A revolution brewing for generations has begun in fire. It will end in blood.
The Free Navy—a violent group of Belters in black-market military ships—has crippled the Earth and begun a campaign of piracy and violence among the outer planets. The colony ships heading for the thousand new worlds on the far side of the alien ring gates are easy prey, and no single navy remains strong enough to protect them.
James Holden and his crew know the strengths and weaknesses of this new force better than anyone. Outnumbered and outgunned, the embattled remnants of the old political powers call on the Rocinantefor a desperate mission to reach Medina Station at the heart of the gate network.
But the new alliances are as flawed as the old, and the struggle for power has only just begun. As the chaos grows, an alien mystery deepens. Pirate fleets, mutiny and betrayal may be the least of the Rocinante's problems. And in the uncanny spaces past the ring gates, the choices of a few damaged and desperate people may determine the fate of more than just humanity.
***
The Expanse made a tremendous first impression, and the next novels in the blockbuster space opera Leviathan Wakes started went from strengthto strength, knocking the overarching first contact narrative out of the park at the same time as remaining satisfyingly self-contained. But then there was a wobble—a wobble of opportunity squandered that nearly drove this reader from the series. It fell, finally, to Nemesis Games to right not a sinking ship, but one that was at least listing.
I was delighted that it did. By contracting as opposed to expanding—by firmly and finely focusing on the characters that had been at its heart from the start—Nemesis Games recaptured the intimate magic that The Expanse's latter chapters lacked, and although it didn't address the presence of the protomolecule, something dramatic did actually happen in book five: something that completely changed the state of play across the Milky Way.
The Belt had finally shrugged off the yoke of the inner planets. They had Medina Station at the heart of the ring gates, they had the only functioning navy in the solar system, and they had the gratitude of millions of Belters. In the long term, it was the greatest statement of independence and freedom the human race had ever made. (p.18)
Said statement came at a cost, of course. You don't just get to declare that you're done with the people who've been keeping you and run off with their resources—not now and not in this near-future milieu. If no one's listening, you have to force the issue. You might even have to fight for that right.
Unfortunately for a huge hunk of humanity—for the folks who've made their homes on Earth and Mars and the Moon—the Free Navy didn't care about collateral damage when they conspired to fire asteroid fragments at the planet their oppressors were arranged around:
There had been thirty billion people on the overcrowded Earth, dependent on a vast network of machinery to keep them fed and hydrated and not drowning in their own waste. A third of those, by the more pessimistic estimates, had already died. Holden had seen a few seconds of a report discussing how the death count in Western Europe was being done by assaying atmospheric changes. How much methane and cadaverine were in the air let them guess how many people were rotting in the ruined streets and cities. That was the scale of the disaster. (p.33)
Essentially, it's the end of the world as we know it, and Marcos Inaros, the man behind it, feels fine.
A thousand worlds have opened, and the greatest land rush in human history has begun. As wave after wave of colonists leave, the power structures of the old solar system begin to buckle.
Ships are disappearing without a trace. Private armies are being secretly formed. The sole remaining protomolecule sample is stolen. Terrorist attacks previously considered impossible bring the inner planets to their knees. The sins of the past are returning to exact a terrible price.
And as a new human order is struggling to be born in blood and fire, James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante must struggle to survive and get back to the only home they have left.
***
For science fiction fans with more of an interest in kick-ass action than extrapolated mathematical accuracy, The Expanse has been brilliant: a breath of fresh air in a genre with a regrettable tendency to taste stale instead.
And yet, in premise, it isn't particularly original. In each part of The Expanse so far, an expanding cast of roguish do-gooders have broken the rules to do good in a galaxy on the brink of going bad. Add to that drawback the characters—characters who felt familiar from the first, and haven't done much to differentiate themselves since—and the setting, which is essentially the same as a hundred other interstellar sagas.
This, then, is a series that really shouldn't work... but I'll be damned if it doesn't.
A large part of the surprising success of The Expanse springs, I think, from the persistent sense that we've only just scratched the surface—of this milieu, of these men and women, and of the slowly-unfolding overarching story about humanity's spread through the one sprawl to rule them all. What we've got to work with in the interim is good enough for government work, but greatness awaits in the wings, I warrant.
