Leviathan Wakes

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.