Leviathan Wakes

James S. A. Corey

Jun 2011 · The Expanse Book 1 · Sold by Orbit

About this ebook

From a New York Times bestselling and Hugo award-winning author comes a modern masterwork of science fiction, introducing a captain, his crew, and a detective as they unravel a horrifying solar system wide conspiracy that begins with a single missing girl. Now a Prime Original series. 

Humanity has colonized the solar system—Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond—but the stars are still out of our reach.

Jim Holden is XO of an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, the Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for—and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why.

Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him to the Scopuli and rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything.

Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations—and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe.

"Interplanetary adventure the way it ought to be written." —George R. R. Martin

The Expanse
Leviathan Wakes
Caliban's War
Abaddon's Gate
Cibola Burn
Nemesis Games
Babylon's Ashes
Persepolis Rising
Tiamat's Wrath
​Leviathan Falls

Memory's Legion

The Expanse Short Fiction
Drive
The Butcher of Anderson Station
Gods of Risk
The Churn
The Vital Abyss
Strange Dogs
Auberon
The Sins of Our Fathers

Ratings and reviews

This series is so good that it has basically ruined fiction for me, I had to switch over to reading history books. The show is ok but doesn't really do it justice. The whole universe and characters in it are so viscerally alive and feel so realistic that you are left just wanting more books like this, and other books become kind of a letdown. The political machinations feel depressingly familiar sometimes even though they take place in space. Ultimately, in my humble opinion, this series is the masterpiece that other series such as GoT or Dune gets credit for. These are the books that those other ones wish they were.

Great read. I blazed through this and the rest of the series to date. I like the plot and world building. The characters are interesting and there's plenty of fun and action to go around. The series doesn't chase mind-blowing tech or try to present the most awe inspiring space battles you've ever read. I love both those things in my sci-fi, but what I appreciate here is how kind of humble the books are. While their action-packed circumstances give them some celebrity, the characters are by and large people just doing their jobs. In the world of the Expanse, living in space is in large parts scary, dangerous and downright unpleasant. Like the settlers and frontier people of Earth they are just people trying to earn a living and do what is best for their family and their community. To me, that backdrop makes the space battles and action all the more interesting and real.

The Expanse series is a self described blockbuster - it is a summer action flick put into novel format. This is not a criticism, because it is an excellent one. It hits all the beats: 1. A (sort of) Damsel in distress 2. Clearly cut, easily understandable, and archaeotypical characters 3. A fast plot loaded with an unbelievable amount of action. 4. Some self aware humor. 5. A solid emotional core upon which the story revolves. 6. A plot that doesn't, when you really look at it, make much sense - but that is coherent enough that this is only obvious in retrospect and doesn't diminish the enjoyment. 7. giant explosions, war, conspiracy, zombies, and the threat of extinction. What really elevates LW and makes it leaps and bounds above the worst examples of the Genre, such as the Transformers series, is that LW never ceases to orbit a solid core of emotion and genuine humanity. And, despite going over into full blown melodrama on occasion (also a hallmark of the genre), it almost always stays on the right side of this line. Overall an astounding success. It shows that this genre, which Hollywood has been murdering for years, can still be done with great success.

About the author

James S. A. Corey is the pen name of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. In addition to writing the novels and short stories of The Expanse, they wrote and produced the television series of the same name. Daniel lives with his family in the American southwest. Ty will tell you where he lives when and if he wants you to come over.