Humanity has colonized the solar system—Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond—but the stars are still out of our reach.
Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, the Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for—and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left 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 rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything.
Holden and Miller …
Humanity has colonized the solar system—Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond—but the stars are still out of our reach.
Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, the Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for—and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left 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 rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything.
Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive 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.
For me, this was a frontier western story in space, and I was not sure why I should be interested. It made me question the whole premise of 'humanity conquers the solar system/universe' science fiction. Why would humanity settle Mars and the Asteroid Belt to begin with, and why would society change so little in that process?
If you like mystery, violence, horror and want it set in space, this might just be your thing; it did not appeal to me.
I encountered the TV show, The Expanse, before discovering it was originally a book series. I'm glad I experienced the two formats in that order. Reading the book was in some way a replay of the TV show, since I pictured and heard the actors as I read.
If you haven't come across either, Leviathan Wakes is the first in a monumental space opera series, set centuries in the future, where humans have colonized most of the solar system, where Mars is a space-faring power that exists in an uneasy and unstable tension with an overcrowded Earth, and where the "Belters" (the inhabitants of the asteroid belt and the moons of the outer planets, are resentful at how they're taken for granted and exploited by the two planets.
A powerful corporation's attempts to weaponize an alien organism destabilizes an already unstable solar system.
This massive canvas is the backdrop for …
I encountered the TV show, The Expanse, before discovering it was originally a book series. I'm glad I experienced the two formats in that order. Reading the book was in some way a replay of the TV show, since I pictured and heard the actors as I read.
If you haven't come across either, Leviathan Wakes is the first in a monumental space opera series, set centuries in the future, where humans have colonized most of the solar system, where Mars is a space-faring power that exists in an uneasy and unstable tension with an overcrowded Earth, and where the "Belters" (the inhabitants of the asteroid belt and the moons of the outer planets, are resentful at how they're taken for granted and exploited by the two planets.
A powerful corporation's attempts to weaponize an alien organism destabilizes an already unstable solar system.
This massive canvas is the backdrop for following a rag-tag crew that have commandeered a salvaged top-notch Martian military vessel. This gives the book its personal touch. The novel is has an excellent balance of the personal and the political/military.
The book has the advantage of going into more depth about the characters' motivations than the TV series could, clarifying some aspects of the show that struck me as rather random.
This is an excellent read, and I've already started on Caliban's War, the second in the series.
A compelling space opera with hits of noir, thriller, and horror. Very CIShet for what I normally read, but really good. Fastest I've finished a book of this size in ages.
Truly fantastic book, I enjoyed it thoroughly. One of the best pieces of sci-fi I've read in years. I spent many late nights on this story. I bought it because I liked the series, and I'm SO glad I did!
