Leviathan Wakes: Book Review

I just finished reading Leviathan Wakes, by James S.A. Corey. This is the first book in The Expanse book series, of which there is a television series. The series is about the distant future, where humanity has managed to escape the earth's gravity well and expand out into the solar system. There are now three different political factions: Earth, Mars, and the Belt. Earth is the cradle of humanity, while Mars is an extremely technologically advanced and militarily effective entity; the Belt is the runt of the pack, completely dependent on the other two for survival, and utterly under their boot. Tensions between these three political entities has been high for centuries, and they hit the boiling point when a new discovery has been made in the moons of Saturn.

Overall, the book is great, although I will supplement my review by discussing its relation to the television series.

Overall (No Spoilers)

The Expanse is Game of Thrones in space. This is the description that drove me to read the books (and also watch the television series). And the description is apt. The Expanse is not Star Trek. There is no liberal/progressive naivete. It's not a liberal wet dream where problems are largely solved through reason and humanity overcoming its limitations. Instead, we are treated to a sobering and realistic portrayal of the human condition, where tribalism reigns over all, and where the humane decision often gets people killed. The Expanse does lack the brutality that is inherent in Game of Thrones, but the realism still shines through.

The best part of the book is that this is centered on the political intrigue, and the human element as new discoveries are made by humanity. The focus is on how people react to new developments, and especially on how this drives conflicts between the different factions based on their own interests. Some people are more villainous than others, but every side has its own collection of characters who have their differences.

The characters aren't my favorite, especially when we start talking about the side characters, but Miller seems to be the most developed; as such, he stands out as one of the better characters. He is disillusioned, suicidal, and desperate for connection, and this influences his actions throughout the whole story. Holden is the other well-developed character. I never liked him as much as the others (especially Amos, in the tv show), but he is also well-developed and stubborn in who he is: morally righteous and a do-gooder.

Something tangentially related: I liked that it was written from specific perspectives that were relegated to specific chapters. Books that are structured this way are more interesting because they allow us to get inside specific characters heads, it prevents the author from just telling the readers certain things that the characters aren't aware of, and it prevents the story from becoming messy with constant head-hopping. There are also drawbacks, but this is mostly due to the comparisons with the television show; basically, the show has more scenes with side characters, allowing certain scenes to take place that would not normally be able to. But this isn't a major drawback to the story.

Another fun point to take is that The Expanse is largely scientifically accurate, with only the occasional exception. There are no hyperspace jumps. When spaceships accelerate, they create g-force on the occupants. The ships are designed according to this reality: they are built like towers, which essentially fly upwards, so the g-force is downwards relative to how people stand in the ship. Even more interesting is the development of people in different gravity wells. If some is born in the belt, where there is usually about one-third g, people grow such that they are taller (over six feet), and their bones are weaker. Many Belters are unable to survive in the full g of earth, their bodies unable to handle the levels of force.

As for the plot, it was very fast paced, with a few slow points thrown in to give the reader rest. By the end, I had to carry it all the way in one sitting even as I knew what would happen (I watched the show first).

The prose was good. I listened to it as an audiobook, so my perception of the writing is a little bit less accurate than if I had read it.

Overall, I liked the book. I will give it a 7/10.

Book and Show (Spoilers)

I will combine the spoiler section with my comparison with the television show.

I watched the tv show first, so I went into this book with the general idea of what was going to happen. I was interested to see just how much of the story had changed over time, and I found that the experience was much like the experience of reading the ASOIAF book series after watching the Game of Thrones tv series first. Initially, I kind of reacted badly to all the good bits from the show that weren't in the books. Later, I decided I didn't want to let the differences color my opinion of the book. Obviously, the meat of the story is present in the books, so the overall concept is still present, but I also think that this is an example of a visual medium that ended up being better than the books. This is rare; I think only the Dexter tv show has been able to do this, and that was because the books are formulaic and terrible.

Because of this, most of my discussion might risk devolving into lamenting the loss of certain aspects of the series. To avoid this, I will try to talk about what the show added that was good, rather than what I missed after seeing that it was not present in the book.

The best addition to the television show is Amos, who was my favorite character in the tv show. I don't mean that he was not a character at all, but he (and many of the other characters) was fleshed out due to the increased runtime available to the show. I liked how they were able to create tension between him and Holden. In fact, this is an actual critique of the books, because there really was no tension between the characters in the books, even though there ought to have been. The book does a lot of telling, but little showing when it comes to Amos' sociopathy. The show was able to develop that and add a few scenes to establish his character.

Another great addition were the scenes between side characters. There was one that sticks out to me when Amos and Naomi and the rest were trying to get off Eros, and Amos ends up killing Miller's friend because that friend wanted to leave them behind. This, then, leads to another scene where Miller and Amos "square up" that I continually come back to. In the books, there is one main scene between these two characters, where they relate to one another because of their cruel nature, but that is about it. Amos is the kind of character to come to butt heads with everyone in the crew, so the show did a very good job building on that.

Something the television show did that the books could not do, due to the fundamental constraints of the medium, would be the visuals associated with the protomolecule, particularly during the sequence where Miller reenters Eros after it had been infected. I remember the surrealism and the dangerous beauty associated with protomolecule, especially knowing that it was absorbing and acquiring all its information by killing people; the visuals capture that feeling perfectly.

Finally, I like how they brought Avasaralla into the first season of the show. I know that she becomes a character in the later books, but I was actually very surprised to see that she was not even mentioned in the first book. By making this change, I think the show helped bolster her character and make her more interesting. It also helped expand the world a bit, given that we don't have a perspective, or all that much information, on Earth at this point in the book's story (though the same could be said about Mars).

Conclusion

Overall, I liked the book. I will give it a 7/10.