Or I would have done, a book or two back. Over the years, though, that impression has inevitably lessened. And fun as the series has been, it's left me feeling increasingly fatigued, even frustrated, by James S. A. Corey's refusal to to follow through on the awesome promise of his milieu. Since the very beginning, everything about The Expanse has been building towards a confrontation between our species and the protomolecule's masters, but like the coming of winter in A Song of Ice and Fire, that game-changer has been nearly here for so long that the forecast has started to feel false—and it's no closer to actually arriving by the end of Nemesis Games, either.
That's the bad news about this book, in brief. Happily, every other development is for the better.
The gates have opened the way to a thousand new worlds and the rush to colonise has begun. Settlers looking for a new life stream out from humanity's home planets. Illus, the first human colony on this vast new frontier, is being born in blood and fire.
Independent settlers stand against the overwhelming power of a corporate colony ship with only their determination, courage and the skills learned in the long wars of home. Innocent scientists are slaughtered as they try to survey a new and alien world.
James Holden and the crew of his one small ship are sent to make peace in the midst of war and sense in the heart of chaos. But the more he looks at it, the more Holden thinks the mission was meant to fail.
And the whispers of a dead man remind him that the great galactic civilisation which once stood on this land is gone. And that something killed them.
***
In the aftermath of the announcement of SyFy's adaptation of The Expanse, interest in the series has reached fever pitch in recent weeks—interest which Cibola Burn is apt to satisfy. It's another solid installment of the ongoing blockbuster space opera, but the most focused narrative in the saga so far lacks, alas, the scope of the other stories James S. A. Corey has told, and character-wise, it's a mixed bag at best.
The embiggening of The Expanse intimated in Abaddon's Gate does seem set to continue in Cibola Burn, which begins several years since the revelation of the Ring: a great alien gate linking the Sol system to an expanse of space formerly far beyond people's reach. The OPA is holding it down at the moment, supposedly so that surveys into the area's safety can be conducted without disruption, but precious few forces have faith in its explanation, particularly given that a bunch of Belters have already settled the nearest habitable planet—the same planet that representatives of the UN have been commissioned to colonise.
That's where things start to fall apart.
The new sun was a faint dot of yellow-white light, not all that different from Sol when viewed from the Ring sitting just outside Uranus' orbit. It had five rocky inner planets, one massive gas giant, and a number of dwarf planets in orbits even farther out than the Ring. The fourth inner planet, sitting smack dab in the middle of the Goldilocks Zone, was Ilus. New Terra. Bering Survey Four. RCE charter 24771912-F23. Whatever you wanted to call it.
All those names were too simple for what it really was: mankind's first home around an alien star. (pp.71-72)
But lest we forget our history lessons, where humanity goes, conflict follows, and it's no different on Ilus. There are tensions between the Belter settlers and the scientists and soldiers of RCE before the latter party have even arrived. Believing they're about to be evicted—as well they will be if Security Chief Murtry, a cold-blooded monster of a man, has his way—and remember: he represents Earth—a ragtag resistance arises amongst the planet's established inhabitants.
Basia, one of the three new perspectives presented in Cibola Burn, is a displaced family man ready to fight for what's right, however his actions are viewed by others as atrocities. Eventually, he comes to question them himself, particularly the part he plays in blowing up the first RCE shuttle to touch down on terra firma, killing half of its passengers in the process. In retaliation, the rest—massed by would-be martyr Murtry—slaughter some suspicious settlers.
In no time at all, Ilus is as a powder keg about to blow, and to make matters worse, everyone's watching. To wit, what happens here has to matter, so the various powers in play promise a mediator; someone so self-righteous and set in his ways that he may be able to defuse the spiralling situation somehow.
