Book Review: Leviathan Wakes

I did something dangerous.  I read Leviathan Wakes.  Ok, maybe that doesn't sound all that dangerous, but often when books get a whole grip of great reviews, and ride a wave of hype that would make Johnny Utah and Bodhi think twice, it is hard for said book to make much of an impression on me.  Often these well-loved, ultra-hyped books wind up being reads that disappoint me the most...all because of the book's failure to meet these high expectations I build up in my head.

So, yeah, dangerous.

Every now and then though, a book will survive the hype. Leviathan Wakes did more than just survive; it managed to rock my socks off.

I think I've always been a bit intimidated by space operas, due in large part to the  massive scale these types of are set on.  Leviathan Wakes is a space opera that's set in the somewhat distant future where humanity has started to colonize the solar system, but hasn't figured out how to reach other stars.  For now the Moon, Mars, and the Asteroid Belt all sport human life, but the desire to branch out further is a strong one.

Though the events of Leviathan Wakes are spread out across our solar system, a fairly grand scale in my book, but not so much compared to other space operas, I never felt like I was struggling with figuring things out.  The fact that the setting is a familiar is handy, but Corey also does a great job of containing the story to a few select locales, and then bringing these locales to vivid life through a great deal of crafty writing.  All this served to make Leviathan Wakes an accessible novel for a novice space opera reader like myself.

In addition to great world building, or should I say solar system building, Leviathan Wakes has many other strong suits.  Not the least of which being the fact that it maintains a sharp focus throughout, and hones in on a select group of characters, and features two distinct point of view characters who begin the novel on far different trajectories, but whose paths begin to converge as the story progresses. This not only gave the story a nice consistent pace, but allowed the reader to gain two very different perspectives or angles on the events that the narrative is centered around.

My favorite of the two point of view characters was Jim Holden, the Executive Officer on an ice mining ship that makes runs from the rings of Saturn, back to the mining stations on the Asteroid Belt.  While returning from one such mission, he and his crew stumble on a wrecked and stranded ship.  Upon searching the wreck for survivors or clues to their demise, they instead find themselves unwittingly and unwillingly a part of events that might just start a terrible war.  With war brewing faster than your morning pot of coffee, Holden and his crew discover that they just might be the key to putting a stop to things before things get crazy.

The opposing point of view character is the curmudgeony Detective Miller, who has been handed a missing persons case.  Not the easiest kind of case given that there's billions upon billions of people in the solar system, but the parents are rich, and contrary to popular belief, money, not the sun's gravitational pull,  makes the solar system go round.  When Miller's search leads him to the same wrecked ship that Holden and his crew discovered, Miller beings to realize the missing girl may be the key to everything, including peace in the solar system.

I think what impressed me most about Leviathan Wakes is how well crafted and honed this novel is.  There seemed to be a deliberate effort to make the book not only accessible to a wide range of readers, but to also bestow the book with a steady pace where the plot is always moving forward in interesting directions.  There is barely a single moment where this books feels like it is lagging, or losing momentum.  I think it is pretty fair to say that this book had me engaged from the very first page, til the very last. The kicker here though is the story  itself which has, for my money, the near perfect blend of some wonderful elements: drama, action, intrigue, politics, a bit of horror, (with a dash of gore), and even a few moments that wouldn't be all that out of place in a fantasy novel.  I was a happy reader.

My one an only complaint here is that sometimes, the secondary characters didn't feel like they had too much substance to them.  Some of Holden's crew members tended to blur together into one unidentifiable clump, better defined by their jobs on the ship rather than their unique personalities.  This didn't have much impact on the quality of the book though as there was so much other great stuff going on for it.  Still, it was an area that was noticeably thin.

In the end, Leviathan Wakes stands out not only as one of the best science fiction books I've read this year, but it stands out as one of the best books I've read this year period.  This one managed to hit quite a few of my buttons, all while being something way different from what I normally enjoy. So kudos to Daniel Abraham, and Ty Franck for writing such a kick ass book.  If you haven't had the chance to read this one, it is pretty much a must read.

