In Review: Leviathan Wakes
If you are into sci-fi shows, then the name Expanse isn’t foreign to you. But if you didn’t know, that Prime exclusive series is based on a book by the writing duo James S A Corey. Leviathan Wakes is the first book in The Expanse series, which has grown to become an immense world. From novellas, short stories, comics, games and a TV series, it can be daunting to dip your toes into this epic space opera.
Title: Leviathan Wakes Author: James S A Corey Series: The Expanse #1 Publication year: 2011 Length: 20 hours 56 minutes Genre: Sci-fi, Mystery, Crime Pace: Medium Story focus: Character & Plot
There are 3 things you need to know. First, Humans have colonised the Moon, Mars, the asteroid Belt and other outer planets. Second, the story follows two characters: Holden, an executive officer aboard an ice mining ship and Miller, a cop from the Belt. And third, war is coming.
On a trip back to the Belt, the Canterbury, an ice mining ship, intercepts a distress signal. With no other ships nearby, they are obliged by law to assist. Holden and his team go investigate. They find a deserted ship with only a beacon from the Martian Navy sending the distress call. Suspecting foul play, they begin heading back when the Canterbury is attacked by an unidentified stealth ship and destroyed. Without many options on what to do, Holden broadcasts a message detailing the destruction of the Canterbury and the possible implication of the Martians on the assault.
On Ceres, the biggest asteroid in the Belt, Detective Miller is tasked to find Julie Mao. In the meantime, Holden’s broadcast reaches all the corners of the solar system, and riots break out. Even on Ceres, suspicious things start happening, which worries Miller. While he keeps on investigating Julie, he finds out her parents warned her of an imminent attack even before the Canterbury was destroyed. Quickly, Miller becomes obsessed with Julie’s disappearance, and his insistence on investigating it jeopardises his career. Without a badge, the only thing he can do now is to team up with Holden, find Julie, and possibly stop an interplanetary war from happening.
Being a fan of Star Trek, The Expanse has always caught my eye. And when I decided to finally give it a watch, I couldn’t understand a thing. I’m not even going to beat around the bush. I was incredibly confused with all of it. But I kept watching one more episode hoping it would start making sense. It didn’t. After 5 episodes, I just quit and bought the book. While in some cases, watching can make some stories easy to understand, the complexity of The Expanse is better tackled while reading.
All my confusion completely disappeared when I started reading. The Expanse is a huge world with politics already established, and the reader is dropped in the middle of a brewing war. If it wasn’t for the slower pace to explain all these complexities, it would be hard to understand what was happening. Alongside the writing style, the story becomes easy to digest, and those 500 pages of a brand-new world not so intimidating.
I would be lying if I said I understood everything that happened by the end. Maybe some parts will be further explored in the next book or maybe I missed something while reading. While I much prefer the book over the TV series, it’s still quite extensive. And after the halfway point, every big slow chunk seemed it was dragging the story for no reason. And that made an impact on my reading. Instead of reading every day, I took big breaks, and that didn’t help keep the story sharp in my memory.
The revelations and the action didn’t have the impact I hoped for. Maybe because I was disconnected from the story. Either because I was taking too long to read or because this story wasn’t for me. When it comes to mysteries, and Leviathan Wakes has a mystery at its heart, one of the most important aspects is to keep the reader engaged in the mystery. And while I felt engaged every time we discovered more pieces to the puzzle, there was never that “AH! I can’t believe it” moment. Maybe this was just my expectations misplaced. After all, this isn’t a thriller. Although I was expecting a greater evil plan that would shock me to my core, in the end, it felt that everything could be resumed to corporate greed. And that disappointed me. Then again, this might be something to be further explored in the other books. I don’t know yet.
Whenever I pick up a big sci-fi book, especially when it’s set outside of Earth or in a very distant future, what I hope for the most is the world-building. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched sci-fi movies and drooled over those quick 5 seconds images of what the world looks like and wish I could see more of it. Imagine the cities in Total Recall (2012), the big market in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017), and the rich and luxurious space station in Elysium (2013). When I jump into a big sci-fi book set someplace else, it’s that type of imagery I want to read about. To know how it should feel to look out a window and see these worlds. I want to see Julie Mao’s apartment, what Ceres is like, and how a city outside of Earth is formed. And more often than not, the descriptions are shallow. I want a book to convey the beauty I see in 5 seconds of a movie concept art but expand it immensely. Maybe I’m looking for this in the wrong books. Although it’s slightly disappointing when I have all these visual cues from the TV series.
While the world of The Expanse is huge, and I’m guessing is further explored in the other books in the series, we get to see very little of it. Holden spends almost the entire book aboard a ship, Miller goes from Ceres to another station and then is inside a ship, And there is Earth, and Mars, the Moon, and we don’t see most of them other than knowing about the political and military games. It’s a story that spends a lot of time inside spaceships and stations, which are spaceships with long corridors. In terms of world-building, I’m a little disappointed. A lot was told instead of being shown. Their connections with each other, either political or social, were very interesting. I got to understand how people from different places in the solar system related to each other, but there was still a lot of imagery missing that I would love to have.
Overall, it wasn’t a bad book by any means. Maybe I was putting on expectations this book was never going to deliver. However, given how slow the story progresses, I wanted that time to also be spent showing the world. Instead, I feel the book lost a lot of time going from place A to B, and only picking up pace when a new clue was uncovered to then slow down again. I want to love this series and dive deep into this immense world, I just don’t know if we are the right fit for each other.
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