Leviathan Wakes: Book 1 of the Expanse (now a Prime Original series) (Expanse, #1)

by James S. A. Corey

This special 10th anniversary edition celebrates the revolutionary first book of the New York Times bestselling and Hugo-award winning Expanse series - a modern masterwork of science fiction with over 4 million copies sold worldwide.

NOW AN AMAZON PRIME TV SERIES

'Interplanetary adventure the way it ought to be' George R. R. Martin

Humanity has colonised the solar system - Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond - but the stars are still out of our reach.

Jim Holden is an officer on an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew discover a derelict ship called the Scopuli, they suddenly find themselves in possession of a deadly secret. A secret that someone is willing to kill for, and on an unimaginable scale. War is coming to the system, unless Jim can find out who abandoned the ship and why.

Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money - and money talks. When the trail leads him to the Scopuli and Holden, they both realise this girl may hold the key to everything.

Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries and secret corporations, and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe.

The Expanse is the biggest science fiction series of the last decade and is now a major TV series.

Praise for the Expanse:

'The science fictional equivalent of A Song of Ice and Fire' NPR Books

'As close as you'll get to a Hollywood blockbuster in book form' io9.com

'Great characters, excellent dialogue, memorable fights' wired.com

'High adventure equalling the best space opera has to offer, cutting-edge technology and a group of unforgettable characters . . . Perhaps one of the best tales the genre has yet to produce' Library Journal

• ISBN10: 0356517160
• ISBN13: 9780356517162
• Publish Date: 23 September 2021 (first published 1 January 2011)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 21 June 2022
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Orbit
• Edition: 10th Anniversary Ed. - Anderida Exclusive
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 576
• Language: English
• Special: Anniversary Edition Numbered Signed

Reviews

[Metaphorosis Reviews]

I was substantially disappointed by this book, especially after [a:Daniel Abraham|134|Daniel Abraham|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1207149629p2/134.jpg]'s excellent [b:An Autumn War|2443516|An Autumn War (Long Price Quartet, #3)|Daniel Abraham|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1312047269s/2443516.jpg|2450710]. I came to this book via Abraham, and in fact bought it more for the 'free' copy of his solo book ([b:The Dragon's Path|8752885|The Dragon's Path (The Dagger and the Coin, #1)|Daniel Abraham|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1292362307s/8752885.jpg|13626110]) than for Leviathan Wakes. (Good decision - the Abraham book is better).

The opening was solid, and this was certainly a competently written book, but to my mind, it lacked a lot of heart. I never really got interested in most of the characters. Two key characters are Holden, a ship captain, and Miller, an ex-detective. Holden and his crew work reasonably well as characters, though they never drew a sustained interest. Miller, on the other hand, I found weak - he develops an obsession that I thought was pretty thinly supported, and yet is central to the plot.

The environment and politics were interesting and credible, and I'd have been happy to see more of them. And the book does end up with a good mystery, but it's nothing we haven't seen before.

Technically, there are some flaws. The authors don't claim it to be hard SF, but even soft SF needs to get current science right. There are two definitions of 'anaerobic' offered here, and they're both wrong. (1. bacteria that aren't airborne; 2. bacteria that die in high oxygen). Even allowing for the first as "character ignorance" (rather than "author ignorance"), it's hard to see how this got into the finished book.

All in all, a disappointing read. Adequate, and certainly not bad, but certainly not as good as I'd hoped for. I'm mildly interested in what happens next, but don't feel a burning need to buy the rest of the series.

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

Humanity has colonised the solar system; the Moon, Mars and even the Asteroid Belt. With the colonisation tensions is on the rise, will conflict erupt between Earth’s government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries and the corporations? Leviathan Wakes tells the story of two very different and very explosive characters; Holden the XO of an ice mining vessel that makes runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. And Detective Miller who is looking for a girl; one girl in a galaxy of billions. Leviathan Wakes is an explosive Science Fiction novel that weaves two different styles into one fast paced novel.

Both Holden and Miller are very dominating characters; the sort of characters that will take a moral stand against anything that don’t believe in. But both characters have a completely different sense of what is right and end up being polar opposites. They tend to end up being their own worst enemies making choices that enviably being destructive towards themselves. I never really ended up liking Holden or Miller; with Holden’s storyline the writers tended to go for a real firefly style plot and I never felt like it ever worked. Holden is no Malcolm Reynolds and overall he had nothing to him that I ended up liking. I felt like he lacked the charisma and wit to make his story line stand out. Then Detective Miller was the storyline I was most looking forward to, the hardboiled detective that will stop at nothing to solve his case. I didn’t mind that Miller was the joke of the police force, I thought that was a nice twist but I never felt like he was hardboiled enough; he was also missing the charisma and wit needed for this character and in the end he was just unmemorable.

I found it interesting to know that James S. A. Corey is actually two people; Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck and both took on the role of writing one characters plot and then the interweaved the two storylines to make Leviathan Wakes. I did end up liking the fact that Holden and Miller’s stories felt and read differently and the way they ending up complimenting each other worked really well. The end process is a thrilling novel with some great elements to keep the plot moving forward.

In the end I felt like the characters of this book needed to be fleshed out a bit more, to me they just weren’t three dimensional enough and I felt like I could predict their next moves without even trying. There was nothing in the book that did end up surprising me, except the one love element, which just ending up feeling like sloppy writing. It’s an interesting start for this series and I still think I want to read the next book in The Expanse Trilogy but maybe that was mainly caused by the open ended end to this novel.