Leviathan Wakes

Author: Ryk Brown

Showing that new space opera is just as relevant as more traditional space opera, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, writing under the pen-name James S.A. Corey, offer a 2011 sci-fi novel centering around a conflict in the solar system that comprises Earth, Mars, and the Asteroid Belt. The story follows Jim Holden, an ice miner who makes runs form the rings of Saturn to the mining stations of the Belt. He and his crew stumble across the remains of a ship named the Scopuli, where he finds a secret that people are willing to kill and die for, and to start wars over. Simultaneously, Detective Miller is looking for the daughter of a wealthy couple. Her trail leads him to Holden and the remains of the Scopuli... and he realizes that this girl just may be the lynch pin holding everything together, or threatening to pull it apart. Holden and Miller have to work together to find out what is going on and to keep themselves alive, but this involves running the gauntlet of the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries and the secretive corporations. The first novel in the Expanse series is the sort of no-holds-barred, kickass space opera that some people say isn't being written any more. Well, here's the proof that it is. And if you can start reading and not want to keep turning the pages just to find out what happens next, I'd be amazed. The pace never lets up, with tensions building up between Earth and the outer planets, alien molecules being used as weapons, conspiraci4es and explosions and a race against time. There's always something dramatic happening.But that's only the start, because in subsequent novels (so far, the series includes Caliban's War, Abaddon's Gate, Cibola Burn and Nemesis Games) the alien molecule takes over Venus and manufactures a gate that gives humanity access to a thousand worlds. But, of course, war, terrorism and other threats follow them there. Why It Made the ListLeviathan Wakes was nominated for the 2012 Hugo and Locus Awards, and George R.R. Martin described the novel as a "kickass space opera".With several novels still to go (and 6 books out so far as of 2016) in the Expanse series, this is shaping up to be one of the most engaging and exciting of contemporary space operas. Let's not forget the absolutely awesome TV series made from the book (The Expanse) by the SyFy channel which has turned out to be some of the best science fiction TV has ever seen.