The Expanse #1 Leviathan Wakes – Review

And it’s full of twists and turns and unexpected happenings. I call them happenings for a reason but I won’t spoil it for anyone. I have a short spoiler-less Goodreads review, have a look, if you are interested!

The premise of the book

(No danger here, spoiler-free zone.)

The premise of the book starts out rather simply and straightforwardly: we have our little crew in space, who are essentially working as ice haulers. They are on their way to Ceres (a dwarf planet, essentially the biggest known object between Mars and Jupiter, situated in the Asteroid Belt) from Saturn, when they receive a distress call from a seemingly empty and deserted vessel called the Scopuli. Which is orbiting an asteroid. Since we are talking about space and its vastness, they must respond and investigate the source of the signal, in case there are casualties or people that need help ASAP.

Therefore, 5 of the main crew, including Jim Holden (executive officer), Naomi Nagata (chief engineer, right-hand to Holden), Alex Kamal (pilot, ex-military), Amos Burton (engineer) and Shed Garvey (medic, doctor), leave in a shuttle to figure out what’s going on. And that’s when everything goes wrong.

The novel also has another thread, from a Ceres-detective, Joe Miller’s point of view. Who is being given a new objective by his boss to find Julie Andromeda Mao, who according to her very rich and influential Lunar family, went AWOL. Now they would like to get her back, even if she likes it or not. Obviously, there is way much more to the story than being a simple run-away or kidnap case, as Julie Mao is connected to the Scopuli, where Jim Holden and his crew is heading. 

I won’t go much more in detail, but things are kicking off right off the bat, as the novel starts, and it pretty much doesn’t stop. 

Political intrigue, conflicts, alien organisms and vomiting space zombies. On top of that we have characters that are so life-like that might as well walk straight off the page. Ring the doorbell and invite themselves for a cup of coffee or tea or stronger. They are witty and have an actual personality, which can be annoying depending on what part of the scale your opinion stands. Highly, highly recommend it if you are new to science-fiction and you are a plot and character-driven reader. 

Artist’s Corner

The Authors:

James S. A. Corey is a pen name for two authors, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. James and Corey come from their middle names and S.A. is the initials for Abraham’s daughter. Daniel Abraham is a fantasy author, comic book writer, screenwriter and television producer (also has another pen name: M. L. N. Hanover). His work includes the comic book series** based on George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones* or the Dagger and the Coin fantasy series starting with Dragon’s Path* just to mention a few from the impressive collection of works throughout his career. Or his Kithamar Trilogy starting with Age of Ash*

In 2011 he collaborated with Ty Franck, American novelist, screenwriter and television producer, who was none other than George R. R. Martin’s assistant at the time. He was writing for Wild Cards** as well, which is basically a collaboration between more than 40 authors in a shared science-fiction Universe, edited by George R.R. Martin and Melinda M. Snodgrass.

Ty and Abraham created The Expanse series, which includes 9 novels, and 9 short stories and novellas.

The Expanse series in order:

Expanse #0.1 – Drive** (short story)

Expanse #0.3 – The Churn**  (short story)

Expanse #0.5 – The Butcher of Anderson Station** (short story)

Expanse #1 – Leviathan Wakes*

Expanse #1.1 – The Last Flight of the Cassandra (short story) – can be find in the Expanse Role-playing game rule book

Expanse #2 – Caliban’s War* 

Expanse #2.5 – Gods of Risk** (short story)

Expanse #3 – Abaddon’s Gate* 

Expanse #3.5 The Vital Abyss** (short story)

Expanse #4 – Cibola Burn*

Expanse #5 – Nemesis Games*

Expanse #6 – Babylon’s Ashes* 

Expanse #6.5 – Strange Dogs** (short story)

Expanse #7 – Persepolis Rising* 

Expanse #7.5 – Auberon** (short story)

Expanse #8 – Tiamat’s Wrath*

Expanse #9 – Leviathan Falls*

Expanse #9.5 – The Sins of Our Fathers** (short story)

Memory’s Legion** (the full short story collection, excluding The Flight of the Cassandra)

And then we have the new series, The Captive’s War, which got its first volume released in 6th of August, The Mercy of Gods*. I’m so excited for this one!

They also wrote a Stars Wars Book, Honor Among Thieves** and a story for a very cool looking sci-fi anthology edited and collected by George R. R. Martin, Gardner Dozois and Michel Moorcock, titled: Old Mars**.

I have a few things to read for a while from them.

The Illustrator:

The book cover was done by Daniel Dociu who is a Romanian art director and Original IP visual Identity Development Consultant, he is making mind-blowing sci-fi oriented art. I highly recommend you to check out his work. He did the book covers for the Expanse series and he also did the cover for The Mercy of Gods, I’m assuming that he will keep making the cover art for the upcoming editions as well, fingers crossed. He also made the covers for Daniel Abraham’s fantasy trilogy; Kithamar mentioned above in the author’s corner. He is the studio art director from 2020 of One More Game, who is developing Spellcraft, the free-to-play strategy game. He has so many awards that I got motion sickness just from scrolling down. Amazing, amazing stuff.