Everyone hates him equally, so we can argue he's impartial. He's got ties to you, Mars, me. He's a fucking awful choice for a diplomatic mission, so it makes him perfect. Brief him, tell him the UN will pay for his time at double the usual rates, and get him on New Terra as fast as possible before this thing gets fucked up any worse than it already is. (p.45)
This from the foul mouth of the fantastic Avasarala, who returns in Cibola Burn—alongside a few other familiar faces—albeit briefly. No prizes for guessing that she's referring, here, to our hero, Holden:
At the beginning of the war between Mars and the Belt, he had been the most important man in the solar system, and the celebrity, while it had waxed and waned over the years, had never gone away. James Holden was an icon. For some, he was the symbol of the triumph of the single ship over governments and corporations. For others, he was an agent of chaos who started wars and threatened stability in the name of ideological purity. But whatever people thought he meant, there was no question that he was important. He was the man who'd saved Earth from the protomolecule. He was the man who'd brought down Mao-Kwikowski. Who'd made first contact with the alien artifact and opened the gates that led to a thousand different worlds. (pp.132-133)
He didn't do it alone, of course, and as ever, accompanying Holden on the refitted Rocinante's trip to Ilus is its pilot, Alex; the XO, Naomi; the muscular mechanic Amos; and oh, Detective Miller's ghost:
Miller's ghost was an artifact of the alien technology that had created the gates and a dead man. It had been following Holden around for the two years since they'd deactivated the Ring Station. It spent its time demanding, asking, and cajoling Holden to go through the newly opened gates to begin its investigation on the planets beyond them. The fact that Miller could only appear to Holden when he was alone—and on a ship the size of the Rocinante, he was almost never alone—had kept him sane. (p.41)
The detective's spectre proves particularly pivotal in Cibola Burn's electrifying finale, such that it's surprising his presence is so underplayed in the remainder—and I'm afraid most of the narrative's returning characters are similarly short-changed. The crew of the Rocinante, up to and including Holden, are reduced to little more than roles—the better to pave the way, presumably, for the problematic new perspectives Corey is determined to develop.
Basia, at least, has an active part in the narrative, but in addition to him, we have Havelock—a sort of soldier of fortune on another of the ships in orbit around Ilus—and Elvi, a scientist who survives the shuttle crash at the start of the narrative, and sets about studying this strange, alien place. The need for these perspectives is revealed eventually, and there is indeed a need, but for the first half of the whole they serve no particular purpose.
Instead, Corey lumbers them with lacklustre subplots: Havelock trains up some surplus engineers in the ways of war—because there's nothing better for him to do, in truth—whilst Elvi nurses a crush on Holden that has her weak at the knees whenever they meet; a distraction which I dare say rubbed me the wrong way, though your mileage may vary.
Both characters come into their own around the midpoint of the novel, but largely because of all this needless narrative, Cibola Burn is singularly slow to start. The stinger is in the middle, when the previously peaceful planet comes alive, and everything goes in orbit goes to pot—and the action, when it happens, is spectacular. There are explosive set-pieces in space; and on Ilus itself, an unnatural catastrophe gives the colourless cast a kick up the arse. There is, to be clear, half of a hell of a novel here, with all the wit and wonder that's made The Expanse such a pleasure in the past, but the most remarkable aspect of the other half is all that is lacks.
Strange to think that Holden and his will be seen onscreen in all probability before the launch of the next novel, Nemesis Games. Safe bet I'll be there, in both cases, but not because of Cibola Burn, which is easily the weakest of Corey's space operas to date.
For generations, the solar system — Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt — was humanity's great frontier. Until now. The alien artifact working through its program under the clouds of Venus has now appeared in Uranus's orbit, where it has built a massive gate that leads to a starless space beyond.
Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante are part of a vast flotilla of scientific and military ships charged with studying the artifact. But behind the scenes, a complex plot is unfolding, with Holden's destruction at its core. As the emissaries of the human race try to decide whether the gate is an opportunity or a threat, the greatest danger is the one they brought with them.
***
Having plumbed the depths of the known solar system, explored the various ramifications of the existence of aliens, and exploded a whole bunch of stuff in the interim, James S. A. Corey — a collective pseudonym for co-authors Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham — shows no sign of slowing down in Abaddon's Gate, the third volume of the fantastic Expanse saga.
If anything, this is the best book in the series so far, and it's been a superb series: an accessible, spectacle-heavy space opera with an expanding cast of characters and a massively ambitious narrative. And this time, the depths are even deeper. The ramifications are far grander. And the explosions? There are oh so many more of those.
