Bibliophilic Friday: LEVIATHAN WAKES by James S. A. Corey (Review by Nancy L. Eady)

Leviathan Wakes is the first book in the science fiction series, The Expanse, written by James S. A. Corey. Mr. Corey is a pen name for two writers, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, who wrote the series as a collaboration. I read the book for the first time upon a recommendation from Goodreads and I’m glad I did. The science part of this science fiction book is solid, and the situations the characters work to resolve have themes similar to situations working adults the world over find themselves in today.  

The book is set several centuries in the future. Earth has billions of people living on it and has evolved into a single government planet. Mars has not only been colonized but also has gained its independence while its people, who live in domes on the surface, work to terraform the surface. In addition, over ten billion people live in asteroids and the larger moons of the outer planets such as Saturn and Jupiter. When the novel opens, people have lived scattered around the outer planets in this matter for at least three generations.

What intrigued me the most about the first book is that, although not labeled as such, it is a mystery. James Holden, one of the two point of view characters, is the executive officer of an ice harvester spaceship called the Canterbury. Its sole job is to harvest ice from the rings of Saturn, then carry those blocks of ice to asteroids and other stations for their water supply. The other point of view character is Detective Miller, who is a member of the police force on Ceres, a large asteroid with a huge port and several million people living in it. In the first few chapters, Holden’s ice ship is killed by a mysterious stealth ship which destorys it with nuclear missiles while Holden and four other crew members are on a salvage mission nearby in one of the ship’s shuttles, and Detective Miller is handed a missing persons case to work on outside of his regular hours. The novel then takes twists and turns until you learn both who killed the Canterbury and why, and what happened to the missing person. 

The story is told in an alternating format. One chapter tells the story from Holden’s perspective, then the next chapter goes back to Miller, even after the two storylines meet. Ultimately both men find the answers they’re looking for, although those answers do not necessarily provide an “and they all lived happily ever after” ending. The answers and resolution of the novel are, however, satisfying and make sense within the context of the story.  

The writing and pacing are riveting. The plot is action-packed, but you also get to know and like multiple characters.  There is a lot of food for thought on the nature of freedom and right and wrong throughout not only the first book but also the series. Leviathan Wakes also perfectly sets up the rest of the nine-book series. Each book is an interesting, entertaining and sometimes horrifying case study of what various people do when confronted with tools and weapons of unimaginable power. And yet all nine books together explore an overarching riddle that is finally solved in the last novel.  

If you’re looking to expand your reading into a different genre, give Leviathan Wakes a try.