Leviathan Wakes

Woah...wow...huh

Mind is still reeling from the last few chapters. That was a twist I should have expected.

Great character development. Probably some of the best I've read. Dialogue is amazing, too much cussing, but some great sentences, comebacks, putdowns and one liners!

"Hey, can we have a ride too?" Holden said mockingly with a Ceres accent. "Uh, no, we need you guys to stay here and, uh, keep an eye on things, which we promise will be totally safe and absolutely not involve you turning into vomit zombies."

Highly recommended ( )

Leviathan Wakes had been languishing on my TBR pile for at least a year before I picked it up for a read along. And I’m glad I finally got to it. While it has room to be improved, Leviathan Wakes is a darn good, rollicking science fiction story.

Several hundred years in the future, humanity has expanded to fill the solar system. Yet tensions grow between Earth, Mars, and the Belters — people who’ve spent their entire life never setting foot on a planet. James Holden’s, the XO of an ice mining ship, responds to a distress call from a spaceship named the Scopuli. They inadvertently stumble onto the biggest secret of the solar system and add fuel to the fire for the brewing war. Detective Miller is hired to find a missing girl, and his path also takes him to the Scopuli, the ship whose secrets may determine the fate of the galaxy.

It took a while for Leviathan Wakes to hook me, but when it did, I wished I didn’t have to put the book down! The plotting is wonderful, full of twists and turns I never saw coming. There’s some truly great ideas that make for a compelling story.

I also loved the world building. Leviathan Wakes is one of the few stories I’ve read that looks at the intermediary ground between humanity leaving Earth and humanity leaving our star. The result is a sci-fi universe that’s recognizably derived from ours but with enough differences that it does feel like it’s set in the future. There’s a certain grittiness to the setting that makes me want to call it “hard science fiction,” but I don’t know enough about the accuracy of the science in the book to debate the point.

However, I wasn’t as fond of the characters. Neither Miller or Holden ever really worked for me. They just felt like walking tropes! Miller’s the noir detective whose got a drinking problem, an ex-wife, and some questionable moral behavior. Holden’s the golden boy space captain, determined to do the right thing and save the galaxy. The characters were most effective when the differences in their archetypes where played off, but they never felt like fully developed characters. I also wish the cast weren’t so male dominated and that Naomi wasn’t the only significant female character. I’m positive this book fails the Bechdel test.

Ultimately, what Leviathan Wakes lacked in characterization, it made up for in plot and world building. I look forward to reading the sequel, especially since I’ve been assured that it improves in regards to female characters.

Originally posted on The Illustrated Page. ( )

Fun read. Space stations with zombies. Detective Novel. ( )

Space opera. Not on the largest scales, it's hard sf so no ftl, which traps us in our own solar system. Humanity has left earth and established colonies on Mars and in the Belts. Initially mining communities, but they, grow, as humans have a habit of doing. And now it's a mix of Belters and Martians, and the vast populace of Earth who try not to interfere too much provided their goods keep arriving (it does have a feel of CJC's early Company Wars). But this author has gone in a different direction - a company mining the moons out by Saturn has come across an alien artifcat. We follow a couple of people as the ramifications spread through the system.

There's a belter cop, security of the station essentials - air, water and integrity before all else. Proper noir stuff divorced, drinks too much etc. but knows what's important, how to get the job done, and when to turn a blind eye. The other's XO on a water hauler, unglamorous, but it' still flying. He's got a good crew, of the sort of misfit's you'd expect, and a sense of honour and justice that landed him there in the first place. His crew somewhat strangely like him for this. When their hauler is the nearest to a distress beacon that's gone off, it's his job to investigate, and from then on it's much more hectic than he ever thought life could get - but it doesn't shake his sense of devotion to letting other people make their own decisions.

I liked the alien concept, it made sense in a way that it's difficult for hard sf authors to do. I think the corporate greed angle was massively over done, and similar results could have been achieved on a more reasonable scale. but it's well written, well plotted and going to be an interesting series - providing the hyperbole can be kept in check. ( )

Science fiction with a mystery set in space. EFfortlessly diverse as it is entertaining. Loved this. ( )