Abaddon's Gate picks up a couple of months after the events of Caliban's War, with the human race in disarray after the recent crisis on Ganymede:
Between Protogen and Mao-Kwikowski, the order and stability of the solar system had pretty much been dropped in a blender. Eros Station was gone, taken over by an alien technology and crashed into Venus. Ganymede was producing less than a quarter of its previous food output, leaving every population center in the outer planets relying on backup agricultural sources. The Earth-Mars alliance was a kind of quaint memory someone's grandpa might talk about after too much beer. The good old days, before it all went to hell. (pp.22-23)
Times have thus been tough for some. Not, however, for James Holden and the close-knit crew of the salvaged shingle Rocinante. Since cutting ties with the Outer Planets Alliance, he and Naomi — alongside Amos and Alex — have been operating as space-faring freelancers, the upshot of which is they're now ridiculously rich. Their ship has been refitted from bow to stern, upgraded according to a wish list of sweet new weapons and tech; they've gone on an all expenses paid galactic gambling break; and even then, "they still had more money in their general account than they knew what to do with." (p.13)
But money isn't everything, is it? You've got to have a place to lay down a heavy head at the end of the day, a home to harbour your heart, and when Mars initiates legal proceedings in order to take back the Rocinante, the possibility that they could lose everything they've gained of late becomes very real indeed. The only available way through the rising red tape is to take a documentary team out to the Ring, the self-assembled alien artefact around which Abaddon's Gate revolves, and which Holden and his crew had resolved to stay as far away from as possible.
The structure itself was eerie. The surface was a series of twisting ridges that spiraled around its body. At first they appeared uneven, almost messy. The mathematicians, architects, and physicists assured them all that there was a deep regularity there: the height of the ridges in a complex harmony with the width and the spacing between the peaks and valleys. The reports were breathless, finding one layer of complexity after another, the intimations of intention and design all laid bare without any hint of what it all might mean. (pp.136-137)
Before you know it, the Rocinante is leading a shaky coalition of ships from Earth, Mars and the Outer Planets right into the Ring... into one side, and out the other, by way of a strange region of space where the rules of physics and relativity are evidently no more important than notes passed back and forth in class in the past.
Stuck in the so-called Slow Zone with Holden and his, a number of new narrators, including Pastor Anna, an ambassador interested in how the Ring might affect the religion she represents, and Bull, an Earther aligned with the OPA, acting as security chief on the Behemoth, "a marvel of human optimism and engineering [...] with mass accelerators strapped to her side that would do more damage to herself than to an enemy." (pp.52-53)
Most notably, though, we meet Melba, a terrorist:
She had been Clarissa Melpomene Mao. Her family had controlled the fates of cities, colonies, and planets. And now Father sat in an anonymous prison, living out his days in disgrace. Her mother lived in a private compound on Luna slowly medicating herself to death. The siblings — the one that were still alive — had scattered to whatever shelter they could find from the hatred of two worlds. Once, her family's name had been written in starlight and blood, and now they'd been made to seem like villains. They'd been destroyed.
She could make it right, though. It hadn't been easy, and it wouldn't be now. Some night, the sacrifices felt almost unbearable, but she would do it. She could make them all see the injustice in what James Holden had done to her family. She would expose him. Humiliate him.
And then she would destroy him. (pp.39-40)
With that, the many pieces of Abaddon's Gate are in place, but as limitlessly ambitious as this book is, the well-oiled machine known as James S. A. Corey makes it all seem simple, somehow. I'd still advise newcomers to start at the start of the saga, but if you have either or both of the previous books in the series behind you, you're as good as guaranteed to have a hell of a time with The Expanse's first-class third act. In fact, looking back, Leviathan's Wake and Caliban's War feel — for all that I enjoyed them — like building blocks, paving the way to this pivotal place in time and space.
The decision to yet again expand The Expanse's cast of characters is slightly off-putting, initially, but the ends almost immediately justify the means: between the calculated physical and political action of Bull's chapters and Pastor Anna's nicely measured perspective on the interorganisational stand-off that informs the bulk of this book, Corey cannily counterbalances the potential problems of a story more focussed on gung-ho, know-it-all Holden — though he too is changed by the end of Abaddon's Gate.
