# Leviathan Wakes, James SA Corey



## iansales

*12th February 2012 02:12 PM*

Ian Sales





Leviathan Wakes, the first book of the Expanse series, landed with a substantial thud during the summer of 2011. According to George RR Martin, it is a “kickass space opera”, a quote prominently displayed on the front cover. There is another approving quote by Charles Stross on the back. It received good reviews on a number of websites, and every book shop in the land boasted large numbers of the novel on their shelves.

And why not?

Space opera is popular at the moment. Further, the publishers have made no secret of the fact Corey is a pseudonym shared by Daniel Abraham, whose fantasy novels have been well received, and Ty Franck, George RR Martin’s assistant. Leviathan Wakes is a sf novel which should do well.

So it comes as a crushing disappointment to discover that Leviathan Wakes is completely regressive. It’s written as if British New Space Opera never happened. It reads like the sort of space opera prevalent in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with all the attitudes and sensibilities implicit in that. The world has moved on since then; the world of Leviathan Wakes has not.

Much has been made in reviews of the level of world-building in Leviathan Wakes, and for good reason. The two authors spend much of the early part of the novel setting out the Solar System they have built for their story. Unfortunately, it’s far from convincing. We’ll ignore for the moment the traditional science fiction approach to space travel used throughout the book, despite it being set less than two hundred years from now and trying for a realistic hard sf feel. It’s the societies in the Asteroid Belt with which I have the biggest problem.

There are some 150 million people living in the Asteroid Belt. The greatest concentration is six million in the tunnels inside the dwarf planet Ceres. There is no diversity. There is passing mention of nationalities other than the authors’ own – and a bar the characters frequent plays banghra music – but the viewpoint cast are American in outlook and presentation. Ceres itself is like some inner city no-go zone, with organised crime, drug-dealing, prostitution, under-age prostitution, endemic violence against women, subsistence-level employment… Why? It’s simply not plausible. Why would a space-based settlement resemble the worst excesses of some bad US TV crime show? The Asteroid Belt is not the Wild West, criminals and undesirables can’t simply wander in of their own accord and set up shop. Any living space must be built and maintained and carefully controlled, and everything in it must in some way contribute. A space station is much like an oil rig in the North Sea – and you don’t get brothels on oil rigs.

Further, what does all this say about gender relations in the authors’ vision of the twenty-second century? That women still are second-class citizens. One major character’s boss is a woman, and another’s executive officer is also female. But that female boss plays only a small role, and everything the XO does she does because she has the male character’s permission to do so (and it’s not even a military spaceship).

For the past twenty years, British space opera writers have been putting diversity, gender equality and some degree of realism into their space opera. They kept the Big Dumb Objects and the gosh-wow special effects, but they stopped treating women like part of the hero’s equipment. They created characters from cultures other than their own, and made an effort to present them authentically. They created space opera universes that were as diverse as our own world is now – if not more so. Leviathan Wakes is a step backwards. It is Old Space Opera, with all the criticisms that implies. Of course, it doesn’t goes so far as to have EE ‘Doc’ Smith’s planet of evil naked lesbians who only need the love of a good man to become useful members of the galactic “fraternity”, but in this day and age its world-building is no less regressive.

As for the plot… it has its moments, but it too hinges on an action which is so unbelievable, so difficult to swallow, despite repeated protestations in the prose itself, that suspension of disbelief is entirely lost. In a nutshell, two separate and different characters – a hard-boiled cop and an idealistic spaceship captain – stumble across a conspiracy, which subsequently triggers a war between Mars and the Asteroid Belt. The conspiracy centres around the discovery of a “protomolecule” (whatever that might be), which proves to be an alien invader from two billion years previously and which can infect, subsume and re-build human tissue – a sort of cross between The X-Files black oil and Lovecraft. The two protagonists eventually discover that behind all this is a corporation, which has been testing the protomolecule on unsuspecting human guineau pigs. A methodology which culminates in the deliberate infection of the one and half million inhabitants of the asteroid Eros.

I don’t believe it for an instant. There is no situation in which a corporation could plausibly consign so many people to a fate worse than death in the name of research. But just look at history, some people will say. It has happened in the past – in Nazi Germany, for example. Except history is not just a narrative of past events, it is also a learning process. We realised that slavery was morally wrong, for example, and we outlawed it. And two hundred years from now, if we are capable of building a space-based civilisation, we will have certainly learned that such actions as described in Leviathan Wakes are so wrong they are unthinkable.

Given all this, it seems churlish to complain that Leviathan Wakes‘ presentation of space travel and spacecraft owes far too much to present-day naval ships and not enough to what it might actually be like. While Abraham and Franck get the physics mostly right, it’s all far more like traditional science fiction than the story’s purported setting suggests. Even though a little authenticity in this area wouldn’t have impacted the “alien zombies in space” plot.

Most definitely not recommended.

The next book in the series, Caliban’s War, will be published June this year. I will not be reading it.


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## Rodders

I really enjoyed this book.


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## biodroid

Was it really that bad?


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## iansales

I thought it was bad, yes.


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## biodroid

I heard a lot og other reviews make it out to be good even GRRM says it's what Space Opera should be.


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## Werthead

It's entertaining fluff. It doesn't take on board all of the strides made in Space Opera over the last 20+ years (mostly by British authors, indeed) but then very little American SF has. Dialling down expectations when confronted by an American space opera novel is very much par for the course these days.

I find Ian's suggestion that it is impossible for another Holocaust to take place because humanity has learned better from history to be preposterous, however. If that was the case we wouldn't have had ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, atrocities in Darfur, civil war in Rwanda and the massacres and the religious strife in Iraq. In addition, the overwhelming lesson of history is that people don't learn from it, only what they've experienced themselves. After the Napoleonic Wars and WWI, it was vowed never to let such a devastating conflict happen again, and both times it did. Maybe television and film depictions of WWII and the Holocaust would serve better to educate people and prevent something similar happen again, but given that millions of people in the world believe the Holocause never happened in the first place despite the titanic and overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I fear not.


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## tonphil1960

Good book yes, nothing to write home about though. Let's see if the sequels are any better. 

T


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## iansales

Werthead said:


> I find Ian's suggestion that it is impossible for another Holocaust to take place because humanity has learned better from history to be preposterous, however.



What holocaust? I'm not talking about one nation going to war and committing atrocities, or one group of people committing atrocities on another. In the book, a single executive decides to test an alien virus on one and a half million people - and no one tells him this is a remarkably stupid idea? Imagine of the director of R&D for ICL decided to test a new poison by introducing it in to the water spuply of Birmingham?


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## spider from mars

Yeah Ian to be honest I was following your review without problem until you got to the holocaust bit. Not only do I find that an exceptionally naive view of history, I also think that if an author wants to introduce an amoral corporation or individual into their narrative then why the hell not? Sure I guess we've learned certain things, but a lot of the atrocities in Nazi Germany were down to the personality of Hitler himself - not particularly far fetched to imagine that another psycho gains some sort of authority (if you look back at Stalin, Pol Pot, about 2/3 of the Roman emperors...). And we've had all kinds of horrible, horrible events since then. (And I don't even want to get into some of the stuff done in the name of profit for the big companies over the years). I don't think that one guy going rogue in the future is beyond the realms of possibility.


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## iansales

Hitler - and it was not him alone - created a political environment in which certain actions not only became acceptable but desirable. Being at war certainly helped. A corporate director who will perform a fatal experiment on an unknowing public is another matter altogether. Given present legislation, safeguards, and public values, the president of Glaxo SmithKline would never consider secretly adding some drug to the water supply of New York City which would likely kill everyone. A terrorist, perhaps. But an _executive_? For _profit_?

But it's not just the lack of plausibility in the action, it's that the authors decided to use it in their story. They invented a one-dimensional villain, a cartoon Hitler, to drive their plot. And that's a failure of craft.


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## Werthead

It's a cartoon exaggeration, sure, but then it's also a deliberately old-school, soft-SF space opera, more STAR WARS and STAR TREK than Alastair Reynolds or Paul McAuley. Villains have done worse in that field before.

And we do live in a century when the heads of tobacco companies went to vast lengths and spent billions of dollars trying to bury the truth that their products killed people, in order to ensure their profit margins were maintained. We see the same now going on with some oil companies desperately trying to halt all attempts to crack down on pollution and global warming so they can continue making profits, regardless of what happens to certain low-lying areas of the planet, endangering a lot of lives.

