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A review by ksander
Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
5.0
This is one of those times when an automated recommendation turns out to be on point and you're glad you followed it. I happened to stumble across the title about the same time promos were running for the SYFY channel's TV series it inspired; the commercials looked good, the description looked good, so I gave it a shot. What I found was an intricately built setting, a detailed and captivating plot, and a compelling main character.
Set in humanity's future, where we've colonized the solar system but not yet figured out how to travel to the stars (at least not fast enough to fit in a feature film or TV episode...), it offers a grittier and more dystopian view than Roddenberry. Earth and Mars are both military superpowers, in a somewhat uneasy and fragile coexistence. Parts of the asteroid belt and some of the moons of the outer planets have been colonized, mainly for their resources (or their transshipment), and have been long enough for noticeable and linguistic physical differences to manifest. Yet existence out there is more tenuous, and there is growing resentment of the inner planets' perceived exploitation.
First, my only REAL gripe. While both the main characters are well-developed, one of them - a detective - struck me as an incongruously anachronistic stereotype. In an interview, the authors ("James SA Corey" is a pen name for a two-writer collaboration) describe him as "noir," and that's not inaccurate, but I wonder if there wasn't a way to write a "noir" style detective in the 24th century without him coming off so much like a 1930s comic book detective. As one of the two points of view for the story, he does his job and moves the action around, and he even engenders a bit of sympathy, but I could never really buy all the way in.
The other main character, however - the man whose discovery thrusts him into the middle of a vast and potentially catastrophic conspiracy - was brilliantly done. In contrast to Roddenberry's larger-than-life Kirk, Holden is an everyman... and a somewhat broken everyman. He'd been unceremoniously booted out of the (space) navy years before, and had been grinding out a living hauling cargo. He never quite seems sure of himself, and often looks to his subordinates for ideas of what to do, or their approval of whatever it was he'd decided (even if sometimes what he's decided turns out to be recklessly naive). Yet he somehow manages to rise to the occasion when he needs to. His flaws and insecurities make you want to root for him, and his triumphs make you happy for him (though, since the book is a series, much like watching the first installment of a movie you know is going to be a trilogy, you're pretty sure he'll squeak through somehow...).
As the opening offer in a series of novels, novellas, and short stories, it's certainly done its job - I intend to check out more... and eventually get around to watching the TV series, too.
Set in humanity's future, where we've colonized the solar system but not yet figured out how to travel to the stars (at least not fast enough to fit in a feature film or TV episode...), it offers a grittier and more dystopian view than Roddenberry. Earth and Mars are both military superpowers, in a somewhat uneasy and fragile coexistence. Parts of the asteroid belt and some of the moons of the outer planets have been colonized, mainly for their resources (or their transshipment), and have been long enough for noticeable and linguistic physical differences to manifest. Yet existence out there is more tenuous, and there is growing resentment of the inner planets' perceived exploitation.
First, my only REAL gripe. While both the main characters are well-developed, one of them - a detective - struck me as an incongruously anachronistic stereotype. In an interview, the authors ("James SA Corey" is a pen name for a two-writer collaboration) describe him as "noir," and that's not inaccurate, but I wonder if there wasn't a way to write a "noir" style detective in the 24th century without him coming off so much like a 1930s comic book detective. As one of the two points of view for the story, he does his job and moves the action around, and he even engenders a bit of sympathy, but I could never really buy all the way in.
The other main character, however - the man whose discovery thrusts him into the middle of a vast and potentially catastrophic conspiracy - was brilliantly done. In contrast to Roddenberry's larger-than-life Kirk, Holden is an everyman... and a somewhat broken everyman. He'd been unceremoniously booted out of the (space) navy years before, and had been grinding out a living hauling cargo. He never quite seems sure of himself, and often looks to his subordinates for ideas of what to do, or their approval of whatever it was he'd decided (even if sometimes what he's decided turns out to be recklessly naive). Yet he somehow manages to rise to the occasion when he needs to. His flaws and insecurities make you want to root for him, and his triumphs make you happy for him (though, since the book is a series, much like watching the first installment of a movie you know is going to be a trilogy, you're pretty sure he'll squeak through somehow...).
As the opening offer in a series of novels, novellas, and short stories, it's certainly done its job - I intend to check out more... and eventually get around to watching the TV series, too.