Just reading the jacket on Leviathan Wakes makes you sense that something epic is contained within. What I didn’t realize was just how disturbing the book was going to be.

“With six ships closing on them, everyone would be at their duty stations. When Captain Yao had said she’d fire her torpedoes in an hour, there hadn’t been a hint of threat in her voice. It was just a flat statement of fact.”

page 115

Space is a big and unforgiving place, it doesn’t help that one of our main character’s, Jim Holden, inadvertently ignites a latent civil war between Earth, Mars, and the Belt.

Why is this on our bookshelf?

Leviathan Wakes was enthusiastically recommended to me by a colleague and before I had a chance to read it I went to a James S.A. Corey author event promoting a book in the several-book Expanse series, Cibola Burn.

James S. A. Corey is actually two authors, one of whom works for George R. R. Martin. The cover quote from Martin says probably everything you need to know about why Leviathan Wakes is on our shelf; “Kickass space opera.”

Rating (5 stars)

This isn’t a light book. In my paperback edition it’s 500+ pages. That didn’t seem to matter as I plowed through enthusiastically reading as the story shifted between characters, settings, and plot. It has mystery, astropolitics, space battles, space-station battles, and other wicked-cool things (that I can’t mention, because it’d be spoiler).

I’m not sure what I was expecting to read going into the book, but it really wasn’t this. Leviathan Wakes was more macabre than I was expecting and its characters neither righteous nor degenerate.