Given the parameters of the story and the setting (these execs can sit on remote space stations and do things to people in a constained asteroid on the other side of the Solar system), the ambitions of the villain are not entirely implausible. Exaggerated and outrageous, sure.


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## iansales

Interesting analogies but I don't think they quite map onto the situation given in the book. Cigarettes - and alcohol, for that matter - are detrimental to your health, and people die from diseases caused by them. But they are not 100% fatal. And if they had been, no amount of money would have kept the cigarette companies in business. (For one thing, their market would have died out very quickly.)

The same is true of Union Carbide, who ignored a report by a safety engineer, didn't make the proposed change to their plant, and as a result thousands of people were poisoned and died. Not fixing that valve did not make it certain that people would die, only that if something happened, the valve would fail and the gas would leak.

In the book, the corporate executive hires mercenaries and gangsters to seal the asteroid so he can then release the alien virus - which he knows to be 100% fatal. This is akin to Philip Morris International spiking all its cigarettes with cyanide just to see what happens, and if they could perhaps profit from it.

As for the book being old school space opera... Why write old school space opera? What's next? Someone writing a racist, sexist spy thriller like Fleming did back in the 1950s?


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## Werthead

> Why write old school space opera? What's next?



Why not? At the basest level, it's where the money is: old-school US space opera authors like David Weber make much, much more money than any British 'new space opera' author bar Peter F. Hamilton. Certainly that's the reason to write it for any author starting out in the field (like Ty Franck) or who writes to feed himself, like Daniel Abraham, especially after the bombing of his fantasy series showed what happened when you try to write a more original, possibly even experimental work rather than something commercial (though Tor's inept marketing didn't help; it's gone down much better in the UK with a more competent publisher at the helm).

Also, it was probably not quite right for me to call LW totally old-school. It's clearly not in the same far-out space fantasy sphere as the likes of Weber. It may not be as 'realistic' as say Reynolds, but with its non-use of FTL and its restriction to only the Solar system, it's clearly nodding a bit further towards that end of the spectrum than a lot of the American space opera stuff.



> Someone writing a racist, sexist spy thriller like Fleming did back in the 1950s?



Well, someone did just publish a new JAMES BOND novel. Whether it had sexism/racism in it, I don't know.


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## iansales

The lack of FTL doesn't qualify as old school - the Lensman series had Kimball Kinnison flitting all over the galaxy via hyperspace. If anything, it's more of a nod towards hard sf than space opera. But in attitudes and sensibilities, then yes, LW is certainly old school - cf Smith's planet of evil naked lesbians who only needed the love of good men to become nice ladies.

I think the latest Bond book was by Jeffrey Deaver. Before that, it was Sebastian Faulks. But there have been 007 books going back decades. John Gardner wrote loads of them. I suspect most of them feature the sensibilities of the time they were written. I've read some of the Gardner ones, and they were ordinary 1990s thrillers and nothing like Fleming's originals. I also have the Faulks one on the TBR, so I guess I'll find out if that one's regressive.


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## belowforty

If you like Space Stories, Leviathan Wakes is a write book for you. The author James A. Corey creates a epic story in a  reasonably near future, with an excellently conceived of environment and  a fun story that is both action packed and thoughtful. Leviathan Wakes  is the embodiment of what good space opera should be: there's a bit of a  scientific background that helps to inform the plot, but the focus of  this story is on the characters and major events that blast the story  forward. Truly I like the book.


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## Kamosis

I liked this book specially for the detective side of it, but can anyone recommend me a good "new space opera" for comparison?


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## iansales

Try *Seeds of Earth* by Michael Cobley or *Stealing Light* by Gary Gibson. Or any of Iain M Banks' Culture novels - the most recent two were *Matter* and *Surface Detail*. Alastair Reynolds is closer to hard sf than space opera but is also definitely worth reading.


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## Mr. Aware Eagle

You make some good points in your review, iansales. But I have to say, I really enjoyed Leviathan Wakes.
To me, it was just a blast to read.  It's hard not to enjoy a book in which "The Mormons are going to be pissed" are the last words of a chapter.  I eagerly await the second of the series, which is due out in a few weeks, I believe.

(please let me know if this is too big of a bump.  I'm new here- still figuring out the etiquette.)


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## iansales

Yes, but just because you enjoyed a book doesn't make it a good one, and certainly doesn't make it an award-worthy one. If it did, then all McDonald's outlets would have Michelin stars...


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## Mr. Aware Eagle

iansales said:


> Yes, but just because you enjoyed a book doesn't make it a good one, and certainly doesn't make it an award-worthy one. If it did, then all McDonald's outlets would have Michelin stars...



Obviously what makes a book "good" is subjective.  Leviathan Wakes, to me, was pleasurable to read.  Is the delight one receives from a book not a factor in whether one considers it "good"?
Why should I not consider something I like "good"?  Because you don't like it?  Because you don't think it should win awards?
Certainly Leviathan Wakes isn't ground-breaking literature, nor is it innovative science fiction.  But it made me smile, made me laugh, and was quite entertaining.  To me, such pleasure, among many other things, is good.

EDIT
By the way, I liked your metaphor.  But we can't eat at five-star restaurants for dinner every night, can we?  I know I can't.


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## iansales

But that's just it - "good" is not subjective, it's objective. "Enjoyable", however, is subjective. As Adam Roberts has said, "aesthetic judgement is not an exact science", but nonetheless there are commonly accepted standards which are used to determine the literary quality of a piece of text. It's perhaps best to list those qualities which are indicative of bad books, such as: cardboard cutout characters, idiot plotting, recycled ideas, lack of rigour, clumsy prose...

I had no problem with the prose in *Leviathan Wakes* - while it wasn't bad, it never rose as high as good. But I did think the world-building and plotting were implausible, not to mention derivative in parts. To my mind, that's two reasons why it isn't a good novel. This in no way affects people's enjoyment of the book, however. But for a book to be short-listed for an award, I believe it has to be more than merely enjoyable.


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## Mr. Aware Eagle

iansales said:


> But that's just it - "good" is not subjective, it's objective. "Enjoyable", however, is subjective. As Adam Roberts has said, "aesthetic judgement is not an exact science", but nonetheless there are commonly accepted standards which are used to determine the literary quality of a piece of text. It's perhaps best to list those qualities which are indicative of bad books, such as: cardboard cutout characters, idiot plotting, recycled ideas, lack of rigour, clumsy prose...
> 
> I had no problem with the prose in *Leviathan Wakes* - while it wasn't bad, it never rose as high as good. But I did think the world-building and plotting were implausible, not to mention derivative in parts. To my mind, that's two reasons why it isn't a good novel. This in no way affects people's enjoyment of the book, however. But for a book to be short-listed for an award, I believe it has to be more than merely enjoyable.




Yes, "good" is absolutely subjective.  The quality of the world-building and plotting-- those are subjective judgements of a book.  As are the quality of the characters and quality of prose.  It all depends on what works for the individual.
That's not to say I thought that everything about Leviathan Wakes was "good," per your terms.  I think it has some flaws.  But, nonetheless, what I might see as a flaw, another might see as a valuable aspect.  It's subjective.  If you aren't willing to accept that, I suppose we're at a stalemate.


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## iansales

Purely subjective? So the craft, the art, the talent a writer puts into their book means nothing? So there's no point in a writer improving, because they can't get better because every such judgment is subjective and entirely personal to the reader? What about classics? Why are books chosen as classics? Is it because those books meet everyone's subjective determination of what makes a book good? And is every book prize given based entirely on the subjective judgment of the jury? Why bother selecting jurors who are writers or critics or who know something about literature? Why not just pick a random person off the street? If all judgments of quality are subjective, what are the point of experts? 

You cannot make useful value judgments on books - on anything - without some form of generally-accepted standards of quality.


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## HareBrain

If I might stick my nose in here, I think "good" is too vague a word to judge quality. An elephant can sling paint onto a canvas in such a way that the result might, by chance, appeal to some people. Does that make the painting "good"? Some would say yes, some no, but that's just so much blah unless they can also say why.

I think one more objective way to "grade" a book is to look at what the author has acheived in the light of (a) the goals he seems to have set himself, and (b) the goals that authors of that kind of book in general set themselves. If (a) and (b) clearly conflict, then discuss.


