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.
I started this series because I loved the TV show and wanted to experience the world more after it ended. I loved the writing style of the book, the writers do a good hard SF world without going in very long descriptions of the world, weaving the SF details in the world elegantly.
I'm impressed how close the show stuck to the book, but I also enjoy the differences, already looking forward to the next book that introduces two of my favourite characters from the show.
I don't know why but I was expecting a fast action-paced space opera. But I thought it had too many political discussions and background and a lack of action.
I enjoyed the world-building, though! It seems like this world can be expanded and explored to create amazing stories. I like noir-style detective stories but detective Miller was not my favorite character. The highlight is Rocinante's crew dynamics. I loved the mix of Earthlings, Martians and Belters. It is interesting to imagine that as humankind explores the universe there will be new languages, mixed cultures and different body types.
**UPDATE: I had originally given this book a 3 star rating mainly because I didn't like the pace (or I was in a bad mood) but after I saw The Expanse TV series I changed my mind about the book. Is that possible? So now it is a 4 star!
So I started reading this book 1 year ago... I remember very vaguely that it kind of bored me; the vocabulary was complicated, the author uses some technical words I don't understand, and it generally didn't entertain me... However, the idea of an interplanetary society that's set up in this novel, is very fascinating, additionally with the perspectives of 2 different, opposite characters, is also a very interesting way of telling a story.
Um, here's a thought, but don't read it unless you've already read the book, okay:
I feel kinda horrible to say it, but I was kinda glad when Miller got killed off. Not that I wasn't sad; he was one of my favorite characters, and I really loved how he developed over the course of the novel. It's just like this: if I'm going to stick around for a what, nine-book series, I want to see that the authors aren't afraid of change. Too many books I've read are afraid to let anything happen because they want their readers to keep loving the characters they first saw. (The Oz series is predominantly on my mind; every book solved the conflict with yet another magic object to the point where one of the later plots--and in my opinion one of the more interesting ones--has an evil magician steal all their magic …
Um, here's a thought, but don't read it unless you've already read the book, okay:
I feel kinda horrible to say it, but I was kinda glad when Miller got killed off. Not that I wasn't sad; he was one of my favorite characters, and I really loved how he developed over the course of the novel. It's just like this: if I'm going to stick around for a what, nine-book series, I want to see that the authors aren't afraid of change. Too many books I've read are afraid to let anything happen because they want their readers to keep loving the characters they first saw. (The Oz series is predominantly on my mind; every book solved the conflict with yet another magic object to the point where one of the later plots--and in my opinion one of the more interesting ones--has an evil magician steal all their magic stuff, so they have to work without. I mean, seriously: how can you keep a story interesting when one character has a belt that lets them do literally anything?)
Anyway, by killing Miller, the authors have convinced me that they're going to do what's right to make an interesting story, even if it hurts the reader's feelings a bit. And that's all right. In fact, I much prefer that to static characters. I don't want a bunch of novels with practically identical plots. (I'm talking to you, Sherlock Holmes and Hardy Boys.)
And to those who have read further into the series (preferably until Cibola Burn):
Yes, I realize Miller came back. My point stands; he definitely was extremely changed and arguably not even the original person at all.
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.
It took me awhile to get going in the first book. After a bit it became such a great read. I am going to go through all of them one after another. I'm flying to Asia in a few weeks and will have all the books loaded onto my kindle and ready to go.
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.
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.
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.
An entertaining read. Can't go into the parts I didn't like without spoilers. Fleshed out characters, good detail on the realities of living in a Newtonian universe.
I started reading this soon after we started watching the TV series "The Expanse". The TV series departs from the book (we're about 2 episodes in) but the book is a pretty good story. I enjoyed the first book and have started the second.