Melba, meanwhile, makes for a neat interweaving of protagonist and antagonist. She does something truly terrible early on, outright rejecting the reader's developing affections at the outset, and falls further and further down the old rabbit hole as Abaddon's Gate goes and goes. The co-authors walk a fine line with respect to Melba, certainly, but they walk it very well. It's almost as if they do this sort of thing for a living!
In any case, these new names and faces bring an array of fresh elements to the table, helping to enliven an otherwise familiar framework. That said, what has become familiar over the course of The Expanse saga remains appealing, if inevitably less than it was once, leaving the story's original elements to steal the spotlight, which they indubitably do.
"The problem with living with miracles was that they made everything seem possible. An alien weapon had been lurking in orbit around Saturn for billions of years. It had eaten thousands of people, hijacking the mechanisms of their bodies for its own ends. It had built a wormhole gate into a kind of haunted sphere. [...] If all that was possible, everything was." (p.223)
Speaking of the story, Abaddon's Gate surprised me — pleasantly, I should stress — by closing out aspects of the overall arc begun in book one. Indeed, Corey answers enough questions that I finished this second sequel feeling like the series could very easily, and very pleasingly, end here.
It won't, of course. Certain doors are literally left open for further adventures in the supersized galaxy of The Expanse — adventures I'll happily have, because Abaddon's Gate is absolutely great. Courageous and audacious, with short chapters, smart characters, and a snappy narrative, it's leaps and bounds bigger and better than the vast majority of space opera.
On Ganymede, breadbasket of the outer planets, a Martian marine watches as her platoon is slaughtered by a monstrous supersoldier. On Earth, a high-level politician struggles to prevent interplanetary war from reigniting. And on Venus, an alien protomolecule has overrun the planet, wreaking massive, mysterious changes and threatening to spread out into the solar system.
In the vast wilderness of space, James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante have been keeping the peace for the Outer Planets Alliance. When they agree to help a scientist search war-torn Ganymede for a missing child, the future of humanity rests on whether a single ship can prevent an alien invasion that may have already begun...
***
In Caliban's War, the planet Ganymede is frequently referred to as the "breadbasket" of the galaxy. For generations, it has provided a crucial foothold for humanity's expansion into the stars. It's like an oasis in the desert: no-one owns it exactly, but everybody needs it equally. Its practical value, then, is unparalleled, and its political capital is accordingly incalculable, so when things on Ganymede go suddenly sideways because of a firefight between opposing forces and a single apparently alien interloper, all of the major powers from across the vastness of The Expanse take a stance.
Some see a grave threat. Others, an opportunity for untold profit. However, with all-out hostilities in the offing, one potty-mouthed politician finds herself fighting for peace. "Caught up in this smaller, human struggle of war and influence and the tribal division between Earth and Mars," (p.383) not to mention the noncommittal Alliance of Outer Planets, Chrisjen Avasarala - assistant to the UN's undersecretary of executive administration - is one of three new narrators introduced in Caliban's War, and she will have a pivotal part to play in the coming months.
In the interim, brilliantly, she's going to swear like a sailor.
Meanwhile, on Ganymede itself, we meet a disparate pair of POV characters. Gunnery Sergeant Roberta Draper - Bobbie to her friends and fellow Martian Marines - is the sole survivor of the gruesome ground war that sparked the space battles which rage in the fire-speckled skies. Haunted by the things she saw, she's shipped off to Earth to tell her incredible tale, where she finds an unlikely ally in Avasarala.
And then there's Prax, an unassuming scientist whose immunocompromised daughter is kidnapped during the planet-wide panic that follows the first shots. Our estranged single father is heartbroken, but pragmatic: Prax understands that "he and Mei were a pebble in space. They didn't signify." (p.108)
To one man, though, they matter — perhaps more than anything else. That would be the captain of the Rocinante, James Holden, and for spoileriffic reasons I'd really rather not get into, his is the only returning perspective from the inaugural act of The Expanse. The other half of that equation, Detective Miller, is much missed over the course of Caliban's War, and though his presence is certainly felt, his actual, factual absence from the narrative gives this second salvo a fairly different flavour from the first.
