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Leviathan Wakes: Book 1 of the Expanse (now a Prime Original series) Kindle Edition
James S. A. Corey (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
NOW A PRIME ORIGINAL SERIES
Leviathan Wakes is the first book in the New York Times bestselling and Hugo-award winning Expanse series - over 4 million copies sold worldwide.
'Interplanetary adventure the way it ought to be' George R. R. Martin
Humanity has colonised the solar system - Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt and beyond - but the stars are still out of our reach.
Jim Holden is an officer on an ice miner making runs from the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. When he and his crew discover a derelict ship called the Scopuli, they suddenly find themselves in possession of a deadly secret. A secret that someone is willing to kill for, and on an unimaginable scale. War is coming to the system, unless Jim can find out who abandoned 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 Holden, they both realise this girl may hold the key to everything.
Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries and secret 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.
The Expanse is the biggest science fiction series of the last decade and is now a major TV series.
Praise for the Expanse:
'The science fictional equivalent of A Song of Ice and Fire' NPR Books
'As close as you'll get to a Hollywood blockbuster in book form' io9.com
'Great characters, excellent dialogue, memorable fights' wired.com
'High adventure equalling the best space opera has to offer, cutting-edge technology and a group of unforgettable characters . . . Perhaps one of the best tales the genre has yet to produce' Library Journal
'This is the future the way it's supposed to be' Wall Street Journal
'Tense and thrilling' SciFiNow
The Expanse series:
Leviathan Wakes
Caliban's War
Abaddon's Gate
Cibola Burn
Nemesis Games
Babylon's Ashes
Persepolis Rising
Tiamat's Wrath
Leviathan Falls (coming 2021)
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherOrbit
- Publication date2 June 2011
- File size1142 KB
Product description
Review
"Corey... has created a refreshingly blue-collar tale, with well-drawn characters and a compelling narrative sweep. Roll on Book Two." FINANCIAL TIMES --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Book Description
About the Author
Review
Review
'As close as you'll get to a Hollywood blockbuster in book form' ― io9.com
'This is the future the way it's supposed to be' ― Wall Street Journal
'Tense and thrilling' ― SciFiNow
'Great characters, excellent dialogue, memorable fight scenes' ― wired.com
'High adventure equalling the best space opera has to offer, cutting-edge technology and a group of unforgettable characters . . . Perhaps one of the best tales the genre has yet to produce' ― Library Journal --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From the Publisher
Product details
- ASIN : B004XCGKYQ
- Publisher : Orbit; 1st edition (2 June 2011)
- Language : English
- File size : 1142 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 573 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 3,742 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 11 in High Tech Science Fiction
- 24 in Hard Science Fiction (Books)
- 28 in Exploration Science Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

James S. A. Corey is the pen name of fantasy author Daniel Abraham, author of the critically acclaimed Long Price Quartet, and writer Ty Franck. They both live in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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Top reviews from Australia
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What can I say, but I loved it. I am a hard core scifi fan from way back, loving Azimov, EE Doc Smith from the golden era through to more recent works in the pulp sci fi fields.
The book has a darker feel to humanity and our endeavours to reach for the stars, but it also shows how even the most flawed of people have redeeming qualities
Worth a read.
Top reviews from other countries

A classic tale at the heart of it, a small, motley and eclectic crew who may hold the fate of the universe in their hands, face off against varying powers, battles galore, with plenty of richly layered characters all set against the backdrop of a beautifully imagined future world.
A heady mix of space opera, drama, horror and science fiction, Leviathan Wakes drowns your senses, messes with your heart rate, keeps you up at night and has a disturbingly relentless feel to the more horrifying moments. All this whilst attaching you to the characters in an emotional way that makes you crazy when the bad things inevitably happen.
I adored it – I don’t think I’ve read a book this long in such a short time ever – that cliche about not being able to put it down was almost literally true in this case.
Fantastic writing, clever, intelligent plotting and a visceral, visual feel to it that digs deep, Leviathan Wakes is one of my favourite reads ever. No messing.
Bring on Caliban’s War is what I say.
Highly recommended.


Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 October 2018
A classic tale at the heart of it, a small, motley and eclectic crew who may hold the fate of the universe in their hands, face off against varying powers, battles galore, with plenty of richly layered characters all set against the backdrop of a beautifully imagined future world.
A heady mix of space opera, drama, horror and science fiction, Leviathan Wakes drowns your senses, messes with your heart rate, keeps you up at night and has a disturbingly relentless feel to the more horrifying moments. All this whilst attaching you to the characters in an emotional way that makes you crazy when the bad things inevitably happen.
I adored it – I don’t think I’ve read a book this long in such a short time ever – that cliche about not being able to put it down was almost literally true in this case.
Fantastic writing, clever, intelligent plotting and a visceral, visual feel to it that digs deep, Leviathan Wakes is one of my favourite reads ever. No messing.
Bring on Caliban’s War is what I say.
Highly recommended.


Part of the problem was Miller's crime noir plot. The problem is that if you've read one noir plot, you've read them all. His plot was predictable, unoriginal and I found it hard to care about someone who cared so little about themselves. A world-weary alcoholic cop obsessed with a beautiful missing girl he hopes to rescue (and hopes she will rescue him) is an over-used cliche (why does the girl always have to be beautiful, would he not care if she was ugly?). Miller was best when he had someone else to bounce off, alone he was just too miserable. Also the obsession over Julia was really weird, the ending tried to make it sound noble, but it was just creepy.
Holden was better, especially as he had a crew to interact with, but these characters never got much depth to them. The world-building was similarly shallow and half-hearted, there was no nuance or shades to political struggle. Making Earth one unified blob without any diversity of opinion or action just seemed lazy. Making cities/stations where everything is dreary and decadent gets repetitive and dull. The villain was cartoonishly evil and just lazy. There were also a few holes in the plot and timeline.
However, what really made this a 3 star book was the ending. Without spoiling anything, throwing alien/zombie/hivemind/extermination was really out of place and didn't work well at all. By the end it got so absurd that I couldn't take it seriously. Even the characters comment on how bizarre it was and how it resembled magic, which is a bad sign (if you're writing hard sci-fi things have to make at least some sense). A lot of mystery novels put so much work into building the mystery that when the final reveal comes it's anti-climatic and that's how the ending felt to this.

The concept is fantastic and Corey executes it well with a witty and engaging narrative filled with characters who, even if I might not always like them very much, I certainly cared about. They are three dimensional and utterly human, with all the flaws and chaos that involves. Corey writes well and is equally adept at tension, action, humour and more touching moments. His dialogue flows well, always in keeping not only with the characters but events as well.
I'm thrilled to discover this is a series that I certainly will sink my teeth into!

Still highly recommended

The story could probably be half the length if it didn't snake it's way through the plot and instead, just got straight to the point! The final straw for me was when one of the main characters was going through his emails and instead of just writing 'Miller was looking through his emails when he received a call' it decided to literally read through his emails only for him to delete them, as they were uninteresting and of no relevance to the story at all. Why?? What was the point??
I'm just glad the box set was unavailable as I would probably have bought that going by the reviews.