Reviews with content warning for Vomit - Leviathan Wakes

Great vacation read. Moves fast and most chapters end on a mini-cliff hanger which keeps you reading. I found the first half of the book really interesting where everything is set up and there is a lot of mystery around what is going on. Lots of f-bombs but primarily limited to one character.

I didn't enjoy the vomit zombie/alien stuff as much. It wasn't that it was so terrifying or gross, it just felt like kind of a letdown after the big build up.

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espea's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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bookswithbethx'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? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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singalana'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? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

From the back cover of this book: “Praise for the expanse: “The future they way it was supposed to be.” - Wall Street Journal”. Hell, if this is Wall Street Journal’s idea of what the future is supposed to look like, then sign me OUT. Oh boy, where to begin with this one. The main feeling after finishing this book was confusion. Maybe it was too smart for me, or perhaps this is just the prelude to the series. But this book is over 500 pages long, and I felt like I ended up with more questions than I started with.

This is a space warfare sci-fi and a detective story rolled in one. The story follows two characters: Jim Holden, an ice miner who stumbles on a dangerous secret, and detective Miller, who has been tasked with finding a girl and bringing her home. The story takes these characters through all kinds of trouble as they navigate governments, organisations and corporations in order to save humanity.

As you might imagine, this story is extremely action packed, and the stakes are always high. Even so much so that it becomes exhausting at times. The characters feel very flat to me, and so much more could have been done to develop their personalities and made them stand out a bit more. I just read 500 pages of them, and I would struggle to write one sentence about who they are as a person.

The writing was okay. The events were partly confusing but I’m not sure if I can pin that on the writing or if I just don’t understand space warfare enough to be able to follow. The plot and events were confusing, but I’m hoping that more will be revealed after the first book. After this book I’m still interested enough to give the next one a try.

One thing that bothered me about this book was how much there were casual mentions of hookers, brothels and prostitutes. And they all seemed to be women. You’d think that if they wanted to display a gritty hellscape, then there would be at least a variety of prostitutes. The women in this book appeared to be either prostitutes, victims or love interests, especially during the first half of the book. It got slightly better in the second half, perhaps due to the fact that none of the characters had time to think about brothels anymore.

And I read more sentences about the main characters' balls than I would have liked.

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jvanwago's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

A page-turner certainly. It had great world-building and was fluidly written.

That said, I didn’t love the characters. Holden in particular seemed too artificial.

My biggest beef with the book was how Holden always got his way, no matter how implausibly plotted.

His YouTube uploads start two wars? Holden continuously convinces Top Men that he should be in the middle of all the action? It strains credulity too much.

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menomica's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

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

Everyone too busy trying to survive to spend any time creating something new.

I’m gonna be honest the only reason I read this book was for my writing class. If you’re into sci-fi and zombies, this book will probably be up your alley. But I’m more a realistic-fiction girlie so there were good stretches of this book where I was kind of bored.

I will admit, I was able to keep myself entertained throughout the middle and end of the book by just reading it as a character study. I mean, almost all the (male) characters were character types that I was not into, but I think it was a nice exercise to dissect why I was turned off by them.

Miller is such a fucking looser. Like he was just giving pathetic flop cringecore the whole book, especially towards the end with his obsession with Julie. Like, my guy you literally have never even met this woman and she’s god-knows how many years younger than you. I get that Julie (and her case) just represented his need for redemption to prove himself as a capable detective and whatnot but it was still very weird the way he was about her.

Holden and Naomi was the most comphet ass shit and I will stand ten-toes down in that. That being said, the scene after they had sex (~~I will not permit hetero copulation on my good Christian server~~) was kinda cute, idk. I like my men a little-love stupid. If they actually ever take the time to develop legitimate chemistry together beyond this-is-convenient-and-we-need-the-guy-to-get-his-girl type of situation, they could actually be, like, nice to look at. I really appreciated Naomi standing her ground and being like «if you want me, prove it.» Yes girl, respect yourself!

My writing prof said there was more stuff that gets developed in later books that actually seemed interesting to me (why tf is Amos like that, Naomi pov), but I did not care enough about this first book to feel motivated to keep going. Y’all have fun though.

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purelytheoretical's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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coffeebot18's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.5

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