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## The Judge

I haven't read *Leviathan Wakes* so I can't comment on it, but I have to say, Ian, that I find it strange you're recommending *Seeds of Earth*, presumably on the basis that it's a "good" book, when to me it was anything but.  I certainly agree that there may be criteria we use to judge quality, but I think those criteria are internalised to a great extent, so that what you may have appreciated as eg world-building in SoE I found intolerable and irrelevant info-dumps, and what I thought were cardboard characters you found engaging and well-rounded individuals.

Anyway, although it's certainly an interesting discussion, it's perhaps better suited to a thread of its own if someone wants to start one, rather than taking up a review thread.


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## iansales

HareBrain said:


> I think one more objective way to "grade" a book is to look at what the author has acheived in the light of (a) the goals he seems to have set himself, and (b) the goals that authors of that kind of book in general set themselves. If (a) and (b) clearly conflict, then discuss.



Except "the author is dead"


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## Connavar

iansales said:


> Try *Seeds of Earth* by Michael Cobley or *Stealing Light* by Gary Gibson. Or any of Iain M Banks' Culture novels - the most recent two were *Matter* and *Surface Detail*. Alastair Reynolds is closer to hard sf than space opera but is also definitely worth reading.



I just read your review and i was wondering which other modern Space Opera would you recommend ?  Banks i will read and the others i might check out except Reynolds lost with Hard SF writing that wasnt good enough for me.

Is there other quality so called British New Space Opera in your eyes ?


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## iansales

Good question. In the front rank, you have Banks, Baxter, Hamilton and Reynolds. Then there's Paul McAuley, who never quite made the leap to their level; and Ken MacLeod, who these days mostly writes near-future sf. Next is Gibson and Cobley and Jaine Fenn, and more recently Gavin Smith or Marianne de Pierres.


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## Connavar

iansales said:


> Good question. In the front rank, you have Banks, Baxter, Hamilton and Reynolds. Then there's Paul McAuley, who never quite made the leap to their level; and Ken MacLeod, who these days mostly writes near-future sf. Next is Gibson and Cobley and Jaine Fenn, and more recently Gavin Smith or Marianne de Pierres.



Im actually reading Ken Macleod 1995 *The Star Fraction* as my first book of his.  After Reynolds was a dissapointment Macleod book gives me hope i will like the other similar british SF authors.  He writes with good prose,characters smart,political SF in near future that is exactly the kind of good SF i expect but then near future SF is the kind i read the genre for mostly. 

I dont like those scientist turned SF author which Reynolds was too much of atleast with *Revelation Space*.  I like that book in first half and then i couldnt finish it.

Paul McAuley seems to be rated for SF thrillers that sound like Richard Morgan books so i wont bother with his Space Opera books anyway.

I want to find out if Space opera kind written today is for me or not.  I enjoy the classic,50s-60s Opera kind those were less science and more story,social SF in space.

Hamilton isnt he some popular brick books ? fluff? I didnt know he was rated critically for his Space opera.


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## iansales

I wouldn't say Hamilton was critically rated but he's the biggest selling sf author in the UK. I'm surprised you didn't like Reynolds. Perhaps you ought to give him another go - perhaps try one of his short story collections, *Galactic North* or *Zima Blue*. McAuley has written a couple of sf thrillers, but he's primarily a hard sf author - his last three books, *The Quiet War*, *Gardens of the Sun* and *In The Mouth of the Whale* are all hard sf. But some of his books are New Space Opera, like *Eternal Light*, or the Confluence trilogy.

And if you don't like too much science in your story, you wouldn't like my book


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## Connavar

iansales said:


> I wouldn't say Hamilton was critically rated but he's the biggest selling sf author in the UK. I'm surprised you didn't like Reynolds. Perhaps you ought to give him another go - perhaps try one of his short story collections, *Galactic North* or *Zima Blue*. McAuley has written a couple of sf thrillers, but he's primarily a hard sf author - his last three books, *The Quiet War*, *Gardens of the Sun* and *In The Mouth of the Whale* are all hard sf. But some of his books are New Space Opera, like *Eternal Light*, or the Confluence trilogy.
> 
> And if you don't like too much science in your story, you wouldn't like my book



Hey i like Hard SF ,science oriented stories but the prose and storytelling must be good too.  Ian im trusting your knowledge,critical eye on good SF i dont care Hamilton is the most popular UK writer.  I was wondering about critically rated SF space operas.  Otherwise i would read weak,fluffy like you call the book in this thread 

McAuley i have read his Second Skin story and i like Hard SF,SF thrillers more than Space Opera so he is naturally more interesting to me.  

I have just gotten A Player of the Games by Banks and then it is Hard SF by McAuley.  Reynolds i saw promise early in that book and i will give him a last,second chance later on but not before more interesting British SF authors like Banks,McAuley,Meaney.


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## biodroid

I tried to read about 30 pages but could not do it anymore. You were right iansales, sorry you had to read the whole thing.


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## CDKelley

Shakespeare in Space
Possible spoilers follow:
The authors, Abraham and Franck, filled their novel LEVIATHAN WAKES with plenty of classical references. These allusions weren’t obscure or sparsely scattered like so many bread crumbs scattered on a bakery floor. What the authors gave readers were plenty of cookies, those super-sized ones as big as dinner plates. This should add an element of fun for any reader with knowledge of Greek and Roman mythology and of William Shakespeare’s plays.
First consider Julie Mao’s full name: Juliette Andromeda Mao. The name Juliette suggests a reference to Shakespeare’s ROMEO AND JULIET. The pieces fall into place after the connection to the play is made. Earth and Mars mirror the Capulet and Montague families with their long-running feud. Miller plays Romeo to Julie Mao’s Juliet. Miller even has his Rosaline. Holden, described in the novel as a righteous man, closely matches Friar Laurence. Fred is the Prince of Verona. And so on and so forth, many of the LEVIATHAN WAKES characters have counterparts in Shake’s play. WAKES narrative roughly follows the events in ROMEO AND JULIET. For example, misunderstandings rekindled rivalries between old antagonists, planet Mars and planet Earth, much as random street violence reignited the blood feud between the families Capulet and Montague. After events play out between Miller and Dresden (a Tybalt-like character), Miller is banished from the presence of Holden and Fred. Like Friar Laurence, Holden’s misguided attempts to help end the crisis he played no small part in creating usually made matters worse. The two meetings between Miller and Julie recall the tragic scene when Romeo enters Juliet’s tomb without prior warning that Juliet had taken a drug which only simulated death. 
Next consider the authors use of named planets and asteroids in WAKES. Their choices have deeper meanings in the narrative. Recall Apuleius’ tale of Eros and Psyche. The god Eros, or Cupid, falls in love with a human woman named Psyche. Eros’ mother, the goddess Venus, hates Psyche at first. But after some nastiness on her part, Venus relents. Eros convinces the gods to allow Psyche to partake of the ambrosia (think of the Brown Goo spewing Vomit Zombies here) which would morph her into one of the gods. The words “psyche” and “Andromeda”, Julie Mao’s middle name, refer one way or another to the mind or brain. And remember Eros and Psyche produced a child named Hedone—the source of the word “hedonism”. In WAKES, Space Station Eros is all about hedonism. Abraham and Franck choose Canterbury, Rocinante, and Scopuli to name some of the ships in WAKES further hinting at deeper meanings to be found by the careful reader.
LEVIATHAN WAKES gets two stars, with a third star added for including some amusing and thought provoking cookies.
Hooray for cookies.
In June, 2012, the next book in the Expanse series comes out. The name, CALIBAN’S WAR, suggests an allusion to Shake’s play The Tempest. Political intrigue plays an important role in The Tempest. The authors of CALIBAN’S WAR have hinted at a similar theme in the new novel. Taken together, WAKES and CALIBAN’S WAR, should make for entertaining, light, summer reading without trying the reader’s patience with too much psycho-babble or techno-babble.


