Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey
Review by Bowden P (Trey)
Leviathan Wakes opens with a bang as a young woman escaping a equipment locker after her ship, the Scopuli, is captured and boarded. She flashes back to the over hauling and boarding by enemy forces and they’re vivid and what she finds after she escapes is horrific – and not the expected massacre.
From there the novel heads in two directions. One focuses on Detective Miller, a rather depressed policeman on Ceres (where there are no laws, just police). He’s been given a kidnapping case – not solving a kidnapping case, but finding someone and kidnapping her to send her home. The career is agreeing with him less and less, and the assignment in particular is getting to him and may be the final straw.
Then there is Jim Holden, the executive officer of the Canterbury, an ice miner. The Canterbury receives a call from a distress beacon, the Scopuli. At that point they become good samaritans and investigate – only to get ambushed by a stealth ship that blows away the Canterbury, leaving Holden and his rescue/salvage team on the shuttle with a very long road home. So, he sends a distress signal blaming Earth and Mars for the death of the Canterbury and Scopuli. Which begins to ratchet up the political tensions between the Inner System and Outer System (and touches off riots on Ceres). It also results in their rescue by a Martian ship.
After that, well, I think I’ll stop for fear of spoilers. Leviathan Wakes is a good, fun book. While I don’t think stealth ships are possible (there is no stealth in space), but outside of that, I had fun reading it. Its good, fun planetary space opera with a lot of noir elements. What makes it fun? Good characterization, keeping tension up and then ratcheting it up with cliff hangers that reveal more about what is going on, peeling back the disguises and deceptions. There are twists and turns a plenty, particularly about who the villains are and their motivations (let’s say they almost make sense).
I also liked the politics of the Leviathan Wakes Solar System, with divisions between Earth and Mars, Inner and Outer System. Plus, all the folks just trying to make a living in the midst of all this.
The characters, Holden and Miller, plus Holden’s surviving crew of the Canterbury are interesting with some unusual depths for characters usually relegated to background status. Miller in particular I liked, but then I adore the works of Dashiell Hammett, the Continental Op in particular.
In summary: four and a half stars (****½).
Likes: Characters and characterization – they felt real and played to genres I liked; The world building and the politics (even if they did remind me a bit of Charles Sheffield’s); Pacing; Detective Miller’s solution to a problem; Trying for hard science fiction (and getting closer than most).
Dislikes: Not knowing Detective Miller’s first name (Josephus for the curious); His ultimate fate; There is no stealth in space!; The question of where the Out System Alliance got its multi-megaton warheads from (and why the Inner System isn’t having a major freak out over it); The sudden insertion of game changing alien technology; The fate of Eros, the casino asteroid, and its inhabitants.
Suggested for: Fans of planetary space opera, Charles Sheffield’s Cold As Ice setting, Proteus books and McAndrew chronicles. I’d also suggest it for fans of Allen Steele’s King of Infinite Space and Clarke County Space and related books. Finally, I’d suggest it for fans of the old Triplanetary wargame, Mike Pondsmith’s Buck Rogers XXVc RPG, as well as anyone who enjoys the websites Atomic Rockets and Rocketpunk Manifesto.
