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, who finds herself trapped after her spacecraft, the Scopuli, is intercepted by pirates. When she finally manages to escape her confinement, however, Mao comes across 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 pace of the novel 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 noir, since the pessimistic character – who even wears a pork pie hat typical of the genre – constantly reflects on how society is corrupted to the core, talking about how violence is inevitable and 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 her 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 the reader question whether the character’s opinions really correspond to the truth. Miller, for example, considers himself tragic because he once had held a woman’s arm while she was dying, but he ends up sounding only foolish to his colleagues.

With Holden, the book assumes the characteristics 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 the reader with sudden deaths and, especially, with the disproportionate consequences of some actions.

The space opera genre, which is also 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 wants to be, making certain decisions precisely because he knows that, even if they really are the right thing to do, they will paint him in tragic colors nonetheless, making his colleagues pity him. The detective embraces this pity. 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 the 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, being a fundamental right of the people. Miller points at the chaos around him as proof that people do not stop to critically analyze a news story and ponder its implications before reaching a conclusion. 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 that kind of people and ignites hatred.

Corey builds The Expanse’s futuristic universe working with the idea that alterity generates hatred. Therefore, the advance of space exploration creates even more conflicts: with one part of the population settling on Mars and another working in the Belt, spending all their lives in space, groups with different interests are formed. 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 that are contrary to the status quo become often vilified.

Finally, the author is also skillful in constructing a few horror scenes, which involve the strange substance that opens the narrative, creating images that seem to have come out of the mind of artist H. R. Giger, interconnecting technology and flesh in a frightening way.

Leviathan Awakes is aware that it doesn’t need to sacrifice its characters to build an exciting narrative, being capable of weaving action scenes into a memorable story.

November 21, 2019.

Review originally published in Portuguese on November 04, 2016.