Astrid Hawk
This was my 2nd read - 1st one was way back when, in 2016 or so. I thought it was a 5-star read then, and now I think it's even better.
Set a couple centuries in the future, humans have not just colonized but built civilization on the moon (Luna) and Mars. Mars has developed its own national identity, separate from Earth (which, in this book, is represented as a single faction behind the UN, rather than the separate nations it is today). With the help of feats of engineering, people have also built city-colonies on asteroids and moons beyond the inner 4 planets - known collectively as Belters, they have now lived for generations on small planetary bodies - asteroids that have been artificially spun to create weak gravity, and space stations. They have developed different physical traits from spending their lives in low gravity, and have their own culture and patois. Unsurprisingly, Earth and Mars don't like each other - competing for political control and sovereignty of the solar system - and Belters, having grown out of the working classes and having a greater struggle to survive than those with a real planet to call home, feel at best overlooked and more often abused for their labor and resources.
All this is established before the story of Leviathan Wakes actually begins. It's a great setup, and, no matter what you think of the technology advancements that enabled this, completely realistic from a human behavior perspective. Most (all?) of this book takes place either on ships or on a handful of the Belt stations, and I loved all the details in here about how people and civilization have adjusted to life in inhospitable vacuum - the descriptions of the "holes" they live in on the stations, the foods they eat, what becomes luxury and what is commonplace, the coriolis effect in everyday life, the "juice" they use to keep them alive in high-g situations, the magnetic boots for walking around in null gravity, the rough culture and class striations on the Belt stations that's just a part of everyday life.
And through it all, the common recognizable themes of the haves vs the have-nots, the racial/ethnic tensions that have transcended skin color and landed on bone structure instead. It's so rich and well-thought-out. The first time I read it, I remember that a lot of the nuance went over my head. I remember being confused as to why Belters, who themselves were technically colonizers, originally from the Inner Planets they despise, dependent on the Inner Planets still for resources, hated them so much. I didn't really understand why Holden's announcement started riots. I guess younger me was just ignorant, not making the (really obvious) connection between racism and generational trauma in real life today and the racism and generational trauma extrapolated to a solar-system-wide landscape. Some of the tensions are quick, casual, short conversations (usually between Miller, the character who serves as the reader's view into life and social structure on Belt stations). On re-read, I like that the authors don't spoon-feed all of this, but rather trust the reader to interpret what's going on, why Miller behaves and reacts the way he does, why the riots are happening, why Havelock has such trouble getting along.
The story itself is told from the perspective of James Holden, a disgraced UN naval officer who has renounced planetary allegiance and is content to live a civilian life on an ice hauler (sort of the equivalent of an officer on a container ship today), and Miller, a cop/detective working for the Earth-run security force that serves as the local law enforcement on the Belt station Ceres. Holden and his crew of an Earther, a Martian, and a Belter (plus some other characters who don't last very long) are sucked unwillingly to center stage when they answer a distress call that turns out to be a trap, and their ice hauler and all their shipmates are blown to smithereens. Miller, an alcoholic just going through the motions of his colorless existence on Ceres, is caught up in the action when he's asked to find a missing person - the daughter of a rich Earther who just happens to have been on the ship that Holden's crew was trying to help. Eventually, Miller's and Holden's paths join, where they discover an even more horrifying/sinister mystery and destructive plot unfolding.
Both Miller and Holden are great characters. Holden is still figuring himself out, not entirely sure where he stands on big questions like who decides whether people deserve to die, but fully committed to the principle that no one should get to have secrets. His common identifying trait is that whatever is happening to him, he's going to blab it to the solar system, consequences to others be damned. He is "righteous" to a fault - but also fiercely loyal to those he considers his friends, and his crew becomes found family to him and to each other. Miller, on the other hand, is hardened by his life experiences - he no longer treasures life, not even his own. At first, his assignment to find the missing Julie is just another mystery to be solved, but when his alcoholism plus the rising violence and tensions on Ceres cause his livelihood to disappear, he finds himself obsessed with his own construction of Julie as a person, and he is compelled as if by a greater force to find her and save her.
Although there is a point in the book where Miller's and Holden's voices start sounding similar, it's very intentional, and for the most part they act as foils to each other. They are reluctant allies - Holden viscerally rejects Miller's shoot-first-think-later-or-not-at-all approach, and Miller is judgmentally dismissive of Holden's naïveté in trusting that if the public "just knows the truth" everything can be solved. It's a great dynamic, an ever-present tension - although at times it does feel like it's repeated a little too often. Unlike the racial tension stuff, that can be more subtle, the Holden/Miller tension is spelled out a lot more plainly via repeated mental flagellation in each character's respective chapters. This is probably my one negative observation in the whole 500+ pages, and it's pretty minor all things considered.
Amidst all of this, there is plenty of action to be found in the story as well - space battles, station riots, close escapes from both ships and stations. Everything from verbal banter, to gunfights in corridors and maintenance shafts, to rail-gun battles across hundreds of kms in space. There are a few "gee-whiz" moments - like the coffee maker that can brew coffee no matter what the gravity is (the TV show gets this wrong btw, showing the coffee falling into the mug like a standard keurig drip), and the ship auto-doc that can apparently fix everything from compound fractures to radiation sickness to cancer, and the "juice" that's made up of an unspecified mix of stimulants and blood-viscosity-maintainers which probably wouldn't actually keep a human's bones and organs from collapsing at 10gs. I love it all though. To me, this is what good sci fi should be. Just enough of a stretch to take the reader outside of our current situation, and provide a revelatory mirror into our world with a great story and characters you care about.
