully drawn and feel like friends by the end.

Great stuff. Space opera on a grand but gritty scale.

3.5 stars! I love the writing, in fact, I love the prose more than I love the plot, which I thought was rather conventional and pedestrian. Still, the writers really know how to make you BE in their universe, and they really deserve top marks for that.

I had no idea what I would read back when I originally picked this book up. This book quickly became a favorite of mine as everything about it was fantastic. Political intrigue, mysteries, a realistic look at living in space, excellent written combat and characters that were real and different from one another. I'd argue that reading this was more of an experience than anything else.

If you're a fan of sci-fi, or really well written books pick this one up.

I had a blast reading it.

Not sure which of the two protagonists I liked more, but I know that it was a well-written space novel that had a lot of smart science based narrative that I can get behind.

Great plot. I found myself making time to listen because I wanted to know what happens next. I wish there were more POV characters though. I was looking forward to Avasarala (who I remember from the first season of the TV show), but she hasn't made an appearance yet! The juxtaposition between Holden and Miller was a bit too on the nose at times.

This is as hard as I go with sci-fi. I thought all of the future physics got explained without bogging down the story.

Heads up, the novel stops at 51% of the kindle edition. The rest is extras. That actually lessened some of the impact of the story's climax for me since I was under the mistaken impression that it was further setup for the rest of the novel.

Executive Summary: This book started off really strong, but fell off a little for me somewhere in the middle, but was still enjoyable from start to finish. It feels sort of like a cross between Deeps Space 9 and Firefly.

Audio book: This is the first book I've listened to read by Jefferson Mays. He does an alright job, but nothing special. He doesn't really do voices or accents that I remember. He speaks clearly and is easy to understand with decent inflection.

Full Review
I started this book thinking I might have found my first five star book of the year, but the story takes a turn in the middle that sort of dropped things down a level for me.

That doesn't mean I didn't continue to enjoy it, but it pushed the story in a direction that I didn't like as much as where it started.

This one has been on my list for awhile, and in fact I've had the ebook for over a year now. I ended up using the whispersync discount to get the audiobook for fairly cheap from audible because it just didn't seem like I was going to get to reading it anytime soon.

I'm glad I did. I really seem to enjoy space opera, or I guess I'm supposed to call this Solar Opera I think. Right Tamahome?

Anyways, I'm not much of a hard sci-fi person, despite having an engineering background. You won't get explanations as to how stuff works here.

What you will get is some cool technology that feels to me like it could only be a few decades or maybe a century off. You get some pretty good characters thrown into impossible situation with a sci-fi setting.

Deep Space Nine is probably my favorite sci-fi series of all time. You have politics and war. Long story arcs with cool characters, and man do I love the Defiant. And what self respecting sci-fi geek doesn't love Firefly?

I feel like you get a little of both here. The belters are living on the edge of space being exploited by the “Inners” from Earth and Mars. Then you have Holden and his crew working as sort of free lances on their “salvaged” bad ass ship.

The story moves along at a quick pace. You get just enough depth to the main characters to drive the story. I'm not as attached to any of them as I have been in other series, but I enjoy following them around.

My only real complaint was the form the “bad guys” take here. I sort of wish they had found a different way to pose a threat for the characters to face. It's too hard for me to explain without spoilers, so I'll just leave it at that.

Despite being the first book of a series, it does end in a pretty good place that would let someone walk away from it, but left me still wanting more. I immediately jumped into the sequel and am eager to see where things go from here.

An enjoyable, if shallow, action romp.

I desperately want to give this a 5* but there are too many minor issues in the book for me to give it more than a 4-4.5. very very good.

I've read these books before, but man, if there is a sci-fi series better than this I need to read it. I love everything about them.

Post cyber punk refererend naar de oude space opera meesters, zei Dirk De Bock, en meer dan dat heb ik niet nodig.

Knippe de poeze, zei mijn Kindle, en de eerste twee boeken stonden er.

En jawel: ik vond het helemaal in orde, dat eerste deel van de Expanse-reeks. Science Fiction zoals in de goede oude tijd: geen literatuur (‘t is noir en horror en space opera), absoluut geen harde SF (hoe werkt X? “it works... well” zegt de auteur in een interview achteraan), ook niet echt vreselijk vernieuwende dingen of zo (allemaal al gezien, zelfs), maar wel enorm wijs.

Twee personages: Holden, bijna pathologisch idealistisch, en Miller, een gedesillusioneerde politieagent (en, uiteindelijk, ex-politieagent) nemen elk om beurten een hoofdstuk voor hun rekening.

Holden's schip (een water-transporteur) komt een schip op drift tegen, ze gaan op onderzoek, en op ene paar man na wordt de hele bemanning opgeblazen. Door een schip dat lijkt van Mars te komen. En Holden maakt dat meteen kond aan het hele zonnestelsel – waarmee hij zo ongeveer meteen een oorlog doet beginnen.

De situatie is een geloofwaardig paar eeuw in de toekomst: de mensheid heeft Mars gekoloniseerd en is daar aan het terraformen, en verder zijn er honderden kleine en grote kolonies, op de grote manen en op asteroïden.

Het is ruwweg Aarde en/of Mars versus de anderen: mensen die geboren zijn waar er een open hemel is en echte zwaartekracht versus mensen die geboren zijn op stations met lage zwaartekracht.

Miller is een agent op Ceres. Hij krijgt een semi-officiële opdracht om een rijke dochter van mensen op Aarde te zoeken en terug te halen. Kidnappen, dus. Hoe meer hij te weten komt over het meisje, hoe meer hij er zich in verliest. En vastbijt. En dan blijkt hij uit te komen bij Jim Holden.

Avontuur! Schietpartijen en achtervolgingen! Aliens! Hoera!

Alternates between clever and silly. Lacks the awe and wonder I'm drawn to in sci-fi, and the world building stalls out pretty early on. But it mostly kept my attention.

The Expanse series is astonishingly good science fiction. Corey paints a future that depicts humanity having ventured out deep into our solar system, but it's a fractured future, where the inhabitants of Earth, Mars, and the Asteroid Belt (“Belters”) find themselves having less and less in common. Ships and stations are cramped, dark, unfriendly places, and these are where much of the book is set.

This story is written primarily from the perspective of Belters, who feel forgotten and abused by the inner planets. It's here that the hunt for missing heiress Juliette Andromeda Mao begins, initiating a series of events that bring together a Ceres detective and a small crew of ice miners. Characters are flawed, and rough edged, but they find a way to come together against an unlikely and terribly mysterious antagonist and display the best of their humanity.

I like the way Corey writes dialogue, and how he illustrates mood through body gestures. Technology is treated very nonchalantly, and feels not entirely unfamiliar. Drama is used sparingly, and punctuates the story at well timed moments. The story is complex, and layered, but I'm excited to continue it.

A fantastic space epic that truly lives up to a science fiction story. There are some great mysteries involving many great characters in a truly believable futuristic world! Would highly recommend for all sci-fi fans