This book has a great moral. Reading bad books is just as important as reading good books because they will show you what NOT to do. I don’t want to sound facetious, but I have never been so annoyed, angered, and confused by a steaming pile of shit in my life. It made NO sense. One of the TWO authors was an apprentice of George R.R Martin, which gives me a bleak outlook on The Game of Thrones series. This book was recommended to me by my neighbor and I was too kind to turn down the offer. I even thought of it as a great possibility to try out some science fiction. I now think that his generosity was a dastardly maniacal evil trick on me. The plot is confusing and constantly changing. It felt like the story was being figured out as it was being written. I can relate because I have done this sort of thing. It may allow the possibility of a more formulated plot in the next addition to the series, but it just felt fucking lazy as I was reading Leviathan Wakes.
Here is the plot (or what I gathered): I’m doing you a favor by spoiling it.
An ice hauler (a not very prestigious position in the galaxy) spaceship gets a signal from a ship “in distress.” They arrive to find that it has been gutted by space pirates. Apparently, the space pirates are in cahoots with Mars’ Navy, and Captain Jim Holden announces this to the world and begins an intergalactic war. He then becomes the center of the universe. On the sidelines, Detective Miller is put on a case for one of the people who were initially killed by the space pirates. Holden and his crew hijack a military spaceship. Holden and Miller meet. They are on another spaceship that is infected with a virus that turns people into vomiting zombies (makes no sense). They both get infected by this alien disease, but somehow are able to be treated by it (plot hole). They reach out to some dude who claims he has found a new molecule from outer space that will be able to rewrite DNA and make humans into functioning robots. Detective Miller kills this dude because he doesn’t like him playing God, and Holden throws a hissy fit. A stupid, shallow, misogynist “love story” aka one night stand, ensues between Holden and his shipmate. Holden’s crew ships out with the only sample of the alien molecule and leaves Miller behind. Where Miller is stationed starts plummeting towards the earth, and then it really stops making sense. The alien molecule has rewired the ship, but the girl who was killed by the space pirates, in the beginning, can give it a conscious. The day is saved. It is really anti-climactic. Occasional good suspense building but always lets you down.
Dude. The book was just putrid awful. There were maybe ten pages in the very large 600-page book that were enjoyable. I feel like I wasted my time, and could be much closer to getting a job, or writing my own putrid novel, or applying for masters programs. There is really poor development of characters. The two leads are just two archetypes sorta fleshed out. White knight. Alcoholic Cop. Everyone else is even worse. Big Brut. Black Girl. Space Commander. The action of the story exists in a complete void. I couldn’t picture any of it. There is a good peripheral world when you can get the idea of the universe, but all the ships sound the same, are hard to imagine, and are never described.
There is really bad ethos of a character named Fred Johnson. At first, he comes off as a figure of authority, a military commander, and then he is compromised by a fucking ice hauler. DO NOT BUY IT. I don’t buy a lot in this book. It ‘isn’t the “suspend your belief” things like a world existing in space, it is the way people talk and behave in the book. It sounds like it was written by two teenagers who are imagining what they think adults talk like. The plot is stupid. A science-fiction story without any morals or deep cogent thoughts is useless. Big guns and ships. That’s it.
20/100 and I’m being generous.
Ben Bonkoske 