I love to write at the Artist’s Corner because I get to find so many amazing books and illustrators which leads me to more amazing books and games. It’s just like being at a library or a book shop to get something specific and then you find this (ooh) and you get distracted by that (wow) and just end up with a list of two or three times more amazing stuff. 

Boom-Kapow!

(SPOILER ALERT!!)

I wonder if they are planning on making a comic book series out of the Expanse, it would be amazing. I love everything about this series, it’s just so much fun to read it. Even if you are not necessarily a big fan of action books it’s done in such a smart way. You have equal parts of action, then you always have a short segment of a breather, when we get to enter Jim’s naive fairyland or Miller’s schizophrenia induced hallucinations. It’s the perfect pace and rhythm so far I have encountered in reading a space opera or as a matter of fact any action/adventure type of novel. 

I’m very curious if the authors will keep this up for the rest of the series. I’m also very curious about how Jim’s personality evolves. I was sad for Miller in the end, as I truly loved his character, but we haven’t actually seen him dying on Venus. I also wish I could get to know Julie Mao a little bit better. But that’s the thing: the characters were just so nicely presented that the reader actually wants to get to know even the ‘side-characters’ better. (Although, I wouldn’t call Julie’s character a side one tbh.) I can’t wait to jump to the next book.

I am way too invested in the drama that’s unfolding in the book to stop and fact-check the science, but there are many very knowledgeable people on the internet who already made tons of articles and videos on youtube. For example, Dr. Ryan Ridden has a lot of quite cool and digestible videos on the Expanse ships and science in general. If I were to do it, I would have to really sit down and work on it and post it as a separate blog entry. Again, not sure how many people would be interested in it when there are so many sources out there, already carefully dissecting every detail and description. Nevertheless, it would be fun to do as a side quest. I might do it with less well-known science fiction books.

If I get to be perfectly honest the political web and relations in the book was just so interesting to read. How the Belters were treated by other planet’s populations like Earth or Mars. On top of that, how Earth and Mars were connected to each other. How was to live and grow up in a station where every breath, gulp of water and square meter is accounted for as it can cost someone’s life. How the physiology of humans would evolve when generations after generations are being born into an environment that has lower gravity than Earth. I think the authors are pretty close, especially taking into consideration our current knowledge and our human behaviour pattern. What was interesting is that I don’t really remember reading anything about flora and funa. If there was any mention it was probably related to Earth, but I don’t remember seeing any animals on Ceres or any other stations. Neither plants. Not that I have a problem with this, I just thought it’s interesting and it can be that it’s going to be talked about in one of the upcoming novels. Just my curiosity. 

I also loved how Jim and Miller were representing two opposites of the same spectrum. We have Jim who is righteous, honest, sometimes naive and quite quick to judge people and especially situations. At the same time has the same capacity to forgive or re-evaluate his standpoint if needed. He is a fair guy who wants the best for his people. In goodreads I write about him as a cross between a labrador and a rooster who doesn’t want to shut up. He has this tendency to be absolutely loveable and easy to approach but at the same time he is also very quick on shouting every piece of information he finds from the rooftop to the whole universe. I was angry with him, a lot. Most of the time I even almost said the same things as Naomi to him in my head. That’s why it was so interesting to see that Naomi has romantic feelings for him, as I am a bit doubtful about that. But I guess whatever floats your boat Miss Queen.

As for Miller he was just so well written. He is a stoic, nihilistic, noir character, a detective with a mysterious and probably questionable past and alcohol problems. The absolute loner, an older version of Space-Aragorn, I mean I loved to read his chapters. I loved his sarcasm and his dark witty dialogues that cracked me up. At the same time it has melancholy and loneliness with a depth that almost hypnotizingly pulls the reader in. What I loved more than his character was when these two met. Jim and Miller together when they don’t agree on something? And they decide to talk it out? How can both re-evaluate their own point of view and decide to pull back or push forward on their agenda, depending on what was necessary and right? Nice little teaching moment there. I truly appreciate it. It’s just awesome. If I could I would turn it into a rooster too, just to shout out to everyone to read this book. 

What’s Next…

As usual I have put all the books that I could find on bookshop.org* into a list down below, so make sure to check it out!
P.S.: If you are an author and would like me to read your book, feel free to reach out to me on my socials or drop me an email at no************@***il.com with Books as the subject, in case it ends up in my spam folder. I’m always on the hunt for amazing stories. If you want to stay up to date with the latest thoughts and reviews, sign up for NOLITETHOUGHTS‘ newsletter at the bottom of this post.