Grade: A-

More on The Dragon's Path

I've had a pretty interesting discussion about The Dragon's Path with Neth and few others over at SFF World today.

One of the things I really struggled with internally, (but didn't mention in my review because I don't want an author's personal views or my perception of their views to cloud my review of their work) were the liberal vs. conservative and class politics elements that Abraham weaves into his narrative.  These elements are seen most often in the Kalliam POV chapters. As I mentioned in my review, Kalliam was a character I disliked.  I stated that I felt like Abraham used him to drive along plot elements in the political arena, even though sometimes the decisions he made didn't seem to fit with his character.  However, in my review, I didn't mention that Kalliam was a character that REALLY got under my skin because he represented a lot of things I personally detest, (classism, racism, sexism, and more...) and I couldn't decide whether Kalliam was a subtle work of genius on behalf of Abraham, or an outlet for Abraham's political views.  Neth, who has met Abraham and discussed the book with the author, stated that this not a case of the latter, but almost certainly a deliberate challenging of the reader's perceptions and expectations.

After talking about it with folks at SFF World and reflecting on my review, I feel that I did my readers a disservice by not mentioning this opposition of my-personal-views-versus-plot-elements aspect of my experience in reading The Dragon's Path.  The fact that a character whose views so diametrically oppose my own could cause such an intense internal struggle in me is something that deserves mention and should at the very least speak to Abraham's skill in creating character that can get a powerful reaction out of the reader.

I try really hard to give you readers my honest opinion and give authors a fair review with reasoning to back up my thoughts both positive and negative.  I think I did that here with The Dragon's Path too, as I still stand by everything I stated in my review.  That being said, in an effort to be the most honest and thorough reviewer I can be, I want to add that my review of The Dragon's Path should have mentioned that my personal political/social views were strongly opposed to some of the plot elements in The Dragon's Path. There were parts of the story that were definitely challenging for me on a personal level.   As I mentioned above in this post, thanks to further reflection and discussion of the novel, I'm of the opinion that Abraham is a slick magician when it comes to creating characters that not only challenge the norms of the fantasy genre, but he also challenged me on a personal level.  This is a credit to both the writer and the novel.

Now this doesn't do anything to change my "grade" of the novel, as the lack of world building, lack of cultural diversity, hit and miss character development that though it had an additional layer than what I initially mentioned in my review, still left me wanting more. Combine all that with what I saw as a weak political aspect and my "grade", for what its worth, the arbitrary fucker, still stands. Though I dare say that between the review and this post, you have a pretty clear view of my thoughts on The Dragon's Path.

Book Review: The Dragon's Path

The Dragon's Path was a highly anticipated read for me.  Despite hearing lots of good things about Abraham from all corners of the interwebs,  I had yet to get around to reading anything by the guy.  On top of hearing great things about Abraham from bloggers and reviewers whose opinions I trust, from what I hear, the guy is like, George R.R. Martin's padawan or something. Well, that's gotta be worth somethin' right?  Also, I feel like I've been searching and failing to find the next great epic fantasy series and then, boom, along comes a new fantasy series by this Abraham guy I keep hearing about.  So, it is fair to say that I had some hopes, high hopes, pinned on this opening volume of The Dagger and The Coin series.

This new epic fantasy starts out on familiar turf, with an orphan.  But Cithrin isn't your typical fantasy orphan.  From the get-go Cithrin is intelligent, capable, and thankfully, not part of some ancient prophecy. Instead, she's the ward of a rich banking house which lies in a city about to fall under siege.  Cithrin is tasked with the extremely difficult and stress-inducing task of smuggling the bank's wealth across a war zone as part of a trading caravan guarded by one of our other principle characters, Marcus Wester.  Wester is in charge of a band of mercenaries theater troupe which he has hired to play-act at being hardened soldiers since his own crew got arrested for drunken and disorderly conduct.

As Marcus, Cithrin and the theater troupe flee the free cites, Geder, a young noble from the neighboring Antean Empire heads towards the same city as part of an invading army.  More of a scholar than a soldier, Geder is a pawn in the great games that the nobles back in Antea play...a game that is spiraling out of control in the worst possible way.

