eaudiobook
English language
Published June 6, 2017 by Hachette Audio.
When Captain Jim Holden's ice miner stumbles across a derelict, abandoned ship, he uncovers a secret that threatens to throw the entire system into war. Attacked by a stealth ship belonging to the Mars fleet, Holden must find a way to uncover the motives behind the attack, stop a war and find the truth behind a vast conspiracy that threatens the entire human race.
ok yeah the hype lived up, there's probably not much else to say after ten years but god damn is the pacing, the writing, everything just so solid with this book. excited to continue the series
I enjoyed this book. It had a fun mix of space ship fights mixed with some classic tension from humanity. It even mixed in noire and vomit zombies. I am starting to get back into reading and this was a fun page turner that got me back into some one of my favorite genres.
Death without warning was preferable, as it removed all fear.
It will be difficult to review the book without comparing it to the Syfy/Amazon series, but the reason I'm reading it is because of the TV show so regardless of how I try to view them separately they (season one and Leviathan Wakes) are so similar that they both suffered the same flaws or challenges.
It's the problem with politics. Your enemies are often your allies. And vice versa.
Miller is a stereotypical cop that has gone through a divorce, witnessed his glory days come and go and is now a joke among the force. I failed to understand (in the beginning) why Miller was so fixated with Juliette Mao and why he kept postponing the conclusion of her case so he could pursue another Julie-related task (find her, find those who wrong her, enacted vengeance). His obsession reeked …
Death without warning was preferable, as it removed all fear.
It will be difficult to review the book without comparing it to the Syfy/Amazon series, but the reason I'm reading it is because of the TV show so regardless of how I try to view them separately they (season one and Leviathan Wakes) are so similar that they both suffered the same flaws or challenges.
It's the problem with politics. Your enemies are often your allies. And vice versa.
Miller is a stereotypical cop that has gone through a divorce, witnessed his glory days come and go and is now a joke among the force. I failed to understand (in the beginning) why Miller was so fixated with Juliette Mao and why he kept postponing the conclusion of her case so he could pursue another Julie-related task (find her, find those who wrong her, enacted vengeance). His obsession reeked of a stalker as opposed someone who was diligent and focused.
On the other end of the spectrum is Holden who came across as someone who made poor decisions that impacted his crew and lacked the awareness to understand his flaws. His conversations with Miller were monosyllabic, which made them both seem simple and flat. The story had a wonderful world, interesting drama developing and our two lead characters are having one word conversations.
The above describes my problem with the TV show and book. However, with the benefit of internal monologues the book avoided the nosedive the TV show took.
He was vaguely aware that he was weeping. It didn't mean anything.
The events that each character faced, the horrors they witnessed, and their different ways of dealing with them showed a drastic divide in how they each operated their morale compass. The conversations between Miller and Holden were still basic, but there was subtext and something existed in the spaces of a "good?" "yeah" conversation.
Suddenly words, however few, had weight and importance.
Holden is righteous, Miller is a renegade. Holden believes in justice and Miller realizes not all situations will see justice so vengeance is necessary.
Unfortunately I dislike Miller in both instances (TV and book), but Leviathan Wakes Miller is redeemed...it just took nearly two thirds of the book for this to become obvious. The events on Eros were a defining moment in each characters path and the outcome of that challenged how they each saw their counterpart.
"You might be the best person I know. But you're totally uncompromising on what you think is right, and that's what you have about Miller."
"I do?"
"Yes," she said. "He's totally uncompromising too, but he has different ideas on how things work."
Holden realized that Miller would shoot without question and Miller understood Holdens morality. The fallout of Eros and then followed by the confrontation with Dresden on the secret science Thoth Station only further showed this division. The crew of the Rocinate sided with Holden but understood the reasons for why the two were different long before Holden did.
Building humanity's greatest empire is like building the world's largest anthill. Insignificant.
When the story has only two POV characters and you dislike them both it's easy to overlook the rest of the book. Holden and Miller aside Leviathan Wakes was excellent. Having the memory of the TV show allowed me to jump in to the world very quickly. Ships, locations, gear and the wonderful execution of the TV show seemed like very honest replication of the source material. Understanding the political struggles to come I took time to pay attention to details and be cognizant that Fred Johnson, OPA, Earth and Mars will set the groundwork for the larger scope of a story to come.
