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The Laconian Empire has fallen, setting the thirteen hundred solar systems free from the rule of Winston Duarte. But the ancient enemy that killed the gate builders is awake, and the war against our universe has begun again. In the dead system of Adro, Elvi Okoye leads a desperate scientific mission to understand what the gate builders were and what destroyed them, even if it means compromising herself and the half-alien children who bear the weight of her investigation. Through the wide-flung systems of humanity, Colonel Aliana Tanaka hunts for Duarte's missing daughter. . . and the shattered emperor himself. And on the Rocinante, James Holden and his crew struggle to build a future for humanity out of the shards and ruins of all that has come before. As nearly unimaginable forces prepare to annihilate all human life, Holden and a group of unlikely allies discover a last, desperate chance to unite all of humanity, with the promise of a vast galactic civilization free from wars, factions, lies, and secrets if they win.… (more)
User reviews
There's a lot of looking back at earlier books, particularly the first trilogy, a result I think of the fact that so much of the books middle went off in another direction, and then suddenly the next book jumped ahead several decades and some of our favorite characters were dead and gone. Remember when the big deal was how the proto-molecule mushed people together? Remember Earth?
Many questions are resolved, at least at some level, about what the proto-molecule was up to, and what's with the big Other that even the proto-molecule was afraid of. It also becomes clear why the narrative had to jump those decades.
Few series are worth nine books but this one is mostly worth it. Recommended for everyone who followed along.
I felt a little underwhelmed by the ending but I don’t think there’s much that could have been different to keep it cogent and consistent with what had come before. Not particularly liking one of the new viewpoint characters probably also played a part. It does wrap things up nicely though and if you’ve read this far you will want to read this. To me it just felt as though the authors had reached a certain point and thought “We’d better end this now” and so they did. I’d been entertained by the series as a whole and still enjoyed spending more time with the ongoing characters which is an accomplishment in itself when you consider the length of it. Going over this review it reads quite negatively but shouldn’t be taken as an indictment of either this instalment or the series as a whole. I think I’d just become so invested in the tale and those who inhabit it that it just felt a little anticlimactic.
At the close of the previous installment, the might of the Laconian empire had suffered a hard blow, compounded by the disappearance of its leader, High Consul Duarte, and the crew of the Rocinante had finally reunited, taking with them Duarte’s daughter, Teresa. Elsewhere, scientist Elvi Okoye continued her studies on the protomolecule creators and on the mysterious entities that obliterated them and that still represented a clear and present danger for everyone.
Leviathan Falls opens with the desperate search for Duarte, introducing a new character in the person of Colonel Tanaka, a ruthless, cold-blooded operative who is given carte blanche to recover the Laconian leader and who clearly enjoys the unfettered freedom about collateral damage she’s given: her cat-and-mouse game with the Rocinante’s crew showcases very well her callousness but also her tunnel vision where Holden & Co. are concerned, because their longtime experience with difficult situations (together with a good amount of luck) has gifted them with the kind of flexibility that allows them to thwart Tanaka’s plans time and again. And I for one have to admit that witnessing the Colonel’s angry frustration was quite satisfying, since she’s the kind of character that I just love to hate…
The stakes, in this final book, are of course high: though diminished, the Laconian empire is still a force to be reckoned with; the rebellious systems, coordinated by Naomi Nagata, lack the resources and the organization necessary to deal a significant blow to the enemy; and the ruthlessly dangerous aliens responsible for the destruction of the gates’ builders are ready to do the same to humanity as a whole. And yet, even though the story does not lack for edge-of-your-seat scenes, furious battles and harrowing journeys through weird alien constructs, the overall mood is more sober, more inclined to melancholy - it might have been the projection of my own sadness at the end of the saga, granted, but with hindsight this book is, after all, a long goodbye to a number of characters I have come to know well and love as real people, just as they, in the course of the series, went from total strangers thrown together by circumstances to a tightly knit family.
Even in the midst of a galaxy-wide conflict, it’s the crew of the Rocinante that still earns the spotlight in this final act, and despite all that has happened to them over the years, despite the unavoidable injuries of passing time or life’s emotional wounds, they hold on to each other through learned trust and affection, in a sort of symbiosis which needs no words to make them work as a unit.
Time and use had changed them, but it hadn’t changed what they were. There was joy in that. A promise.
