Leviathan Wakes
Author- James S.A. Corey
Paperback (Advance Reader’s Copy)
Page Count: 592 pages
Publisher: Orbit
Release Date: June 15, 2011
ISBN-10: 0316129089
ISBN-13: 978-0316129084
I felt a certain buzz of satisfaction when I finished Leviathan Wakes, not only because of its enormous readability, but also because it is enormously fun to read. Metallic spaceships roam (and occasionally fight) in the silent vacuum of space, spaceports and neon-lit bars are prominent locales, and various factions of both the lawful and unlawful carry out an uneasy existence between each other. There’s also weird aliens and psychotic scientists, talk-easy prostitutes, Martian pilots with a Texan drawl and Indian ethnicity, battle-weary rebels, and down-on-their-luck security detectives, with a heavy feeling of planet-hopping adventure advancing throughout its entirety. But this isn’t the defining aspect of the book (though that isn’t to say the presence of all these things aren’t welcome). No, what sets apart the good ol’ space opera of Leviathan Wakes from all others is that it restrains itself to tell a story in just the Milky Way. The spaceships in these novels aren’t the sleek Enterprise-like spacecrafts readers might be used to. These are essentially flying tugboats, ugly and proportional shoeboxes that are used to get from point A to point B. Even the most powerfully-equipped of the space-traveling model tend to be a rough ride, as characters are frequently compressed, slammed, and thrown under the stress of high speed null gravity flight. I enjoy how, despite spending little time talking about it, Leviathan Wakes adheres to the laws of physics and the mechanics of space time. Ships don’t arrive in record time, human bodies aren’t designed for high-g acceleration and there is no sound in the nothingness of space. The art of both operating a ship and fighting other aggressive ships is a crude practice at best, and very often this is taken into account in the story. Interstellar travel is still a caramelized dream of the future; humans get around easily enough, but Epstien drives only carry them far enough to travel in our solar system. The stars are, for now, out of reach. As stated, Corey doesn’t spend too much time on the hard science- an interview included in the back of the book asks Corey how the actual Epstein engines operate, to which he simply says, “Very well. Efficiently.”- and instead cuts straight to the chase by focusing on what matters most. The Belt divides the outer and inner planets, and a fragile pact exists in the form of the Earth-Mars Coalition. Mars, Earth, and the moon have all been colonized, as well as a few gas giants, where clean breathing air is a thing of the past. Thankfully, there isn’t any moment of information dumping that dampens the wonderfully seamless way Corey points out idiosyncrasies of the world.
Miller is a pent-up aging security cop on Ceres, who’s worked in crowd control and enforcement on the moon all his life. He is assigned the lucrative task of a hired kidnap job, a simple bag-and-tag of a wealthy off-moon merchant’s daughter named Julie, who went missing a few weeks back. He starts to construct mental snapshots of Julie, and as he continues to gain more knowledge into her past and who she was, he starts to become attached to her, shall we say, memory. Keep in mind that although Miller isn’t a bad guy, he has some emotional flaws (and over the course of the book, readers start to realize that he isn’t entirely sane either). His chapters are close to the thinking of a detective building a desk case, but remember, it isn’t noir. It isn’t even crime. Again and again, readers are given different kinds of things that aren’t science fiction- buddy cop aspects, mystery, and even a little dose of horror- but they are always reminded that Leviathan Wakes is, above all else, quick and conventional science fiction.
Meanwhile, millions of leagues away, James Holden is XO aboard an ice hauler that moves between planets delivering preserved ice water from chopped glaciers. They are on their way back from Saturn when they stop to investigate a mysterious distress call from a ship that went dark, called the Scopuli. And then, in a literally explosive turn of events, his ship is fired on and destroyed by an unknown vessel, and Holden and a handful of his crew-mates are thrown into a series of events that could end up igniting the first interplanetary war, a war which encompasses all the inhabitants of the solar system, including Miller. High-stakes adventure is what the reader expects, and high-stakes adventure is what the reader receives.
Holden and Miller share some obvious similarities ( independence, bravery, and a touch of pride) but they also have some overstated differences. James Holden is to Leviathan Wakes what Eddard Stark was in A Game of Thrones; he does what’s right (most of the time without thinking) and he always tries to do what’s best for others. Everyone deserves an opportunity before Holden makes judgement, which is also why I think he doesn’t always get along with Miller. He can’t figure him out. Miller does what’s necessary, even when it means taking some casualties. He doesn’t love death, but he doesn’t hate it either. As such, their personalities become a focal point for disagreement, but not so where they’re endlessly arguing like in a bad 1960′s buddy cop movie.
The chemistry between Holden and his crew strongly reminded me of Joss Whedon’s Firefly, a sorely missed show that I actually found myself thinking a lot about while reading Leviathan Wakes. And while the one-liners got a little too many, it wasn’t all that bad. You can really tell that this is written by a male, or in this case, males. Now gender doesn’t matter much to me, but I couldn’t ignore the fact of the boorishness of the text, especially knowing that Abraham has written far more elegantly portrayals of female characters in The Long Price Quartet, or that he made me really connect with one of his female leads in the recent The Dragon’s Path a few months ago.
The writing can be blunt and a little crude, particularly in a few dialogue exchanges like this one:
“Something out there has a comm array that’ll put a dot the size of your anus on us from over three AU away,” Alex said.
“Okay, wow, that’s impressive. What is our anus-sized dot saying?” Holden asked. (p. 95)
An aside is that I found the females sparse; while they were well drawn and healthy in number, characters like Naomi, Julie, and Shaddid really didn’t get enough time in the book for me to really put a finger on.
What amazes me is that this book achieves a perfect balance between the action of a Hollywood blockbuster and the caliber of smartly-written science fiction ingenuity. Leviathan Wakes isn’t stupid fiction- it juggles modern ideas with a real world that doesn’t bend its knee to conveniency, and interesting characters that don’t necessarily agree with each other- but it doesn’t make the reader feel stupid either. It’s easy to follow, easy to read, and easy to enjoy. Hopefully, Leviathan Wakes will help widen the readership of Abraham and convincingly introduce the writing talents of Franck, as a great book that made me remember just why I fell in love with science fiction in the first place.
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