Book Review: Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse #1) by James S.A. Corey

Rating: 4 Stars

Published June 2nd 2011 by Orbit
Summary: 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.
(from Goodreads)

 

Review: When I started this book I could NOT stop listening. The prologue opens with a hook and I HAD to find out whatever happened to Julie. I appreciated that the story bounced back and forth from following Detective Miller for a space of time and then switching to following Holden and his crew. You got to see into their heads and their different points of view coming from very different backgrounds, which was cool. It was also interesting to see the different pieces of the puzzle fitting together, and exciting once their separate storylines finally converge.

While starting out with a bang, for some reason about 3/4 of the way through I just got tired of this book. And then I'm looking at how many books are left in the series (5 more already published, and 3 more slated to be published in the next couple of years, not counting the 1.5 type inbetweener novellas) and I was left going "Eghhhhh... Do I HAVE to finish this?" I'm glad I plugged through, because the last hour or so picked back up again. I don't feel any need to read the rest of the series, though, and feel like this first book of the series can stand alone with the way it ends and not FORCE you to read the rest of the series - specifically, no cliff-hanger ending but instead wrapped up nicely enough that it can be left alone with enough open-endedness to segway into the rest of the series should you so choose.

I listened to the Audible version narrated by Jefferson Mays, who did a great job narrating. I could tell which character was talking, and he managed to do a credible female sounding/feeling voice for the female characters that wasn't high/squeaky/awful like I've found a lot of men do.