Thinking about the persons they were at the beginning, and seeing how time and experiences changed their outlook, made me aware of the long road they traveled as characters: Naomi kept trying to be as inconspicuous and unassuming as possible, guilt from her past compelling her to keep to the shadows, and yet she ended up being the leader of the resistance against Laconia, putting her mechanical skills at the service of the vast “machine” of the underground; Alex had always skirted his commitments as a husband and a father, preferring the freedom and joy of piloting a ship, but in the end the choice he makes is focused on his son and grandson. And Holden, who had chosen a nondescript work on an ice hauler to be free from responsibilities, little by little found himself at the center of big and momentous events, so that his ultimate decision is a supremely selfless one, which looks even more poignant when considering that his return from imprisonment on Laconia had left him “scarred and broken” in the wake of the physical and emotional torture he had endured, and that he would have deserved some peace after so much suffering.
The only one who remains a constant is Amos: not even the uncanny changes he underwent in the course of the previous book managed to shift him from the steadfast presence I’ve come to appreciate and expect, someone who can come up with startlingly wise advice:
“You’re overthinking this, Cap’n. You got now and you got the second your lights go out. Meantime is the only time there is.”
Amos’ personality is a weird combination of menacing strength, expressed in nonchalant understatement, and of unexpected gentleness, which we see - time and again - in his penchant for picking up strays: from distraught botanist Prax, looking for his missing daughter, to Clarissa “Peaches” Mao, former enemy he added to the Roci’s crew, to Teresa Duarte (plus her dog), who seems to come as close as an adopted daughter for the apparently unemotional mechanic. Maybe it’s not so strange when considering Amos’ past and his (albeit unexpressed) desire to protect the helpless, which makes a great deal of sense when we see Amos as the one to get the very last word in this final book, in his role as protector and guardian.
If the final chapter in The Expanse is not as “epic” as might have been expected, it’s however quite rewarding thanks to the quiet but poignant emotions that stand as its backbone: I’m not ashamed to admit that some of these goodbyes affected me deeply because, despite the 9-books run, I was not ready to part company with this crew, and the only comfort to be had was the hopeful outlook on humanity given by the last paragraphs. Granted, in this series humanity did show some of its worst traits, but also the capacity to move beyond them, or at least of being willing to try: the hint that the story does go on behind the closing curtain is indeed a glimmer of hope, and I will stick to that while I wait for these two amazing authors to create something new and equally compelling in the future.
While the ending of this series may not have been exactly as I would have planned it, the collaborating team of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck definitely brought the story home and gave their readers an ending that they can be satisfied with. They, and all the people who helped produce the six-season television show, created what, IMHO, is the greatest science fiction series ever. It was very painful to close the cover for the last time.
Although
That could all be good news for our protagonists, but there's a kinda big problem: the Laconians sent a bomb into the ring gates, and now the mysterious forces inside them are pissed and they're trying to kill everyone.
We get a new character, Tanaka, a vicious Laconian soldier tasked with the job of finding Duarte after he seems to come back to life and then disappears in an ancient alien spacecraft. Tanaka believes her best shot to find him is to find his daughter, who is hiding out on the Rocinante with Holden, Naomi, zombie Amos, and Alex.
The book concludes, as one would expect, with a lengthy showdown that wraps up both the fate of the Laconian empire and the war between humans and the entities in the rings. We finally get a little explanation of the nature of the rings and how they are powered, thanks to the research of Elvi along with zombie Cara.
The book is great, as were the others. I mark it a half star below previous volumes though- I found the descriptions of Elvi's research so opaque that I really didn't get it, and I found the climax to be a bit overstuffed and long- the book could have been cut by 50 pages easily enough.
But those are quibbles. Any Sci Fi fan should read this whose series (or do what I did- watch the TV series and then read the last 3 books, which take place after the TV series ends).
Dr. Elvi Okoye rises to be my favorite character but I'm biased as someone with academic training in biology.
Threads from earlier in the series are woven in well.
Somehow staying true to the themes of cooperation vs. greed that has driven the entire narrative, and
A natural place for these stories and characters to end.
The fates of all the characters we have met so far, including Teresa Duarte and a Laconian Marine officer we meet for the first time in this book, are wrapped up, some more neatly than others. By the end, we have said goodbye to everyone, some more finally than others. It is hard to see how this could have ended in any other way.
I'd like to take a moment to reflect on the tv series, in particular the fact that the series ended with the dramatisation of book six, Babylon's Ashes. Many people are holding out hope that the final three novels might be dramatised at some point; and given that there are thirty years between books six and seven, this would not be impossible, if the same cast could be re-assembled some years down the line. The main issue would be accommodating Cas Anvar's absence, as his character - Alex Kamal - was written out of the show in season 5. But as Alex's son and his new family play a fairly direct role in this book, some plot gymnastics would be necessary. It's also interesting to see how some of the short stories - collected in the volume Memory's Legion - are shown in the tv show, to the extent that anyone coming to this book without having either seen the show or read the collected stories will find two quite important characters suddenly appearing and playing a central role apparently out of nowhere. So - on to the short stories!