The Dragon's Path is a problematic book for me. I wanted this one to be good. It could have been good. But it wasn't that good.  This book is basically a great poker hand where the author didn't go all in and he should have.  Abraham has all the makings here of a solid, potentially great new edition to the epic fantasy pantheon but he doesn't quite deliver the goods.  For every potentially positive aspect of this novel, there is an equally negative quality that drags that aspect down towards mediocrity.

Allow me to elucidate:

Abraham does something I always love to see in epic fantasy, and populates his world with a bevy of humanity who are of different races.  (And I don't mean elves, dwarves, gnomes, goblins, etc.) This is a quality of the book that I was very excited about, and I was always hoping to hear more about as I turned the pages.  Sadly, the differing races are only given a bit of mention and even less description.  From what I did read, there didn't seem to be much cultural or language diversity among the peoples that populate the world.  Maybe there'll be more exploration of  the various races in the coming volumes, but for my money there should have been more development of this concept in the 550 pages this volume contains.

Another aspect that felt half baked and ties in a bit with racial diversity is the world building. I'm always excited to explore a new fantasy world and see what awesomeness it holds in store for me. It's a fun aspect of the genre for me.  The Dragon's Path features a map that displays what appears to be a massive continent with a variety of different kingdoms and realms.  I was pleased that through the course of the story, I got to visit a fairly good number of these places too.  The kicker is that one location never felt all that different from the next and I never got a sense of atmosphere nor was I able to form a clear picture of the various locations in my head.  There is very little "lay of the land" type development or description in The Dragon's Path. This was a frustrating quality that definitely took away from my enjoyment of the story.

The main characters, who head up chapters as point of view characters much like in GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire series, were hit or miss for me too.  I definitely enjoyed both Cithrin and Marcus and felt that both characters were well developed and always interesting to read.  On the other hand, Geder, and Kalliam, both of the noble class from the Antean empire, felt more like plot elements than characters.  It seemed to me like Abraham used these two character's actions to move the story along but those actions and the character themselves didn't always seem to match up.  Often, and this happened with both Geder and Kalliam, the character would do something incredibly stupid that would lead to an exciting plot development, but the logic behind the action didn't necessarily make sense for the sake of the character himself.  This aspect led to lots of frustration for me and was totally infuriating at other times.   This also made the "political intrigues" portion of the story come across as pretty amateurish, both in terms of the writing and in terms of the character's actions.

Combine these hit and miss story elements with my (probably too high) high expectations that I had going in and you get a very disappointed reader.  I always feel a bit guilty when I pin expectations on a book or an author, and then get disappointed when the book doesn't meet my hopes and dreams.  That being said, even without the expectations, I would have been disappointed with The Dragon's Path.  I need to have well developed characters, a world I want to explore and a story that fully captures my imagination in order for me to fully hook onto an epic fantasy series, and this one fell well short of those requirements.

Grade: C-

A Song of Ice and Fire Comic Adaptation News

Winter is coming, but first we get September, which is going to be a ridiculously epic month for comics.  As many people know, September is when the DC relaunch goes down, but my daily perusal of Comics Alliance tells me that the A Song of Ice and Fire comic adaptation will also hit the shelves that month.

I envision myself poor, and up to my neck in comics come the end of September.

For those of you who don't know, Daniel Abraham will be handling the scripting of the comics, and the interior art will be handled by Tommy Patterson, a guy I've never heard of, and all I have to go on so far are a couple of Tyrion and Jon sketches Comics Alliance has up for view.  Alex Ross, who has been delivering some sweet, sweet covers for the Rocketeer Adventures comics, will be handling the cover art duty.

The Ross art they are soliciting so far (seen above) isn't exactly spectacular though.  Abraham seems capable enough but Patterson is an unknown entity.  I'm hoping the comic adaptation will do justice to the source material.  Its kinda crazy though, after 5 years of nearly nothing ASoIaF related, in one year we get a TV show, a new book, and comic.  I hope it isn't possible to get A Song of Ice and Fire overload...