J’ai eu le temps de regarder les trois premières saisons de The Expanse avant de commencer à lire les romans dont la série a été adaptée. Pourtant, les premiers tomes m’attendent sur mon Kindle depuis que j’ai terminé la première saison. J’ai enfin pris la peine de me plonger dans le premier volume, intitulé Leviathan Wakes.
Il faut d’abord préciser que James S.A. Corey est un pseudonyme : derrière ce nom de plume se cachent en réalité deux auteurs, Daniel Abraham et Ty Franck, qui ont entrepris ensemble l’écriture de cette grande saga de science-fiction baptisée The Expanse.
L’action se déroule dans un futur plus ou moins proche : suffisamment proche pour que l’environnement nous soit familier, avec la Terre, Mars, la ceinture d’astéroïdes, bref notre système solaire ; mais suffisamment éloigné dans le futur pour que la science-fiction soit bien présente : l’humanité a colonisé le système solaire et …
J’ai eu le temps de regarder les trois premières saisons de The Expanse avant de commencer à lire les romans dont la série a été adaptée. Pourtant, les premiers tomes m’attendent sur mon Kindle depuis que j’ai terminé la première saison. J’ai enfin pris la peine de me plonger dans le premier volume, intitulé Leviathan Wakes.
Il faut d’abord préciser que James S.A. Corey est un pseudonyme : derrière ce nom de plume se cachent en réalité deux auteurs, Daniel Abraham et Ty Franck, qui ont entrepris ensemble l’écriture de cette grande saga de science-fiction baptisée The Expanse.
L’action se déroule dans un futur plus ou moins proche : suffisamment proche pour que l’environnement nous soit familier, avec la Terre, Mars, la ceinture d’astéroïdes, bref notre système solaire ; mais suffisamment éloigné dans le futur pour que la science-fiction soit bien présente : l’humanité a colonisé le système solaire et est désormais plus ou moins divisée en trois blocs à la fois concurrents et interdépendants : la Terre, a priori dotée d’un gouvernement mondial sous l’égide des Nations Unies ; Mars, une république qui dispose d’une technologie plus avancée que celle de sa planète soeur-mère ; et la ceinture d’astéroïdes, sorte de colonies dépendants de la Terre mais dont les habitants méprisés par les Terriens aimeraient prendre leur indépendance.
C’est dans ce contexte que nous faisons la connaissance de deux personnages très différents :
- James Holden est l’officier en second et l’un des rares rescapés de l’équipage de son vaisseau-mineur de glace abattu par une mystérieuse navette furtive après avoir tenté de porter secours au Scopuli, un autre navire en détresse
- Joe Miller est un détective sur l’astéroïde Ceres, dont l’une des affaires dont il est en charge est de retrouver Julie Mao, fille d’un puissant homme d’affaires terrien, qui s’est engagée pour l’indépendance de la ceinture d’astéroïdes
Les chapitres alternent les points de vue des deux personnages et si les deux récits sont d’abord indépendants, on se rend vite compte qu’ils sont liés et que Holden et Miller sont destinés à se rencontre à un moment ou un autre. Cela finit évidemment par arriver, et c’est là que le livre devient passionnant, d’autant que les auteurs ont la bonne idée de ne pas attendre les derniers chapitres pour en arriver là.
Le récit lui-même est intelligent, captivant à suivre, avec des enjeux forts. On ne s’ennuie pas du début à la fin, grâce à des chapitres courts et un sens du rythme évident. On peut parfois se demander si cela n’a pas été écrit dans l’optique d’être adapté sur le petit ou le grand écran, mais c’est suffisamment efficace pour que je ne n’en fasse pas un défaut impardonnable.
Ce premier volume est en tout cas riche de promesses pour la suite de la saga, je ne vais clairement pas tarder à me lancer dans le deuxième tome.
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!
I've seen The Expanse season 1 and 2, and reading this book was like rewatching the directors cut of the show. It was a great read, even at 540+ pages, and interesting to see what was changed for the show. For instance the UN leaders are central in the show but barely register in the book. Miller's obsession with Julie is more consistenstly portraited in the book, and more random in the show.
