Leviathan Wakes (Expanse, #1)

by James S. A. Corey

[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.