Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey

[lightreads]

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I picked this up expecting a Daniel Abraham book (he’s half of James S.A. Corey), but what I got instead was a scifi summer blockbuster. You know – lots of shoot-outs, a starship chase or two, a splatter of space horror, a bit of light weight philosophy, no surprises. Oh, and the characters, ahaha. One of them is an idealist forced into command by circumstance; the other is an alcoholic and divorced failing cop whose only emotional tie is his creepy fetishy love affair with a missing girl half his age, who he can only really get a hard-on for after she’s dead. I honestly thought they were kidding me with these guys – that we were going to be making fun of these clichés -- until about halfway through when I realized nope, these were actually and sincerely the characters.



It’s not terrible. This book does a much better job with a cultural/racial divide between the inner and outer solar system than most do, and the mcguffin is interesting. But basically this is something Vinge or Baxter or about ten other guys could have churned out at any point over the past twenty years. It does the classics crisply, and with some flare. And someone who actually gives a damn about the classics will probably like this more than I did.



But my God, they need to fire their casting agent.





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