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## Werthead

*The Expanse #2: Caliban's War by James S.A. Corey (Daniel Abraham & Ty Franck)*



> An  alien protomolocule has taken root on Venus. Earth and Mars are in a  shooting match over an incident on Ganymede. The Solar system is moving  towards all-out anarchy and war, and it falls to a well-meaning meddler,  a canny politician, a Martian marine and a grief-stricken botanist to  try to stop the descent into madness.
> 
> _Caliban's War_ is the second novel in *The Expanse* series, following on from last year's well-received _Leviathan Wakes_.  This is old-school space opera, featuring the crew of a spacecraft as  they attempt to save the Solar system from an alien menace. The series  features some nods towards serious science - the ships work strictly by  Newtonian physics and there is no FTL travel, with the scope of events  being limited (so far) to the Solar system alone - but it's certainly  not hard SF. The emphasis is being on an entertaining, fast-paced read,  and the book pulls this off with aplomb.
> 
> The cast of characters  has been expanded in this volume, with only Holden returning as a POV  character from the first volume. Unlike the first novel, which had a  grand total of two POVs, this second volume features four: Holden, UN  politician Avasarala, botanist Prax and marine Bonnie. This means that  the authors have three major new characters to introduce us to, as well  as continuing the storyline from the first novel and evolving the  returning cast of characters (Holden and his crew). This results in the  pace being marginally slower than in _Leviathan Wakes_, although  certainly not fatally so. Indeed, Abraham and Franck imbue the new  characters with interesting backstories, motivations and quirks. It's  also quite amusing that the most enjoyable character in an action-packed  space opera is a 70-year-old politician with a potty mouth.
> 
> There's  some major shoot-outs, a few big space battles, a close encounter with a  rampaging monster in a zero-gravity cargo hold and other action set  pieces that are handled well, but the book falters a little in its  handling of politics (which are fairly lightweight) and the  characterisation of the bad guys, who never rise above the obvious.
> 
> _Caliban's War _(***½)  is not as accomplished as its forebear but is still a page-turning,  solidly enjoyable read. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.


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## Rodders

This is definately on my "to buy" list.


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## Galacticdefender

Yes, I know, this thread is a bit old, but I'm posting my comments about the review here. Also I'm quite enjoying Caliban's War.

Well, I thought it was a good read at least. Space Opera is by far my favorite genre, and Leviathan Wakes is a pretty good space opera in my opinion. The whole “Ceres is filled with criminal scum” thing got to me a bit too, however. If this story was set say, 600 years in the future and the entire asteroid belt was completely self-sufficient, then maybe, but it kind of irritated me. 
Also the fact that the crewmembers hijack a military vessel and know exactly how to fly it was a bit strange.
I really don’t know where you are getting the whole sexism thing from. There were plenty of female characters that were portrayed well enough. I highly doubt there were any intentional messages against women.
The characters weren’t that interesting, Holden was alright, and so was Miller, but the other characters were kind of just cookie-cutter space opera characters. 
I quite liked the setting though. Having a space opera that loses no sense of scale despite being set in our own solar system was pretty cool. 
Anyway, it was an entertaining read, and I would recommend it. I’ll definitely be reading Caliban’s War. 
(Also I think this book was nominated for the Hugo award. Not sure if it deserves praise that high, but it was a pretty good book)


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## Nerds_feather

I'm resurrecting this thread from the dead because I've just finished *Leviathan Wakes* and have some criticisms that complement Ian's. 

Namely, I felt the characters were stock cardboard and unfortunately familiar, the future envisioned was overly American and the book was overly deferential to (pre-British New Wave) libertarian space opera traditions.


----------



## Werthead

*The Expanse #3: Abaddon's Gate*



> A mysterious alien artifact - a gateway - has been constructed beyond Uranus's orbit. Its purpose is unknown. Representatives from Earth, Mars and the Belt are rushing to investigate, among them, reluctantly, Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante. The artifact holds the key to the future of the human race, an opportunity to spread mankind to the stars...but it is also a weapon that could incinerate the entire Solar system if it falls unto the wrong hands.
> 
> Abaddon's Gate is the third novel in The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey (aka Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck), which is expected to run to nine novels (and "Will soon be a major television series"). This book picks up after the events of Caliban's War, although unfortunately some of the more notable characters from that book are missing. Instead, we have a number of new POV characters joining the returning figures of Holden and the Rocinante crew.
> 
> The book initially opens with the different factions racing to the gate with their own agendas and goals in mind. There's a murderous character plotting vengeance on Holden in a (not very convincing) way of getting him involved in the plot. There's tensions on the Belter command ship between the psychotic captain and his more reasonable executive officer and security chief. There's a religious-but-non-fanatical leader who couples pious morality with hard-headed practicality. And so on. It's all reasonable enough, until the crew arrive at the gate and pass through it into a strange sub-pocket of space where physical rules can be rewritten and an ancient intelligence uses the form of Detective Miller to speak to Holden.
> 
> At this point things take a turn for the bizarre and it feels like The Expanse is about to break out into a fully-blown hard SF novel. The "slow zone" of the gateway space feels like a nod to Vernor Vinge, and the limitations of slower-than-light travel when the laws of physics keep changing is the sort of thing that would earn an Alastair Reynolds nod of approval. It's all nicely set up for The Expanse to move away from its MOR space opera roots and turn into something more than explosions and gunfights.
> 
> Except that doesn't happen. The novel soon falls back into its comfort zone of explosions and gunfights, with the major characters all forced into choosing sides between the psychotic captain of the Belter command ship and his other senior crew. This would have more resonance if we'd had the mad captain set up a bit better, but he isn't. It just feels like he's there and mad and antagonistic because, well, the book wouldn't have any conflict without him.
> 
> The action set-pieces are generally well-handled, there's some very nice zero-gee combat scenes and Abraham and Franck don't let up on the pace until the last page. There is no denying that there's fun to be had here. But it also feels a bit shallow, and it reinforces the feeling that The Expanse is SF with the training wheels left on. Abaddon's Gate feels like it should have been allowed to make a turn into crazy hard SF weirdness, but instead it's shoehorned back into being an action story. A very nicely-done action story, but there is military SF around that does this stuff a lot better.
> 
> As it stands, Abaddon's Gate (***½) ends up being just another readable, fast-paced and entertaining instalment of a readable, fast-paced and entertaining series. Which is fine, but there is definitely the prospect here, between the authors' excellent worldbuilding and solid prose skills, of elevating things onto another level. Hopefully later instalments will deliver on the promise of the series, which is so far tantalising but unfulfilled. Abaddon's Gate is available now in the UK and USA.


----------



## Brian G Turner

_Leviathan Wakes_ is currently only 99p on Amazon UK for the Kindle version - so have bought it.


----------



## Vertigo

I've just finished this and I'm afraid I largely agree with @iansales:


Following all its glowing reviews Leviathan Wakes was a huge disappointment. The main ideas of the book are good and interesting; a three way political stew coming to the boil with a massively destabilising discovery adding spice. All this had great promise but it sadly failed desperately in its execution – at least for me. I can see how many might have enjoyed it, as the writing itself is really quite good with excellent pacing keeping the pages turning, well written action scenes, good dialogue, albeit heavily laced with clichés, and the use of some well proven tropes. Those last two points however are at the root of much of my disappointment; well proven tropes are always likely to result in popular acclaim, but for me at least these ones are far too well proven and just plain worn out.

The two main characters are the main guilty parties, though the supporting characters are almost as bad. We are presented with Miller, a recently divorced, burnt out cop who used to be good but is now viewed by his colleagues as a bit of a joke and just beginning to realise it himself. Think a mix of Deckard (Harrison Ford) from Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (more the film version than the book) and Doyle (Gene Hackman) from The French Connection (Miller even wears a porkpie hat, for goodness sake). This is such a worn out trope my heart fell as soon as it became apparent it was being used for one of the major characters. Then we are given the righteous Holden (note that these are the only two significant characters always referred to by surname – maybe for a touch of gravitas? – all others are referred to by first name). Holden is righteous ex-military officer who was dishonourably discharged for attempting to strike a senior officer, for very good and very righteous reasons, of course, and is now XO of a tramp ice transporter. He has major self-doubt issues but, as we are constantly reminded by various characters throughout the book, he is so righteous (and, yes, they use that word at least as much as I have) that all his well-meaning screw ups can be forgiven (and he makes plenty without apparently learning from them). Oh and he’s just so good looking that a broken nose received later in the book can only enhance his sex appeal.

