Leviathan Wakes

Part noir, part space opera, Leviathan Wakes is a very good science fiction novel: written by James S. A. Corey, the first volume of The Expanse series manages to successfully balance character development with exciting set-pieces, offering the best of both genres.

The book opens with a young pilot named Juliette Mao finding herself trapped after her spacecraft, the Scopuli, is intercepted by pirates. When she finally manages to escape her confinement, however, Mao witnesses her captain being swallowed by a mysterious substance and realizes that her problems are even greater than she had imagined. Meanwhile, in the Asteroid Belt near Jupiter, Detective Miller receives the mission to kidnap Mao and return her to her parents, who are concerned about her safety. And James Holden, an officer onboard an ice hauler, receives the distress signal from the Scopuli and decides to form a rescue team to investigate what is happening there.

The novel’s pacing is brisk, thanks to chapters that rarely exceed four pages and always end with a hook. But despite opening with Mao’s perspective, Leviathan Wakes starts to alternate only between Miller and Holden’s perspectives, placing the young pilot as the private detective’s main goal.

Miller’s point of view flirts a lot with the noir genre, since the pessimistic detective – who even wears a pork pie hat – constantly reflects on how society is corrupted to the core, and how violence is inevitable since it’s a part of human nature. Mao functions as his femme fatale, seducing him from afar by giving meaning to his life. Miller’s mission doesn’t take long to become an obsession: finding Mao means the last chance for him to make a difference in the world.

Corey (a pseudonym) works well with the detective’s limited perspective, placing some suspicious descriptions at the beginning to make us question whether the character’s opinions really correspond to the truth. Miller, for example, considers himself a deeply tragic figure because he once held a woman’s arm while she was dying, but he ends up sounding just foolish to his colleagues while talking about the event.

With Holden, the book assumes the form of a space opera, bringing to the table large-scale political conflicts and spatial battles between various planets and factions. His chapters are responsible for much of the initial tension in the narrative, since Corey shocks us with some sudden deaths and, especially, with the disproportionate consequences of some the characters’ actions.

The space opera genre, which is also usually characterized by melodrama, gains resonance in Miller’s journey as well, whose character arc eclipses Holden’s. The detective gradually becomes the tragic figure he so desires to be, making certain decisions precisely because he knows that, even though they really are the right thing to do, they will paint him in tragic colors nonetheless, making his colleagues pity him – for the detective not only embraces that pity, he yearns for it. Miller is defined by his search for pathos: believing that happiness will be forever out of his reach, the detective decides that the only way to make people feel anything for him is by being tragic, and so he uses his mission to find Mao to achieve this goal.

Leviathan Wakes really comes to life the moment Miller and Holden finally meet. Corey builds the two characters as opposites and, by avoiding easy solutions, makes their struggles fascinating to follow. Holden is an idealist, defending that information should be spread indiscriminately, as it’s a fundamental right of the people. Miller points at the chaos around him as proof that people don’t stop to critically analyze a news story before reaching a conclusion that confirms their initial bias. They don’t use information to be informed; they use information to be right. The detective believes that people only consume the news, using it to reaffirm their worldview and justify their prejudices: if they already hate a certain group of people, for instance, any accusation against this group is automatically a guilty sentence, any small evidence becomes indisputable proof, and any testimony is treated as an unwavering truth. Miller accuses Holden of irresponsibility, defending that transmitting information in an incomplete or disorganized way only feeds ignorance and ignites hatred.

C The Expanse’s futuristic universe is built around the idea that alterity leads to hatred. This means that the advance of space exploration creates even more conflicts, as more groups and factions are formed: one part of the population settled on Mars, for example, while others spend their whole lives in space, working in the Belt. While Martians want to revitalize their planet, the people of the Belt fight incessantly to end the exploitation of their labor. It’s also interesting to notice how a union is positioned as the maximum institution in the Belt, and how it is basically treated as a terrorist cell by Earth and Mars: in politics, after all, those contrary to the status quo are often vilified.

Finally, the novel also shines in a few horror scenes, which involve the strange substance that opens the narrative, offering some imagery that could have come out of the mind of H. R. Giger, interconnecting technology and flesh in a frightening way.

Leviathan Awakes, then, is proof that one doesn’t need to sacrifice character development and theme to build an exciting, gripping narrative, being capable of weaving some spectacular action scenes into a memorable, well-crafted story.

August 27, 2025.

Review originally published in Portuguese on November 04, 2016.