Leviathan Wakes

Endlich fertig gelesen, nach einer langen Pause. Das tut dem Buch aber kein Abbruch. Tolle Charaktere, mitreißende Geschichte und ein wundervoller Schreibstil mit wechselnden Perspektiven. Und auch wenn ich die Serie vor Jahren schonmal geschaut habe, konnte ich mich nicht mehr an alles erinnern. Deswegen bin ich jetzt mal sehr gespannt wie es weiter geht!☺️

Erst Serie oder erst Buch?

Normalerweise liest man erst das Buch und dann schaut man den Film bzw. die Serie. Hier finde ich, ist genau das Gegenteil interessant. Ich habe vor bestimmt 2 Jahren die kostenlose Prime-Serie „The Expanse“ begonnen und zu Ende geschaut nach 6 erfolgreichen Staffeln. Es handelt sich hierbei um eine Space-Serie, die von den Hauptcharakteren Jim Holden und seiner Crew sowie dem Cop Joe Miller handelt. Ich möchte eigentlich gar nichts weiter zu der Serie bzw. dem Buch sagen, weil ich nicht spoilern möchte. Alles was man sagen kann ist, dass es zwar eine Space-Serie ist, welche aber extrem realistisch umgesetzt wurde (anders als bei anderen Space-Serien s. Star Wars). Ziel der Serie ist es, mehr über das sogenannte „Protomolekül“ zu erfahren, welches sozusagen der Antagonist des Buches darstellt. Mehr oder weniger. Daher kann ich nur soviel sagen, dass die Serie so gut umgesetzt wurde, dass es sich nahezu lohnt erst die Serie und nachher das Buch zu lesen, was keinerlei Kritik gegenüber dem Buch darstellen soll. Auch wenn ich „das Ende“ bzw. den Verlauf der Geschichte schon kenne möchte ich die weiteren Bände lesen und bin dennoch gespannt wie sich die Teile, die leider nicht verfilmt wurden, verhalten.

Ich liebe die TV Serie und das Buch ist NOCH besser!!

Nicht nur eine der besten Sci-Fi Geschichten aller Zeiten, sondern eine der besten Geschichten überhaupt. Starke, toll geschriebene Charaktere, ein fantastisches Pacing, super Dialoge und ein Mysterium, das sich über den Verlauf der Geschichte immer größer und wichtiger wird. Wer die TV Serie kennt, wird das Buch leben. Wer komplett neu ist, sollte beidem unbedingt ne Chance geben. Was mich damals überzeugt hat war ein Tweet in dem Stand "It's like Game of Thrones, but in Space!"

If you like Firefly, you should try it.

4.5/5 "And for a moment, he was tempted. In that hesitation between drawing breath and speaking, part of him wondered what would happen if he shed the patterns of history and spoke about himself as a man, about the Joe Miller who he'd known briefly, about the responsibility they all shared to tear down the images they held of one another and find the genuine, flawed, conflicted people they actually were. It would have been a noble way to fail."

A thrilling and gripping page turner for a loooong series (9 books in total). This feels like a prologue for a huge setting with lots going on but on the other hand could also be read as a standalone. I'll definetly will continue the expanse! The setting gave me some vibes from shadowrun, cyberpunk, dead space and even bladerunner reading this.

I am a bit conflicted about this book. On the one hand, it has fascinating ideas (such as “Belters” and the spinning gravity of Ceres), but on the other, I feel like the execution is a bit rough sometimes. For example, I found it very difficult to connect with any of the characters, so I wasn’t too concerned about any of their fates. All in all, it’s a solid 4-star book, which isn’t bad as it’s the first in a 9-book series. I will continue with the series with the hopes that character work is a bit more polished in future books

I loved the show and with the long hiatus just couldn't help myself and had to delve into the books. I have to give credit where credit is due. The author came up with a most original space travel system and fleshed out communities of humans with their own agendas and struggles.

Very Manly Sci-Fi for Real Men

All kidding aside, I was growing a certain amount of chest hair reading it. Miller and Holden are MEN and it oozes out of every pore of this sci-fi epic. That's not a good thing, or a bad thing, it's just something to be prepared for. There's a fascinating preoccupation with aching balls, someone's literally haunted by the visage of his dead wife, Holden's romance arc is three braincells working very hard to understand that the object of his affection (his second choice, really) is a human being with agency and feelings. He gets there in the end but boy is the internal journey - what there is of it - tedious. If you ever wanted to learn what the male gaze is, beyond like, titties, then this is a very good case study. But it would be an exaggeration to claim that this breaks an otherwise solid sci-fi adventure. Something Corey does truly well is tension. The shifting PoV forces you to always read the next two chapters to find out what happened next, making the book incredibly easy to scarf down like a stack of pancakes. The world building is solid, as is the prose. I'm not usually a sci-fi gal, I swear, but I made an exception in the mid 2000s for Mass Effect and I am making an exception in the mid 2020s for The Expanse. It's both a world shattering catastrophe and small, personal stories, artfully interwoven by a skilled author. The next book is on the couch next to me, waiting to continue the saga. I recommend fence sitters on sci-fo to give this one a shot.

Leviathan Wakes is a near-future story where humanity colonised the solar system and is divided into Earth, Mars and the Belt. The story is told from two perspectives: Miller, a dedective living on Ceres assigned with searching for a rich girl rebel and Holden, an ex-Earth navy officer in charge of a water hauler. When Holden's ship The Canterbury finds the abandoned ship Scopuli floating out in the belt, what he finds on board will start a war that could destroy the whole system and end humanity itself. While Holden is a really likeable and optimistic character who is always trying to do the right thing, Miller is more of a "noir hero" with a pessimistic view and a tragic past. I enjoyed both characters equally. Holden and his crew reminded me a lot of the characters in Firefly (but maybe only because I've been overly obsessed with this TV Show lately), being a group of mischief makers with a strong cohesion between themselves, the bond only growing stronger as the story progresses. Miller, on the other side, is harder to connect with, but I did it all the same. As Holden would say, he can be a "pain in the ass", but I really felt and sympathised for him. I loved how this was not only a pure space opera, but also contained elements of mystery and horror that made the story really gripping and hard to put the book down. The story itself also deals with topics such as colonialism, racism, exploration and how humanity is "reaching for the stars". What really amazed me the most though, was the interaction and the dialogue between Holden and Miller and their different view on the ethical use of information, which came up quite a few times throughout the novel. Though "Leviathan Wakes" is seen as not using Hard Science, I sometimes found it difficult to follow with all the technical terms, especially as a non-native English speaker. Still, I think it is a great place to start for someone interested in Science Fiction since it feels like the story is easy to approach. I strongly recommend it!