If those two tired tropes aren’t enough we have the female interest; an initially strong seeming tom girl chief engineer who we are told, again repeatedly (how many times do these authors have to tell us stuff before they believe we’ll remember it?), that she can fix anything and who refuses to carry a gun and hides her head in her hands when bullet start flying, giving lots of opportunity for Holden to provide manly (righteous!) protection. Then there’s the ex-military pilot who is fine when he’s flying a spaceship in a desperate action but turns into a gibbering wreck in any other kind of action and, of course, finally we have the tough, beer (and anything else) swilling, brawny, rock solid, dependable ex-military engineer. I mean, all we’re really missing is an old wise wizard and a teenage kid who doesn’t know how special he is… oh, sorry, switched genres there!

I could go on about the noir Blade Runner/Cyberpunk style criminal-centric worlds of the asteroid belt but I grow tired and I’m sure you get the idea by now. I could also go on about the numerous small plot holes and implausible plot driving decision made by the characters but enough already. Leviathan Wakes is so full of cliché’s it’s frankly embarrassing to read at times. The punchy writing did keep me reading until the (very predictable) end but I can’t see me going on to the other books in the series.


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## Bugg

Pretty much sums up how I felt about it, too.  I agree with what you say about the pacing and yet I found it quite a struggle to read, and I think that's because I didn't care about the characters at all.  I also found - and forgive me if I'm remembering this incorrectly (I've managed to blot most of the book from my memory) - the whole infection thing tedious, just an excuse to do zombies-of-sorts in space.  I finished it and thought I'd enjoyed it, but I've had absolutely no inclination to read the next book.

Also, I tried watching the tv series.  Made it through two episodes and haven't watched any further.  I didn't think it was particularly bad, but there was just so much else else I'd rather watch (which, similarly, also applies to how I feel about the books).  And the porkpie hat looks even sillier in action than it seemed in my imagination.


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## Vertigo

I was sort of prepared to live with the zombies as it was only a very small part and the final result was, I thought, actually a bit more satisfying though inconsistent; each infection from the original crew to Julie to the population of Eros behaved in very different ways. So for example why was Julie the only one to still be relatively complete and recognisable whilst everyone else's body parts seem to have gone off wandering about separately and why is Julie seemingly the only one left with any volition of her own and why didn't she turn into a zombie? This was given some vague possible explanation along the lines of the protomolecule improvising differently under different circumstances, however it was one example of the many small pot holes I kept stumbling on. Another was how Holden, himself ex-space navy, has to keep being filled in on standard space navy practices by both Amos and Alex (such as self destruct and turning off transponders). There were many others...


----------



## Vince W

I only read up until the space zombies and that was it for me and it was a massive struggle to reach that far. If I were to bother writing a review it would have been far more vitriolic than yours @Vertigo.


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## Vertigo

I did feel it had almost been written with a TV/film franchise in their sights. You cold almost see them going through a mass appeal checklist:
Burnt out but honourable cop - check
Manly righteous hero - check
Cute but independent love interest  - check
Zombies - check
Space battles - check

and so on...


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## Vince W

Vertigo said:


> I did feel it had almost been written with a TV/film franchise in their sights. You cold almost see them going through a mass appeal checklist:
> Burnt out but honourable cop - check
> Manly righteous hero - check
> Cute but independent love interest  - check
> Zombies - check
> Space battles - check
> 
> and so on...



Very true. I also felt it was written _while_ watching TV. I can hear them now - 'Hey, did you see Castle/CSI(x)/Walking Dead/...? You know that part... Yeah, let's do that.'


----------



## Werthead

*The Expanse #4: Cibola Burn*



> An alien artifact has opened a wormhole nexus leading to a thousand different star systems, all of them containing at least one Earth-like world. A mass exodus, the greatest diaspora in human history, is threatening to take place but one group of Belter settlers have already staked a claim to a world they call Ilus, although the corporation granted UN settlement rights prefers to call it New Terra. As the settlers and corporate representatives resort to violence, it falls to Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante to mediate their dispute. This proves to be a lot easier said than done.
> 
> Cibola Burn is the fourth novel in The Expanse series by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (writing as James S.A. Corey) and the first to take place outside the Solar system. The Expanse's big success in its opening novels was that it created a relatively restrained vision of the future, with humanity forced to employ slower-than-light travel between the worlds of the Solar system. After the events of Abaddon's Gate, the way to the stars has been thrown open, but it still takes months to get anywhere. For the colonists on Ilus and later the Rocinante crew, this puts them well out of the range of immediate help when things go disastrously wrong.
> 
> Each of the Expanse novels has taken a somewhat different tone, helped by Holden being the only continuing POV character, with the rest being exclusive to each novel. Cibola Burn feels like a Western (and more Deadwood than Gunsmoke), with the unruly settlers on the frontier being reeled back in by the mining company backed up by a reluctant sherrif with Indians and smallpox on the horizon. There's lots of hard moral questions and tough challenges posed by both the situation and the environment. This shift of tone is welcome and well-played as it allows a tighter focus on real, low-tech issues and solutions like the first (and still the best) novel in the series, Leviathan Wakes. The threat of the protomolecule, its creators and its even more enigmatic enemies does reassert itself towards the end of the book, along with a space-borne problem that feels a little too reminiscent of Abaddon's Gate, but it definitely takes a back seat for the most of the book.
> 
> The focus is on three new characters: a Belter settler named Basia, who is reluctantly drawn into becoming a terrorist; a security officer called Havelock on the orbiting corporation ship and a scientist named Elvi who just wants to be left alone so she can get on with cataloguing the planet's crazy flora and fauna.  These are all well-crafted characters, if not particularly original. Havelock, as the company man who suddenly realises his corporate masters are useless, is an archetype that is looking dangerously overused at this point in the series. Other characters are less well-defined, and main villain Murtry is as cliched and uninteresting as they come: a rigid, dogmatic man unable to adapt to changing circumstances unless it involves shooting things. I get the impression that Abraham and Frank wanted to create a morally murky situation with sympathetic POVs on both sides, but Murtry's outright villainy soon means that the corporate side loses all sympathy and interest.
> 
> For a novel almost 600 pages long (in hardcover!) the pages fly past briskly and there's an interesting move away from the gunfights and set piece explosions of the previous novels. There's still a zero-G battle or three, but the writers dial back the more obvious shooting in favour of evoking the occasional SF sensawunda that represents the genre at its best. The social commentary on us bringing our baggage to the stars is well-handled, if a little obvious, and events run enjoyably up to a climax that hints at bigger things to come.
> 
> Cibola Burn (****) is the best book in the series since Leviathan Wakes, restoring focus and verve to a series that felt like it was becoming predictable. It'll be interesting to see how they adapt this book to the screen in later seasons of The Expanse, however. Although the producers will likely enjoy the far smaller scale (and hence budget) of things, I can't see viewers being too interested in taking a season off from the rest of the Solar system to see Holden and his crew dealing with frontier settler problems. But as a novel, it workers very well. The book is available now in the UK and USA.


