Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey

Caliban's War, James S. A. Corey

One of the best books I read this year is Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey, or actually by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck as Corey is a pen name. I love the way the two authors describe their characters. My favorite, detective Miller, is done incredibly well, and the level of psychological layers that they put into his really impressed me.

The Expanse series books are the basis for the Netflix show The Expanse, which you might know. I haven’t seen the show, but if it is anything like the books, it must be really good.

The sequel totally lives up to the first but is quite a different type of story. Where the first is a noire detective story set in space and which makes use of horror and military SciFi elements, the second is a political thriller using some of the same elements as garnish.

The books share enough of the same main characters to make it fell like as series, but unlike a lot of other series the sequel do not feel like a remake of the first but a very solid story in it is own right. 

In Leviathan Wakes the plot was best in the first half of the first book, but I would have liked it even better with more detective investigations, war episodes and realism and less vomit zombies. Zombies are in my opinion one of the most overused and boring "concepts". I admit I liked them a lot when I was a teen, but that was a long time ago.

Ciliban's War has fewer zombies and is more consistently good all the way through.

All in all, if you want to read one of the books I write about here read Leviathan Wakes.

/Rune S. Nielsen