This was my 2nd read - 1st one was way back when, in 2016 or so. I thought it was a 5-star read then, and now I think it's even better.
Set a couple centuries in the future, humans have not just colonized but built civilization on the moon (Luna) and Mars. Mars has developed its own national identity, separate from Earth (which, in this book, is represented as a single faction behind the UN, rather than the separate nations it is today). With the help of feats of engineering, people have also built city-colonies on asteroids and moons beyond the inner 4 planets - known collectively as Belters, they have now lived for generations on small planetary bodies - asteroids that have been artificially spun to create weak gravity, and space stations. They have developed different physical traits from spending their lives in low gravity, and have their own culture and patois. Unsurprisingly, Earth and Mars don't like each other - competing for political control and sovereignty of the solar system - and Belters, having grown out of the working classes and having a greater struggle to survive than those with a real planet to call home, feel at best overlooked and more often abused for their labor and resources.
All this is established before the story of Leviathan Wakes actually begins. It's a great setup, and, no matter what you think of the technology advancements that enabled this, completely realistic from a human behavior perspective. Most (all?) of this book takes place either on ships or on a handful of the Belt stations, and I loved all the details in here about how people and civilization have adjusted to life in inhospitable vacuum - the descriptions of the "holes" they live in on the stations, the foods they eat, what becomes luxury and what is commonplace, the coriolis effect in everyday life, the "juice" they use to keep them alive in high-g situations, the magnetic boots for walking around in null gravity, the rough culture and class striations on the Belt stations that's just a part of everyday life.
And through it all, the common recognizable themes of the haves vs the have-nots, the racial/ethnic tensions that have transcended skin color and landed on bone structure instead. It's so rich and well-thought-out. The first time I read it, I remember that a lot of the nuance went over my head. I remember being confused as to why Belters, who themselves were technically colonizers, originally from the Inner Planets they despise, dependent on the Inner Planets still for resources, hated them so much. I didn't really understand why Holden's announcement started riots. I guess younger me was just ignorant, not making the (really obvious) connection between racism and generational trauma in real life today and the racism and generational trauma extrapolated to a solar-system-wide landscape. Some of the tensions are quick, casual, short conversations (usually between Miller, the character who serves as the reader's view into life and social structure on Belt stations). On re-read, I like that the authors don't spoon-feed all of this, but rather trust the reader to interpret what's going on, why Miller behaves and reacts the way he does, why the riots are happening, why Havelock has such trouble getting along.
The story itself is told from the perspective of James Holden, a disgraced UN naval officer who has renounced planetary allegiance and is content to live a civilian life on an ice hauler (sort of the equivalent of an officer on a container ship today), and Miller, a cop/detective working for the Earth-run security force that serves as the local law enforcement on the Belt station Ceres. Holden and his crew of an Earther, a Martian, and a Belter (plus some other characters who don't last very long) are sucked unwillingly to center stage when they answer a distress call that turns out to be a trap, and their ice hauler and all their shipmates are blown to smithereens. Miller, an alcoholic just going through the motions of his colorless existence on Ceres, is caught up in the action when he's asked to find a missing person - the daughter of a rich Earther who just happens to have been on the ship that Holden's crew was trying to help. Eventually, Miller's and Holden's paths join, where they discover an even more horrifying/sinister mystery and destructive plot unfolding.
Both Miller and Holden are great characters. Holden is still figuring himself out, not entirely sure where he stands on big questions like who decides whether people deserve to die, but fully committed to the principle that no one should get to have secrets. His common identifying trait is that whatever is happening to him, he's going to blab it to the solar system, consequences to others be damned. He is "righteous" to a fault - but also fiercely loyal to those he considers his friends, and his crew becomes found family to him and to each other. Miller, on the other hand, is hardened by his life experiences - he no longer treasures life, not even his own. At first, his assignment to find the missing Julie is just another mystery to be solved, but when his alcoholism plus the rising violence and tensions on Ceres cause his livelihood to disappear, he finds himself obsessed with his own construction of Julie as a person, and he is compelled as if by a greater force to find her and save her.
Although there is a point in the book where Miller's and Holden's voices start sounding similar, it's very intentional, and for the most part they act as foils to each other. They are reluctant allies - Holden viscerally rejects Miller's shoot-first-think-later-or-not-at-all approach, and Miller is judgmentally dismissive of Holden's naïveté in trusting that if the public "just knows the truth" everything can be solved. It's a great dynamic, an ever-present tension - although at times it does feel like it's repeated a little too often. Unlike the racial tension stuff, that can be more subtle, the Holden/Miller tension is spelled out a lot more plainly via repeated mental flagellation in each character's respective chapters. This is probably my one negative observation in the whole 500+ pages, and it's pretty minor all things considered.
Amidst all of this, there is plenty of action to be found in the story as well - space battles, station riots, close escapes from both ships and stations. Everything from verbal banter, to gunfights in corridors and maintenance shafts, to rail-gun battles across hundreds of kms in space. There are a few "gee-whiz" moments - like the coffee maker that can brew coffee no matter what the gravity is (the TV show gets this wrong btw, showing the coffee falling into the mug like a standard keurig drip), and the ship auto-doc that can apparently fix everything from compound fractures to radiation sickness to cancer, and the "juice" that's made up of an unspecified mix of stimulants and blood-viscosity-maintainers which probably wouldn't actually keep a human's bones and organs from collapsing at 10gs. I love it all though. To me, this is what good sci fi should be. Just enough of a stretch to take the reader outside of our current situation, and provide a revelatory mirror into our world with a great story and characters you care about.