----------



## Werthead

*The Expanse #5: Nemesis Games*



> Several years of constant duty has left the independent frigate Rocinante damaged and in severe need of a refit. With the ship in a repair dock for several months of work, the crew scatters back to their homes to catch up with old friends and family. With humanity moving out to explore the new worlds beyond the alien wormhole gateway, it feels like a time of peace and opportunity. This abruptly changes when the largest terrorist attack in human history kills millions and suddenly the Solar system is plunged into chaos. The crew of the Rocinante have to regroup and stop the crisis from getting even worse.
> 
> Nemesis Games is the fifth of nine planned books in The Expanse series, carrying us firmly into the second half of the story. Co-authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (writing as James S.A. Corey) have structured this series in a very interesting way, using only Jim Holden as their ongoing POV character and swapping other characters in and out with every passing volume. The story has also evolved in an organic way, moving from a near-future thriller rooted in realism in Leviathan Wakes to much grander stories involving aliens and gateways, as well as frontier colonialism. This approach helps keep things fresh, especially when compared to the numerous military SF series out which go on year after year, getting more stale with each passing volume.
> 
> Nemesis Games is different to the preceding books in several ways. First off, it splits the POVs between the four crewmembers of the Rocinante. Holden still present, but Alex, Amos and Naomi now all get their own storylines and perspectives. This is a very welcome and overdue move, especially for Naomi who always clearly had more background and complexity going on than Holden (who is often somewhat dense, it has to be said) was able to discern from her. Focusing on Amos, a deeply violent man who requires external stabilising forces to keep himself from snapping altogether, is also a rewarding move which furthers his character more. Alex is the most straightforward crewmember on the Rocinante and this makes him arguably the least interesting, but Abraham and Franck throw in a crowd-pleasing move by teaming him up with Bobbie Draper, the fan-favourite Martian marine from Caliban's War, for most of his mission.
> 
> The rotating chapter structure keeps things ticking along quite nicely and at first it appears that our characters are all involved in completely different events. Links soon appear between them and suddenly everything comes crashing together when the terror attacks take place. This is a game-changing moment in the series when the powers and factions we have gotten used to through four previous volumes are challenged by the arrival of a new, more dangerous force and all the existing rules are thrown out. The abruptness of the catastrophic attack is brutally effective, even if the scale of the conspiracy required to bring it about is at times unconvincing: Abraham and Franck evoke a similar feeling of shock to the events of 9/11 but on a far vaster scale involving thousands of conspirators, but that makes the likelihood of the plan succeeding without being found out rather less likely.
> 
> Once chaos has been unleashed the authors slam down the accelerator. Nemesis Games moves rapidly between Alex and Bobbie on a desperate rescue mission to Holden's politicking on Tycho Station to Amos and Clarissa Mao trying to escape from a scene of utter devastation to Naomi reluctantly trapped on the inside of the criminal conspiracy. There's a feeling of doom-laden relentlessness to the book which keeps things moving along quickly. This is also the first time in the series where the authors haven't felt the need to tie up the primary storyline before the end of the novel, as they seem to consider Nemesis Games and the forthcoming sixth volume, Babylon's Ashes, as a duology within the framework of the larger series. The novel ends with the bad guys still at large, the catastrophic aftermath of the attack still unfolding and new threats emerging beyond the wormhole gateways.
> 
> There are flaws in all of this: Naomi is captured and spends the bulk of the novel imprisoned and trying to talk her captors down from their villainy. Although the authors change things up by having Naomi's captors being her friends from childhood, it still feels a little too much like a retread of Naomi's story in the previous novel in the series, Cibola Burn. The actual moment of the terror attack also feels a little undercooked, as we move from the villain declaiming that something huge is about to happen to seeing a news report on the aftermath. But the impact on the characters is immense and the way it restructures the story going forwards is quite well-handled. In addition, some readers may be disappointed that there is little to no expansion given for the protomolecule storyline and the mystery of what happened to its creators, but arguably after three books focusing on that to the possible detriment of the human story, that's not too much of a problem.
> 
> Nemesis Games (****½) finally fulfils the promise laid down by Leviathan Wakes five years ago and is the best volume in The Expanse to date. The novel is available now in the UK and USA. The next book in the series, Babylon's Ashes, will be published on 2 November 2016.


----------



## Steve Soldwedel

Galacticdefender said:


> Yes, I know, this thread is a bit old, but I'm posting my comments about the review here. Also I'm quite enjoying Caliban's War.
> 
> The whole “Ceres is filled with criminal scum” thing got to me a bit too, however.



OK. I apologize, because I know this is a significant necropost, at least with regard to the singular message to which I'm replying, but I feel compelled to speak up about the gripes about the seedy nature of the Belt in The Expanse novels (I assume the gripe extends also to the show).

I look at the Belt as any other frontier. Whether the Canadian wilderness in pre-Revolution North America or the the American West during the Victorian Era, or any other example you care to cite. Yes, I know that technology is much more advanced in The Expanse, and one could argue that renders less relevant the isolating issues, perhaps, of Pony Express and other slow methods of correspondence. But the telegraph and steam trains did not automatically "civilize" the Wild West, so why should more immediate kinds of communication and transportation civilize the Belt?

So long as the colonial powers (in this case Earth and Mars) are getting what they want from their colony / economic interest (in this case the Belt) what incentive is there to maintain, at any outpost, anything above the threshold of law and order that permits colonial needs to be met?

Additionally, I posit that those living on the frontier would be the same kind of people who did so in the past: a combination of intrepid adventurers, miscreants, thieves, debtors, desperate people, et al (and their descendants) all hoping for greater opportunities than existed from where they emigrated. I wouldn't expect any place populated by such a variety of characters to be a squeaky clean utopia.

Personally, I would love to live in a time when we humans have figured out how to coexist without exploiting others to sate our own greed, but I don't see that happening any time soon. And I can easily imagine that it won't even happen 200 years from now.

Additionally, peaceful coexistence and squeaky clean utopias make, in my opinion, for boring stories. If history has proven anything to us it is that we are never satisfied. And I don't see us, as a species, ever being satisfied, even with paradise. I believe that there will always be those who find a way to undermine our well-being as a species, just to satisfy their own selfishness.


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## Steve Soldwedel

Note: I don't mean to barrage the very thread I've revived, so I'll refrain from further comment after this remark.



Bugg said:


> And the porkpie hat looks even sillier in action than it seemed in my imagination.



Ha. I love how everyone piles on Miller for his silly hat.

I don't wear hats, myself, but some people do. If that seems like an obvious statement, it's intended to be. While I don't wear hats, and I think some who do look silly and/or ridiculous in them, it doesn't preclude their fashion choices. Douchebaggery is in the eye of the beholder.

Perhaps Miller _is_ a washed up douchebag. Does that make him a bad character? I don't think so. But I've got a soft-spot for Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, and I really enjoy a lot of Elmore Leonard's output, so the hardboiled detective trope is near to my heart ... even though, objectively, I realize that these guys are sad, broken men whom I'd probably not want to know in real life.

But I don't read stories to see my real life reflected back at me. I read stories to see people behaving nobly or badly or, hopefully, both nobly and badly. I read to see--preferably flawed--characters be who they are, even if they are a douchebag. And, if the portrayal seems genuine enough, I keep reading, to see where the story takes them.


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## Vertigo

it's not just that it's a frontier society, it's also in an environment totally inimical to all life requiring a lot of well maintained technology to continue functioning and I just don't see this sort of society maintaining the environmental integrity of such a place. The whole thing would, I feel, collapse sooner rather than later. And that is what really pushed my disbelief suspension too far. I should add that this is the case with all too many such sf fantasy stories.

On the whole pork pie hat burned out detective thing; it is corny but it still can work given some sort of fresh angle; simply setting it in sf is not enough for me and the whole burned out detective aspect felt to me like it was lifted straight out of the French Connection (right down to the pork pie hat) and just put in space. There was nothing really new in it and, for me, became tedious very quickly.

Bottom line; I found the whole thing to be little more than a montage of everything the authors could find that had ever contributed to a successful tv series. And note I say tv series not book there.

However I must add that clearly the books and to series have been tremendously successful, so it seems probable I'm being just a little over critical


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## Vince W

No so @Vertigo. Your feelings echo mine about this series. I've never watched the programme, but the first book, which I only got part way through, felt like the writers had made a list of things from past successful stories that had to be included.


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## psikeyhackr

I nearly quit when I got to the "vomit zombies".  It was merely OK up to that point.

But I just reread *Cold as Ice* by Charles Sheffield.  I think it is better than *Leviathan Wakes*.  But it is a post-war story not a start of war story. 

Cold As Ice by Charles Sheffield

Who knows what takes off in the market place.  Fortunately *The Expanse* mini-series seems to be better than the book.  Maybe it is the medium and done well for it.


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## Vince W

psikeyhackr said:


> I nearly quit when I got to the "vomit zombies".



That was precisely the point I binned the book.


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## Steve Soldwedel

Vertigo said:


> On the whole pork pie hat burned out detective thing; it is corny but it still can work given some sort of fresh angle; simply setting it in sf is not enough for me and the whole burned out detective aspect felt to me like it was lifted straight out of the French Connection (right down to the pork pie hat) and just put in space. There was nothing really new in it and, for me, became tedious very quickly.



I can certainly see why all of the things a lot of you have cited would be turnoffs. I suppose where I benefit is from never having read the book, and only seeing the series. To this point, I've enjoyed it. And, perhaps mercifully, they've replaced Miller's porkpie hat with a fedora. 

