Reviews with content warning for Rape - Leviathan Wakes

The premise was super interesting and I enjoyed the mystery aspects. It could’ve been a 4.5 star rating if it weren’t for the constant gross man writing. I was so exhausted from being constantly pulled away from the story to hear about underaged or unlicensed ‘whores’ who were constantly brought up by the detective main character the entire book despite never meeting one of these characters. Both of the main perspective characters were not very likable to me mostly because of how they interacted with women. It was extremely weird. When Holden starts describing how ‘exotic’ Naomi was and breaking down her ethnic background I legit sat there listening to this book going ‘don’t do it don’t do it oh my god stop don’t do that’.

Also

did the authors REALLY have to have cosmic horror coming out of a dead woman’s VULVA?! What was the reason? WHAT WAS IT?

I still really enjoyed the mystery but I will not read any more of these books. I do not want one more chapter in the head of these authors. I will however check out the TV show and maybe it will be less blatant without the narrator going off on unnecessary horny and weird tangents.

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annailles's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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ehparrish's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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abby_b's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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bookdreamer's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Sci-fi is not my genera. I have a hard time understanding the detail and finer points of stories with a lot of moving pieces, and this book is all over the solar system. As the mystery dragged on in the first half I was feeling it was more of a two or three star read, but the second half and ending made it a four star. I almost cried at the end, I was not expecting to love these characters but I'm still thinking about them after setting the book down over a day ago.

It's not light reading. There was a lot of information and switching between two perspectives that forced me to pay attention to what was going on between the lines and making sure I was following the plot. I'm still confused as to how (view spoiler) but you don't really have to understand to move on in the plot. I get how it ended, anyways. The blend of genres was interesting: noir, mystery, military, political, and of course, sci-fi. The books were written because James Corey wanted to write about the gap where humanity has explored the solar system, but not quite yet expanded outside of that. This is the push that moves them forward.

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featherbrain's review against another edition

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adventurous dark fast-paced

1.0

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iviarelle's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense slow-paced

Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

2020

In hindsight, I like this book somewhat less than I did before. It's still a promising first entry to a series, no doubt, and there's a lot to be done with the intrigue and mysteries it sets up... but there are also a lot of little problems that add up to a much less enjoyable experience when I start looking a little deeper.

Maybe the best example of this is that the way the story treats rape is downright insensitive, to understate it vastly. At one point, Miller assumes that Julie must have been raped, because she suddenly starts taking a martial arts class, and gets really good at it quickly. The story never indicates in any way that he's wrong about this assumption; on the contrary, Miller's "hunches" are proven right time and time again. In Holden's case, at one point he thinks about how he's drunk and Naomi's drunk and he would hate himself in the morning for taking advantage but he should go for it, ask her to sleep with him. Later, their first sexual encounter begins while she's been drinking and he hasn't. The word rape isn't ever brought up in conjunction with this, possibly because the writers only viewed rape as a violent act by a stranger, as so many people (particularly, people who are under significantly less threat of being raped) do. Maybe she'd be okay with it in the morning (as she was in the latter instance) and maybe she wouldn't, but... the very fact that Holden's thoughts admit that sleeping with someone drunk would be "taking advantage" shows that at some level, he and the writers know it would be rape... and yet they do it later anyway, not just with no consequences, but with the actual reward of starting a relationship with her.

And I can't go without mentioning the extraordinarily shitty cops in the story. Miller more or less considers himself accountable only to his superiors, not any real sort of law. He has his own moral code and his own definition of justice and will carry those out no matter what orders he's been given or by whom. And the worst part is that, again, he's shown to be right to do so by the story. That's... not a good look.

It's a little frustrating, because it was so recently that I first read this book, I feel like I should have looked a little closer all this time. I think the later books do less of this sort of thing? But I can no longer be sure, and that's frustrating to me.

=====

2017

This was a pretty good book. The science felt solid (except for the acceleration giving ships gravity thing, I never felt like that was quite as well explained as everything else, why should acceleration forward give gravity downward?), the characters were all given depth, none of the men were particularly rewarded for toxic masculinity. I could've done with a few more women in major, active roles in the narrative, especially who don't end up love interests, but it was generally enjoyable. When I want another hard science fiction fix, I'll likely turn to the next book in the series.

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