reads | Leviathan Wakes, James S.A. Corey

I know… As usual, I am late to the party. To be fair, however, when I originally read the first book in The Expanse series, I was hardly in the right mindset to continue on with the series. It had been a struggle to read any novels at the time. Proof of which is that I only had vague recollections of the plot involved. I was in full-distraction mode when it came to reading anything offline.

At the time I had planned to continue reading the next book, but I think I was put off by the wait times for a library copy or the cost, or both. I recently signed up for Kindle Unlimited and was both surprised and pleased to see the whole series of books were available to borrow.

As I said, my head was someplace else when I read the first book back in 2022, so I reread it to refresh my memory and I’m glad I did.

The Expanse series, both books and television series based on the books, have been very popular with readers and viewers across the globe. If the first book is any indication, there is a good reason for its popularity, as it tells a fairly “ripping yarn” that doesn’t slow down enough to avoid the occasional bouts of hypoxia. But in a good way.

The two authors writing as James S.A. Corey do a really good job of keeping the science in science fiction. While I am an old Heinlein fan who likes his less scientific, more speculative adventures fiction (in space!), as a scientist who works with hard science on a daily basis, I have an admiration for authors who can write fiction that is based in science, but keep it readable. It is a special skill set, something I work on as part of my job, when I have to explain chemistry to non-chemistry folks. Keep it readable and real, but don’t treat the readers like morons.

Leviathan Wakes is an adventure story set in space, no doubt about it. But it is less reliant on the fantasy elements some authors employ (and call science-fiction) than other writers, and yet skips getting too sciencey in the vein of Stephen Baxter’s earlier novels, which often felt as if you needed to have a textbook nearby to fully understand what he was getting at. The Expanse is rooted in real-world physics, even if the technology isn’t there yet (with some minor hand-waving near the end).

The story revolves around a survivors of a space ambush, a hardboiled detective on Ceres (a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt) looking for a missing rich girl turned rebel, and a conspiracy to infect humans with a extraterrestrial pathogen (to see what happens, because… ethics be damned). There are other players in this tale, but the narrative POV is largely told from the captain of the survivors and the detective. The drip feed of details supports the building conspiracy and there are plenty of times where no good deed goes unpunished.

There are also the politics of the outer worlds versus the inner worlds — Earth, Mars and “The Belt” are all dependent upon each other, but the conspiracy-leading faction is using misunderstanding and staged misleading attacks to distract from the evil they are sowing in the reaches of space. Apocalyptic war threatens the solar system, and that suits the baddies just fine because then no one will notice what they are about to unleash upon humanity.

It is a captivating tale all the way through, with few (if any) laggy spots in the narrative — unlike Finders Keepers, where I struggled to stay engaged until I finally threw in my porkpie hat (I leave you to read LW to understand the reference) and gave up.

Aside from discovering the series is on Kindle Unlimited, I was drawn to returning to the series because of a videogame coming out in a few years that takes place in the same universe. For those into games, it is touted as the “spiritual successor” to Mass Effect, but hopefully they stick to the more science-based elements of the novels than add in the more magical elements of the game that inspired this one. While I liked Mass Effect, I will say that there was plenty of magic masquerading as faux science and it would be nice to see if they can keep the new game more grounded than Mass Effect ended up being near the end.

I’ve already loaded the next novel onto my Kindle, Caliban’s War and will probably start before the new year. Chances this will not be finished until 2026, which makes Leviathan Wakes probably the last full novel I will have read for 2025. Not a bad way to end the year. Not at all.

I won’t assign stars, but I do think it is one of the better books I’ve read this year. Not a must-read, as I know scifi isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But if you like your fiction in space, and you have yet to read the novel, I think there’s a good chance you may enjoy it. Of course, there’s always someone who will disagree with that assessment, so do your research, read a sample before you try it out if there is any doubt that you might like it. I enjoyed myself, but that doesn’t always translate for others.