This whole vomit zombies thing intrigues me ... not in that it makes me want to read the books, but in that it exists and you all hate it. I tend to avoid anything with zombies in it, which means that, as a writer, I'm missing out on cashing in on the slew of zombie-related media there is, these days, but c'est la vie. I just can't deal with it; no trope bores me more.

In The Expanse show, they seem to have mercifully avoided the zombies, as yet. The closest glimpse I got of what I figure you're talking about are the folks on Eros that got radiated and exposed to the protomolecule.


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## psikeyhackr

Vince W said:


> I only read up until the space zombies and that was it for me and it was a massive struggle to reach that far. If I were to bother writing a review it would have been far more vitriolic than yours @Vertigo.



It is funny what it takes to evaluate a story or TV show.  In a way I like *The Expanse* better than *Star Trek* visually because the Enterprise comes across more as a flying hotel than a space ship.  But that does not come across in the book.   But the book really pissed me off when the asteroid jumps out of the way of the collision with the star ship without the slightest clue of how the zombie mud knew the space ship was coming.

psik


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## psikeyhackr

Steve Soldwedel said:


> In The Expanse show, they seem to have mercifully avoided the zombies, as yet. The closest glimpse I got of what I figure you're talking about are the folks on Eros that got radiated and exposed to the protomolecule.



That's them.  It does not matter what pseudo-scientific BS is given for the zombies. 

Protomolecule

I finished *Leviathan Wakes* but I decided I was not buying any more of the series.  So I will have to see what the miniseries does with it.  In some ways I am more forgiving of TV than books.    The series seems to be about hooking a readership to make a buck, not create anything that I would regard as forward thinking science fiction.  Belters and interplanetary wars are nowhere near new concepts, but how many people who just watch science fiction know that?

psik


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## Vertigo

Interesting comments all. maybe this is an example of the TV being better than the book. I've not watched the tv series yet but I rarely watch tv these days.


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## Brian G Turner

Well, I started reading it, but put it down after the Prologue as it looked like it was just going to be _Zombies in Space_, which holds no interest for me. However, having begun watching the series and really enjoying the first episode, I think I'll end up picking this up again. I'll watch the series first, though, then read the book after, so I can't get frustrated about the bits they changed for the TV adaptation.


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## Bugg

I had a similar reaction to LW the first time I read it, too.  Things improve a lot, though, for what it's worth.  Also, as book to screen adaptations go, The Expanse is very good, IMO.  I actually much prefer it as an adaptation to Game of Thrones.  There, I've said it


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## elvet

Brian G Turner said:


> Well, I started reading it, but put it down after the Prologue as it looked like it was just going to be _Zombies in Space_, which holds no interest for me. However, having begun watching the series and really enjoying the first episode, I think I'll end up picking this up again. I'll watch the series first, though, then read the book after, so I can't get frustrated about the bits they changed for the TV adaptation.


Had it been about zombies, it would have lost me as a viewer (and a reader for that matter). 


Spoiler



As it turns out, the protomolecule’s effect is far more elegant than just creating zombies.


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## Werthead

*The Expanse #6: Babylon's Ashes*



> The Solar system has been plunged into chaos. A third of the Martian fleet has defected to a new cause, an OPA breakaway faction has committed the greatest terrorist attack in human history and the new colony worlds beyond the gateways are engulfed in strife. It once again falls on the shoulders of Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante to help end the crisis.
> 
> Babylon's Ashes is the sixth novel (of nine) in The Expanse series, but is really the second half of the preceding novel, Nemesis Games, which took the Expanse universe we'd all grown to know and tossed it through a blender. Ashes picks up the wreckage from that book and tries to restore some sense of normalcy to the setting.
> 
> The book is huge in scope. In fact, it's the broadest in scale of the series to date, with numerous POV characters in multiple factions, including picking up on various one-off POVs who appeared in earlier novels. Seeing characters like Prax and Anna show up again several volumes after their own storylines apparently ended and lend a hand (or take a view) on what's going on is quite good fun.
> 
> However, since Babylon's Ashes is pretty much exactly the same length as the other books in the series, this enlarged scope does mean we get a lot less time with other characters. In fact, the book's pace feels a bit accelerated, as we pin-pong back and forth between a large cast. Having more characters in a standard-sized book means that we spend less time with each character, and the resulting story arcs are much choppier.
> 
> It also doesn't help that there is a repetition of structure and plot here. We've seen Jim Holden and the team getting into hijinks with the Nauvoo aka Behemoth aka Medina Station and the "slow zone" previously whilst various other factions shoot at one another and here we are, doing it again.
> 
> The Expanse is, at its best, a thrillingly executed political thriller in space, with normally enjoyable adventure elements added. At its worst, the series' workmanlike prose and tight focus can leave it feeling repetitive and a bit MOR as these kind of space operas go. Nemesis Games was probably the best book in the series because it gave readers a "Red Wedding" level of shock, something which overthrew the apple carts and put our heroes on the back foot with a genuinely thrilling sense that anything could happen. Babylon's Ashes wastes that promise by lowballing the damage done from the disaster in the previous novel (the characters are now completely removed from the carnage so it's only related through statistics and people looking glumly at reports on screens), eliminating the over-arcing threat easily with a convenient mcguffin and then establishing a new status quo with almost indecent haste.
> 
> That's not to say that Babylon's Ashes is a bad book. Even at its weakest, The Expanse is competent. But there is the prevailing feeling here that the books feel like a first draft with the (decidedly superior) TV adaptation coming in afterwards and rearranging the character and plot elements into something considerably more compelling.
> 
> Babylon's Ashes (***) is readable and interesting, but after Nemesis Games it feels decidedly underwhelming, occasionally bordering on the lacklustre. It is available now in the UK and USA.


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## Rodders

I have to say that I thought the ending on this one was a massive cop out.


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## Ashley R

Well, a lot of views here that couldn't be further from mine if I tried.

I saw the first few episodes on the show first. The story didn't really grab me until the Donnager turned up, and then it was like the story turned on the afterburners and took off like a rocket. Because we got to it late, the second season was available to watch, and at that point I was caught, hook, line, and sinker.

It left me wanting to know more so I bought the novels, and devoured them. Probably the best TV SF series, the cast are excellent with lots of strong female characters to like too. And unlike GoT, a series that we mostly enjoyed and I actually read more than the first novel. So for me, this was a good series, and I know a lot of people here don't like the American perspective, but for me it works.

SF started as an American led genre, and The Expanse is true to its roots.


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## Werthead

*The Expanse #7: Persepolis Rising*



> Over the last thirty years, Earth, Mars and the Belt have unified to explore and settle the thirteen hundred colony worlds beyond the ring gates. The divisions and damage of previous generations are slowly being forgotten...until the colony world of Laconia launches a coup using protomolecule-based technology. As a new empire rises, the crew of the ageing frigate Rocinante once again find themselves on the front lines.
> 
> Persepolis Rising, the seventh book in The Expanse, opens with a bit of a non-sequitur time jump as we leap thirty years after the events of Babylon's Ashes. This is an interesting narrative decision, although one that is decidedly undersold: everyone is pretty much exactly where we left them in the previous volume and doing much the same thing, which not so much stretches credulity as shatters it into ten thousand tiny pieces. Time jumps are tricky to get right and can often feel contrived, and the time jump in this book feels rather like the latter.
> 
> Once the initial discomfort of that passes, Persepolis Rising ups its game considerably by introducing the Laconian forces as a powerful new player on the scene. There was enough foreshadowing in the previous two books to allow Laconia's rise to feel reasonably organic and the authors do a good job of fleshing out the empire and its hierarchy by using Laconian military officer Santiago Singh as a POV character. There's also some good characterisation as Singh makes choices that seem reasonably logical in isolation but rapidly escalate towards disaster.
> 
> Elsewhere, the Rocinante crew get stuck in a very tricky situation and have to escape. This is a fairly good story, but it feels like it should have been a much briefer episode in a larger story. Instead, huge events are happening but then we cut back to our regular heroes plotting to escape...and then plotting some more...and then at the end of the novel they (spoilers!) escape. The main storyline here is treading a bit too much water.
> 
> Still, there's some very good characterisation and the authors pull off a major shift in the underlying paradigm of the series relatively successfully. Persepolis Rising (****) is available now in the UK and USA.





> SF started as an American led genre, and The Expanse is true to its roots.



