Amazon.com.au:Customer reviews: Leviathan Wakes: Book 1 of the Expanse (now a Prime Original series)

Top positive review

Top hard sci-fi story.

Reviewed in Australia on 14 February 2019

Just read this book and am really impressed, first time reading anything of James Corey's and am already an avid fan. I am on the wrong side of 75 yrs and have read sci-fi all my life from the pulp fiction mags to all the works of the Grand Masters of the genre and I am delighted that James S A Corey makes the grade and is a delight to read. Am looking forward to reading the rest of this series and later watching the tv series.would highly recommend to any reader of hard sci-fi.

5 people found this helpful

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Lysanne Cameron

Entertaining

Reviewed in Australia on 4 March 2020

I liked the detailed world of the expanse. The story started off well, a missing rich girl somehow linked to an abandonded space craft with an horrific secret on board. Ultimately though it reads like it was written for the screen. And of course it is now a TV series. It was entertaining but not sure i will commit to reading any more in the series...

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From Australia

Lysanne Cameron

Entertaining

Reviewed in Australia on 4 March 2020

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One person found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Three Stars

Reviewed in Australia on 20 February 2016

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Great Read. Very Good SiFi

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t3mp3st

I couldn't get started.

Reviewed in Australia on 19 October 2014

I started reading this but I found it too jumpy. The first chapter was really interesting and had me engaged straight away (though the ending was a bit sci-fi cliche). The second chapter quickly introduces a swag of new characters suddenly, with little snippets of irrelevant back story. The style is a bit clipped, and really... I don't care!! I want to read more about the Chapter 1 story and don't have the patience to make it through what seems like an (initially) boring side story about a guy walking around a ship and trying to get a date.

I think if you're going to leave readers with a cliffhanger, at least make the next story just as interesting so that it's not boring, or it's just frustrating.

Also, some people are good with lots of names but not me, so maybe don't introduce so many characters at once too.

Anyway I'm sure this is a great book but I couldn't get past Chapter 2. I'm giving it 3 stars as I didn't actually finish (or even really start).

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Robert Nielsen

Underwhelming

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 December 2018

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This book had a lot of promise but unfortunately didn't live up to it. It opened well, I was interested in the characters, the setting and the plot (especially the mystery). Unfortunately, these were not well-developed as the plot went on and became something of a slog by the end. There were certainly plenty of good moments, but nothing particularly great or special.

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.

27 people found this helpful

Mr. M. G. Helliwell

Ok but a bit tedious

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 October 2021

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The plot isn’t too bad but the writing let’s the book down. Imagine a second rate gritty American cop drama transported into space and this is what you’ve got.

The characters are all trying too hard to be interesting but just end up a bit stereotyped and 2 dimensional. Despite the authors best attempts, everything just feels American. If this was somehow written to be happening in a New York, it wouldn’t feel out of place.

The prose drags in in places making me skip paragraphs without missing much. And the author needs to stop saying “cracked open like an egg”. For goodness sake think of a different analogy.

P. M. Bonewell

Solid but uninspiring basis for an excellent TV show

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 March 2019

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Having become a fan of The Expanse and currently twiddling my thumbs waiting for season 4 I decided to pick up the books (Leviathan Wakes and Caliban's War) to enjoy the story again from the source.

If anything it has added to my appreciation of the TV adaptation. Though they spin a good yarn the books aren't great scifi and the writing is a tad dull with some pretty flat and cliched characterisations.

Much is made of the "hard scifi" angle in the series which pretty much centres around the physics and limitations of interplanetary space flight, really an extrapolation of current technology which adds some meaningful constraints. This is fine but there isn't much hint of a wider technological universe beyond that.

It's highly unlikely humanity can solve the problem of faster than light space flight etc but you'd expect there would at least be some more exotic materials and so on available to 23rd century humans. Perhaps I miss the futuristic consumer fetishism of writers like William Gibson who seem to pack every paragraph with cool ideas and tech - not to mention snappy prose.

By contrast the Expanse/Leviathan universe is all too prosaic and if anything the much trumpeted political dimension doesn't hold up too well on the page.

There are some minor plot differences between the TV series and the books which I won't go into beyond saying the show sharpens up the political tensions and makes them and the character's motivations more believable, though I'm never going to be convinced by the notion that beyond system failure, and is already 100% recycled on the ISS for example, water will ever be a scarce commodity in space.

As a sketch for a truly excellent TV action scifi epic it works fine but beyond that I'm not convinced.

I'll just have to wait for the next season of The Expanse and hope it doesn't get cancelled (again!).

2 people found this helpful

Michael K.

Hollywood blockbuster?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 April 2020

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I don't read a lot of sci fi, but the comment that this is a 'Hollywood blockbuster in book form' led to me buying a copy. Alas, for me, I would not say it warranted such a claim - though could probably be made into a movie. The story itself was readily understandable and relatively easy reading, but just never got me hooked, certainly not enough to encourage me to read the many other books which comprise the 'Expanse' series.

Jamie

Good enough

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 January 2022

Verified Purchase

If it was in pristine condition when it arrived I’d probably give it a 5. Unfortunately Amazon loves to rough up the books a bit before bringing them to your door it seems. Its mostly the dust cover taking the damage tho not the book itself but still a real shame. Other than that it’s fine. I just wish Amazon would be more careful.

One person found this helpful

James Coffey

Fine

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 October 2015

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It's fine. A decent enough enjoyable story. But I'm not convinced it's as good a space opera as some people seem to think.
The writing is passable but the author may get better as the series continues, and the story is interesting.
If you want real page turning space opera stories, go read the series by Peter F. Hamilton.

2 people found this helpful

DmCarey88

...Holden Said,...Miller Said

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 August 2020

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This book was highly recommended and has some great reviews but despite that it just didn't resonate with me. Don't get me wrong there are some great world building elements and story beats here but I was hoping for something more than noir-style Star Trek-like story with some fairly flat supporting characters. I can see why people like it but it's just not for me.

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Leviathan Wakes: Book 1 of the Expanse (now a Prime Original series)

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Leviathan Wakes: Book 1 of the Expanse (now a Prime Original series)

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