[rating=5]

Leviathan Wakes is the first book in the Expanse trilogy. I only have one complaint. The next book isn’t going to be available till 2012. I guess I might be a little too demanding on the authors of books I like though 😉 At least I’m not going to pull a Misery on them.

It’s a sci-fi thriller, with some horror aspects to it. I thought ‘Dead Space’ more than once. Yes, that’s a tiny bit of a spoiler. But only a tiny bit, as the first place I thought it was right in the prologue, just a few pages in. It’s not, however, really a horror. You’ll just have to trust me on that, unless you want to read the mild spoiler below.

[spoiler]It’s not a horror, in the same way that The Rock isn’t a horror, regardless of how nasty VX gas is (well, the fictionalised one). A plot element, not the focus. Mostly. :D[/spoiler]

As Sci-fi goes, it’s fairly hard. Humanity still sticking to the solar system, subject to inertia, and presumably the speed of light. No FTL travel or comms here. Nothing really radical, just ‘like now, but more futuristic’. And no real techno-babble either. That tends to annoy me. Nicely factionalised politics, too. Earth. Mars. The Belt and outer planets. All keeping each other in the kind of uneasy balance that makes for a good start in a thriller with a large scale.

There are two main groups of protagonists, the crew of an ice mining ship, and a worn down detective from an asteroid colony. (Ceres! Well, a dwarf planet, sitting in the asteroid belt, and making up about 32% of it) It’s a good mix, with the differing personalities clearly visible. Different kinds of idealism. No-one’s perfect, they’re just different kinds of broken.

I’m going to be interested to see how the series progresses. A lot of possibilities have been opened up.

[spoiler]I also happened to think it was similar to a film with a similar name. Just not so b movie ish :D[/spoiler]

Read on the kindle. Linky