Writers from the United States have played a key role in the later development of science fiction, but the earliest works in the genre (such as _The Blazing World_ by Mary Cavendish) predate the formation of the USA by a century or more. Arguably the most important early work in the establishment of the genre was British, _Frankenstein_, and many of the key later SF writers were British, Russian, Polish and other nationalities. Science fiction in the latter 20th Century was an American-_dominated _genre in the English language by volume, but creatively led? No, or no moreso than other nationalities.


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## Ashley R

Werthead said:


> Writers from the United States have played a key role in the later development of science fiction, but the earliest works in the genre (such as _The Blazing World_ by Mary Cavendish) predate the formation of the USA by a century or more.
> 
> Arguably the most important early work in the establishment of the genre was British, _Frankenstein_, and many of the key later SF writers were British, Russian, Polish and other nationalities. Science fiction in the latter 20th Century was an American-_dominated _genre in the English language by volume, but creatively led? No, or no moreso than other nationalities.



Science fiction, or scientifiction was a neologism created by Hugo Gernsback. who said, "By 'scientifiction' I mean the Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe type of story—a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision..."

So arguably he created the genre classification. The fact that critics have retrospectively broadened the definition to include writers who wouldn't have thought of themselves as writing 'scientifiction,' is I believe driven by wanting to give the genre the veneer of respectability against the criticism that SF is not literature.

Frankenstein is arguably Gothic Romance, and other writers have argued they are creating speculative fiction as a way to distance themselves from the putrid pulp of tentacled aliens.

As for the quibble over led versus dominated. Where a market is dominated by a volume of creations from one culture, it is arguably creating more and therefore American authors, or writers working in the American style, lead the creation of tropes that make up SF.

Arguably...

I'm proud to be a writer of SF and don't require validation of the literary critics to tell me what I do is worthwhile. YMMV.


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## Werthead

Science fiction is not an exclusively American genre and the attempt to claim it as one is the worst kind of kneejerk nationalist nonsense.

*The Expanse #8: Tiamat's Wrath*



> The Laconian Empire has conquered the Solar system and most of the colony worlds established through the ring space. A resistance movement led by the crewmembers of the Rocinante is hoping to win back the freedom of the individual worlds, but High Consul Winston Duarte has taken James Holden captive. As tensions rise, Duarte makes the bold decision to declare war on the unknown, possibly unknowable aliens that killed the creators of the protomolecule, a war that will have unforeseen consequences.
> 
> Tiamat's Wrath is the eighth and penultimate novel in The Expanse, moving the series decisively towards its endgame with the conflict against the unknown aliens beginning in force. This is the moment that The Expanse has been building towards for a decade, with the true conflict finally getting underway.
> 
> It's a shame, then, that it feels anti-climactic. Part of the problem in this latter part of the series is that it feels like it is trying to do too much in too little space: the conquest of the Solar system by the Laconians happened very rapidly (and mostly off-screen) in the previous book and in this book the resistance movement forms and takes action with almost indecent haste. Persepolis Rising did at least benefit from the tight focus on the Rocinante crew trying to escape Medina Station and using that as a lens through which other events unfolded. Tiamat's Wrath is a much more epic, widescreen book which tries to tell the story across a number of fast-moving fronts, but in almost exactly the same page count. This results in a much faster-paced story where events happen quickly and sometimes without enough setup.
> 
> We've been here before, and in fact Tiamat's Wrath forms the second half of a duology that began with Persepolis Rising, and in doing so comes across as a near beat-for-beat retread of the previous duology (Nemesis Games and Babylon's Ashes): in the first book a huge, epic, game-changing event takes place with apparently massive ramifications for the series, and in the second it is wrapped up with almost indecent haste, both times relying on an important female character in the enemy camp deciding to swap sides. The structural similarities between the two duologies can leave the reader with a nagging sense of deja vu. The pieces are different but the game is being played the same way.
> 
> There is also the problem that we still know very little about the extradimensional alien threat. We know they're bad news, but their motivations, capabilities and real level of threat remain unclear after eight books out of nine in the series. It does feel a little like the situation with the Others in A Song of Ice and Fire, where we're supposed to be wary of this species but we don't really know what they want so it means their level of threat remains vague. The stakes, rather than being made clear or raised, are instead simply left undefined.
> 
> As usual, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (who together make up the gestalt entity known as James S.A. Corey) deliver a fast-paced, moderately well-written space opera yarn with some exciting battles, interesting plot twists and some decent characterisation, but also one that feels like it is repeating earlier beats from the series and still leaving a lot of information undisclosed before heading into the final volume of the series. Tiamat's Wrath (***) is solid but occasionally feels like a detailed plot summary of a novel rather than a novel in its own right. The book is available now in the UK and USA.


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## Ashley R

Werthead said:


> Science fiction is not an exclusively American genre and the attempt to claim it as one is the worst kind of kneejerk nationalist nonsense.



I'm not sure if you are aiming your at comment at me? If you are may I suggest you take account of what I actually said:

"As for the quibble over led versus dominated. Where a market is dominated by a volume of creations from one culture, it is *arguably* creating more and therefore American authors, or writers working in the American style, lead the creation of tropes that make up SF.

*Arguably...*

I'm proud to be a writer of SF and don't require validation of the literary critics to tell me what I do is worthwhile. YMMV."

I've highlighted the word *arguably*, and secondly I'm not American, though *arguably* I write in the American tradition of SF, as did Arthur C. Clarke.


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## soulsinging

iansales said:


> What holocaust? I'm not talking about one nation going to war and committing atrocities, or one group of people committing atrocities on another. In the book, a single executive decides to test an alien virus on one and a half million people - and no one tells him this is a remarkably stupid idea? Imagine of the director of R&D for ICL decided to test a new poison by introducing it in to the water spuply of Birmingham?



Having worked for multiple large corporations I find this very easy to believe. Nobody tells executive leadership an idea is bad, unless you want to lose your job. Whistleblowers get fired. See Wells Fargo.

Everything else about the review is pretty much why I gave up on this one.


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## soulsinging

iansales said:


> Hitler - and it was not him alone - created a political environment in which certain actions not only became acceptable but desirable. Being at war certainly helped. A corporate director who will perform a fatal experiment on an unknowing public is another matter altogether. Given present legislation, safeguards, and public values, the president of Glaxo SmithKline would never consider secretly adding some drug to the water supply of New York City which would likely kill everyone. A terrorist, perhaps. But an _executive_? For _profit_?




If they thought they could get away with it, absolutely. There was much hand wringing here in the US about adding a provision to our Coronavirus relief bill that would limit the cost of any vaccine developed with public funds because executives claimed they couldn’t justify the research if they weren’t able to guarantee windfall profits for themselves on the back end. I left my previous company when an executive ordered us all to start telling prospective employees that a temp job was permanent because we couldn’t find people willing to take a job that lasted less than a week. Who cares about the financial stability of those people's families as long as our buyer is happy?

Just seems odd to critique the book for clinging too close to outdated gender/racial norms but then also criticize it for not showing proper deference to the moral superiority of western capitalism. We justified enslaving millions of people for hundreds of years in the name of profitability...


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## Brian G Turner

I've mostly enjoyed The Expanse TV series, but I couldn't shake the feeling that they were making it up as they went along and creating conflict for it's own sake.

I mean, the protomolecule - what does it do? It tries to take over existing life and destroy it. No, it creates a Lovecraftian monster. Wait, no, it creates mutant super-soldiers. Nope, it takes things apart to try to understand things. Oh, wait - now it's turned into a ring filled with wormholes!


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## elvet

Brian G Turner said:


> I've mostly enjoyed The Expanse TV series, but I couldn't shake the feeling that they were making it up as they went along and creating conflict for it's own sake.
> 
> I mean, the protomolecule - what does it do? It tries to take over existing life and destroy it. No, it creates a Lovecraftian monster. Wait, no, it creates mutant super-soldiers. Nope, it takes things apart to try to understand things. Oh, wait - now it's turned into a ring filled with wormholes!


(I have only read up to Babylon's Ashes) My take on the protomolecule is that evolves and learns from its host. It also needs energy to become more complex. Initially, it fed off of humans, and took their form. Then it fed off of ships, and eventually a planet. Constantly learning and building to become these portals. So, in that context, all those changes made sense to me. The question remains, who put all this _potential _into this molecule, and for what reason?


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