Caliban's War picks up roughly a year after the shocking climax of Leviathan Wakes, with humanity reeling from the revelation that we are not, after all, alone. Somewhere out there an alien intelligence exists, and our species’ situation has slipped from bad to worse, because it doesn’t mean to make nice with its new neighbours.
Ever since the events on Venus, Holden and his crew - namely Naomi, Alex and Amos - have been running odd jobs for the OPA, and the dirty work they've been doing has taken a toll on all involved, though the captain most notably. "He'd turned into the man [Naomi] feared he was becoming. Just another Detective Miller, dispensing frontier justice from the barrel of his gun." (p.352)
Inasmuch as this frequent fear cheapens the legacy of a fantastic character, it also serves to add a compelling dimension to Holden's formerly one-note nature, and the other crew members of the Rocinante are decently developed as well. The child abuse involved in Prax's narrative strikes a surprising chord with Amos; Alex kinda falls for Bobbie; and Naomi is no longer so sure about her feelings for Holden.
The real meat of this superb sequel lies elsewhere, however. With Avasarala - who shines an unflattering light on the politics of tomorrow - and Prax in particular, who offers insight into the family of the future and a layman's slant on the sprawling galaxy of The Expanse. I'm afraid that Bobbie, beyond her involvement in the battle which kicks off Caliban's War, seems something of a spare part, but Prax and Avasarala give this sf series a new lease on life, demonstrating the setting’s inestimable potential at the same time as realising a few of its most fascinating aspects.
Caliban's War can also lay claim to a powerful sense of momentum thanks to its co-authors' impressive storytelling diversity. When the book's four perspectives resolve into two greater tales, and then these two become one, the impulse to pump your fists in pleasure is almost irresistible. The pace is breakneck from the start, and though Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck run into a touch of trouble trying to sustain said for all 600 pages of this unstoppable object, by and large it gets exponentially faster. Markedly harder. I’d go so far as to say better — and Caliban's War is pretty brilliant to begin with.
Which is not to say our allied authors don't miss the mark occasionally. There's Bobbie, obviously. But you should also be aware that there's some rather tiresome dialogue in the cards, as well as an overabundance of laughably transparent politics, and a couple of at best cartoonishly characterised bad guys. Last but not least, Caliban's War attempts to reproduce one of the most memorable moments of Leviathan Wakes, but the hellish descent our refreshed cast of characters must make is substantially less impactful that it once was.
In a sense, then, Caliban's War is more of the same, but the same good thing, it bears saying. And thanks in no small part to the perspectives of Prax and Avasarala, and the new angles on this universe they offer, it's different enough from its predecessor to stand apart, if not alone — some knowledge of book one is practically a prerequisite. That said, last year's Leviathan Wakes got this action-packed series off to a stellar start, so if you haven't read it already... well.
Profoundly affecting and intellectually stimulating space opera The Expanse is not, but space rock, as exemplified by Caliban's War, is at least as awesome. Bring on the encore performance!
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 toThe Scopuliand 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.
***
You know what the first thing I wanted to do was, when I finished reading book one of The Expanse? Read book two of The Expanse. And mayhap the third after that. You set 'em up, Orbit, and I'll knock 'em down!
Truly, I could not get enough of Leviathan Wakes. To be perfectly frank, I'm not the biggest SF fan - though equally I suppose I am far from the smallest - yet this masterful collaboration checked off every one of my marks, before proceeding to tear right through the census. Were it not for Embassytown, and the months of new genre releases still stretched out before me, I'd declare it the best science fiction novel of 2011 right now and call it a day. Furthermore, much as I love my Mieville - and I love my Mieville - in terms of pure, unadulterated fun, Leviathan Wakes would handily take the cake come that particular cage match.
But apples and oranges: after all, Leviathan Wakes is sprung from a very different oeuvre of SF than Embassytown, with its towering intelligence and its inextricably literary smarts, might be said to signify. It is, as per George R. R. Martin's bang-on three word blurb, "Kickass space opera." Well, quite. Consider my ass kicked black and blue.
