Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My love for science fiction was born on the beaches of Lake Michigan. As a kid we would get a cabin on the long white beaches of the lake’s eastern coast, and my dad always had a thick paperback in hand to read while me and my sister played in the sand. I can remember one book in particular just by its cover: Vernor Vinge’s Marooned in Realtime. I would stare at those covers and wonder at what sort of things must lurk between the covers. If I had to trace my love for science fiction to one point, that would be it: wondering at the covers of the books my dad read at the beach.

It’s a tradition I’ve continued, and one I appreciate even more now that I’m a father: taking a good paperback along to read on the shores of Lake Michigan. If you’re going to fill long days, you need a good page-turner that’s consistently compelling without requiring too much processing power. Last year the perfect beach book was The Martian. This year, because I was taken with the first few episodes of The Expanse on Syfy, it was Leviathan Wakes, the first novel of the series upon which the television show is based. And like last summer, it turned out to be the perfect choice.

James S.A. Corey is the author, but the name is actually a front for a creative team of two, one of which is George “Game of Thrones” Martin’s assistant. I haven’t read any of the Game of Thrones books (or seen the series), so I can’t say whether Leviathan Wakes brings some of the scale of Martin’s sensibilities of politics and peril into a scifi milieu, though there is certainly a good portion of both in the mix.

The authors themselves explain their goal of the novel as to situate in a specific science fiction landscape: they wanted it to function as a bridge between far-future and near-future scifi, between fiction that explores our first steps into the solar system and those that already assume humanity’s place on a much larger galactic stage.

Call this then a mid-future science fiction epic. Humans have colonized the solar system and splintered into three distinct groups: Earth/Luna, Mars, and the Belters. Corey does a good job painting the cultures and sensibilities of each group (though Earth takes a more minor role here than it does in the television series), and the considerations of humanity would develop both biologically and sociologically in the asteroid belt and outer moons of the solar system is handled deftly, adding to characterization and tensions rather than distracting from the overall plot.

Political tensions are already high between the three groups, and when a water carrier bound to the asteroid belt from Saturn’s rings is destroyed by what appears to be a Martian warship, the entire solar system tips toward war. The threat and eventual unfolding of this war is the background for the major mystery that plays out, and though the conflict is not as Machiavellian as portrayed on the TV series, the scope and implications of the war– what all out-conflict would mean in regions already as marginal and inhospitable as the outer solar system and the threat of even the simplest weapons rained down a gravity well on the inner planets– effectively keep tensions ramping up throughout the novel.

But the work isn’t a political war story. It’s more straightforward and gripping than that. It’s a mystery, and one the resolution of which has implications much wider than the solar system alone. It starts with a single missing person, and the narrative spirals out from there, following two characters with chapters alternating between their perspectives even when their trajectories eventually intertwine. Holden, the executive officer of the destroyed ice frigate, believes the solar system should know exactly what’s happening, even as that knowledge pushes political factions towards war. His character pairs well against the other main character, Miller, the world-weary detective on Ceres whose missing person case goes deeper than he could have imagined. Both soon find themselves, along with the remnant of Holden’s crew, alone in a solar system at war, trying to stop a resurrected alien threat.

Like I said, it was an ideal beach book, and I tore through it in a matter of days. The action flagged in only a few places, and there were enough major twists– and some surprisingly dark ones, as when the heroes learn the true nature of the threat they face when it’s unleashed on an inhabited asteroid– that the reveals felt significant. The characters were likable and well-rounded, and their varied idealisms or lack thereof played against each other well. My only complaint was that the support cast felt in comparison pretty one-dimensional. As competent and even badass (for lack of a better term) as Holden’s female counterpart, Naomi, and Miller’s missing girl turned out to be, both women characters in the novel felt like little more than the inspiration needed to motivate and support the heroic guy characters. In this respect, it felt a bit embarrassingly like a novel for men written by men.

Besides that wrinkle, Leviathan Wakes reminded me to a surprising extent of my own novel– surprising because I had never read anything by Corey when I wrote First Fleet. Both books have an underlying edge of horror, and both treat the science in the story accurately without being overwhelmed by detail. Both start with missing ships (though mine starts with an entire derelict fleet). I wouldn’t say this if it wasn’t true, but similarities in feel, scope, and even tone can allow me to tell people now that if they liked The Expanse, they should probably check out my work. And if they liked Leviathan Wakes but want something in that vein with strong female protagonists, they should definitely check out my work.

It might even be good on the beach.