Everything you could ever ask for in a story. -and vomit zombies-
I'm angry because the prologue tricked me into thinking this book was going to have a female protagonist, but actually that was the only part of the book from her POV, she was fridged in order to provide motivation for one of the dude protagonists
at some point I said "this book loses a star if Julie ends up murdered" and yep
and then I was like "if Holden ends up with Naomi this book loses another star"
so here we are
tbh I just feel really bad for Julie because she starts the book stuffed in a locker, spends the entire book as Miller's imaginary friend (so female and nurturing and compassionate and understanding!) and then ends up stuck with him FOR EVER in weird ass alien goo mind meld situation
it had some interesting ideas in it but it's such a super generic space opera, with so much …
I'm angry because the prologue tricked me into thinking this book was going to have a female protagonist, but actually that was the only part of the book from her POV, she was fridged in order to provide motivation for one of the dude protagonists
at some point I said "this book loses a star if Julie ends up murdered" and yep
and then I was like "if Holden ends up with Naomi this book loses another star"
so here we are
tbh I just feel really bad for Julie because she starts the book stuffed in a locker, spends the entire book as Miller's imaginary friend (so female and nurturing and compassionate and understanding!) and then ends up stuck with him FOR EVER in weird ass alien goo mind meld situation
it had some interesting ideas in it but it's such a super generic space opera, with so much DUDES SHOOTING THINGS and NEEDLESS VIOLENCE and DUDES HAVING A FEELING BETTER SHOOT THINGS and like every character making a needless sexual comment about Naomi honestly it was super tiresome and masculinity is boring
I was kind of split about Leviathan Wakes. I think it is one of the few cases wjere I like the TV adaptation better then the book. I really like the main plot of this story, but for Leviathan Wakes compared to the first 1-and-a-bit season of The Expanse the TV show, the latter seems so much more elegant and well done. The writing here is a bit ham-fisted, the characters are two-dimensional and the narration is a bit clumsy. The script writers of the TV show have made a lot of good calls when it comes to altering the story to trade gore for suspense, and they did absolutely right in introducing Chrisjen Avasarala much earlier in the story - the character gallery in the book is too narrow, and the story line too linear, it feels a bit claustrophobic.
This is not to say I dislike the book. …
I was kind of split about Leviathan Wakes. I think it is one of the few cases wjere I like the TV adaptation better then the book. I really like the main plot of this story, but for Leviathan Wakes compared to the first 1-and-a-bit season of The Expanse the TV show, the latter seems so much more elegant and well done. The writing here is a bit ham-fisted, the characters are two-dimensional and the narration is a bit clumsy. The script writers of the TV show have made a lot of good calls when it comes to altering the story to trade gore for suspense, and they did absolutely right in introducing Chrisjen Avasarala much earlier in the story - the character gallery in the book is too narrow, and the story line too linear, it feels a bit claustrophobic.
This is not to say I dislike the book. It's just a great story written by unseasoned writers (Caliban's War, the next in the series, is already much better). And on the upside, the prose has a good flow to it. It is an easy and fast read and, despite all my criticisms above, often hard to put down. No, it's not a bad book at all, it's just that the TV series has shown how brilliant it could have been, and it isn't, not quite.
Still, definitely worth the time.
Finally! I don't know why it took me so long to finish this book because it is brilliant. I've already seen the first two seasons of the show and I'm a huge fan of it. Naturally, I was curious enough to check out the material it is based on, and I wasn't disappointed. This book covers Holden & Miller's perpectives of what happens in the first two seasons. I'm very curious to find out what the next book will be like.
(I do actually: I read to much at work to read a lot at home).
Why'd it take me so long to read this? Great character development, amazing worldbuilding, and a tension that kept on ratcheting up and up. I'm hooked. bring on the rest of the series.
I rather enjoyed this book. It's not truly hard SF but it attempted to maintain a semblance of realism. I enjoyed both main characters, Miller, and Holden. One a washed up cop and the other an idealist. While a rather long book, I did not find it at all draggy.
It's very good, reasonably hard SF (i.e. it tries to avoid space opera tropes such as artificial gravity, etc.).
After watching the Netflix series, I was curious about the original. The TV show is curiously close at recreating individual scenes very faithfully from the book, but simultaneously strays far from the characterizations of the cast, peppering the show with somewhat unnecessary tension that's also not in the source material.
Overall, I prefer the book. It does a much better job at keeping the plot on track, the characters relatable, and the reveal is far more intriguing than the TV show lets through.
The first season covers about half of this first book, but either invents a new plot line, or lifts it from a later book (I don't know yet).
Stick to the books, then watch the TV show for the visuals.
Lots and lots better than I expected.
I didn't realize I was in the mood for a 500+ page "space opera" until shortly after starting Leviathan Wakes. A little mystery, a little horror, a little action thriller, and a lot of fun.