The first thing you need to know about Leviathan Wakes - that is to say the first thing after it's awesome - is that it is very much a book of twos. That it comes from the pseudonymous pen of two distinct writers - namely Daniel Abraham, author of The Long Price quartet and of late The Dragon's Path, and Ty Franck, assistant to the man and the mind behind A Song of Ice and Fire - two distinct writers working together for the first time, no less, is only the beginning of its duality. Yet it factors.
Rather more notable, and I would assert not unrelated to that precursory split, is the twofold division in its narration, for through its slightly bloated course Leviathan Wakes alternates between chapters told from the perspective of two men, worlds apart in space and purpose. For years, XO Jim Holden has been doing laps around the solar system, which humanity has long since colonised as of the start of The Expanse. But his half-cocked career hauling glaciers from asteroid to planet and back comes to a shocking conclusion when his ship, the Canterbury, is killed. Whether Holden and his close-knit skeleton crew survived the devastation by accident or design remains to be seen, but determined to do The Right Thing, he broadcasts evidence of the unprovoked attack on the hauler far and wide.
So begins the First Solar War.
In fairness to Holden, the self-righteous so-and-so, it's been a long time coming. Practically since mankind took to the stars, there has been a certain tension between those folks who call Earth and its immediate surroundings home, and the Belters, who hail from the Outer Planets, where life is nasty, brutish and short. On Ceres Station, through which flows "a river of wealth and power unrivalled in human history," doggone Detective Joe Miller provides a perspective in ideological opposition to Holden's; he's a glass half empty sort of guy, while the XO's cup is always full. Miller is too well placed to see the effects of Holden's unwitting declaration of war, because from the moment of his address, tensions between the Earthers and Belters on Ceres - already near boiling point - suddenly erupt.
It's all Miller can do to keep the fragile peace as "the great, implacable clockwork of war ticked one step closer to open fighting," so when his chief dumps a kidnap job on the bitter old detective, he thinks little of it. Yet through it all, it is the disappearance of Julie Mao - the rebellious daughter of one of Ceres Station's security force's biggest financial backers - that plays uppermost on Miller's mind. Then, when open conflict ultimately comes, and the detective is promptly divested of his position, it is her trail he follows... and it leads him all the way to Holden, and his merry band of intergalactic idealists.
So it is that two become one, and Leviathan Wakes at last takes to the stars. I'll admit I had my reservations about this collaboration beforehand - the self-same trepidatiousness with which I approach all such works - and though a truly gripping pre-credits tease did a great deal to dissuade them, as the first book of The Expanse wore on, the narrative's stark duality began to jar. Clearly one perspective was written by one author, my head said, and the other by another; as fine a way as any to divide collaborations, so far as it goes, but initially it felt as if I were reading a pair of discrete tales spliced into one peculiar-looking entity.
That's as may be, but rest assured: when Leviathan Wakes finally comes together, by the dead does it come together. In fact I dare say it's a moment made all the more powerful because of the time it takes for Franck and Abraham to enmesh as authors.
When the season to celebrate the year's most singular literary feats arrives, I very much doubt Leviathan Wakes will be deemed a contender. More's the pity, for short a slight sag in the middle and the air of disparity inherent in most collaborative works, it makes for terrific science fiction. That is to say terrific "working man's science fiction," as Corey notes in the incisive interview supplementing the value-packed e-book edition - and snobbery is as snobbery does, so do not expect the Nebulas to take note.
Doesn't mean you and I shouldn't sit up straight in our chairs and devote our collective attention, because the first book of The Expanse boasts some of the most thrilling action in recent memory, and a world - nay, a universe! - brilliantly built yet not overdesigned, courtesy a minimalist aesthetic which rings all too true. It features a cast of characters which, however archetypal, make for fine, fun company; a pace that rarely flags; and moments of excruciating tension, and skin-crawling horror to boot.
If Leviathan Wakes is not particularly thoughtful SF, then it is the perfect reminder that sometimes... sometimes it's nice to turn down the power, and let someone else do the heavy lifting for you. In that regard, I put to you that the entity James S. A. Corey could hold the very universe on its shoulders.
