More than once, I’ve seen novels I’ve read come to life onscreen, but I thought it might be fun to mix things up by revisiting the source material of an adaptation I’ve already watched all the way through: in this case, The Expanse, a six-season series that is likely one of science fiction’s best.
The first season of The Expanse is based on James S.A. Corey’s Leviathan Wakes (2011), and if memory serves, the adaptation is largely faithful. The novel takes place in a colonized solar system in the future, focused largely in the Belt, a network of populated asteroids, long subservient to the major powers of the system, Earth and Mars. James Holden is the XO of a cargo ship delivering ice to the Belt when a distress signal propels him into a rescue mission. This places him at ground (er, space) zero for what may be the inciting incident of a war, and thrusts him and his small crew — Naomi, Amos, and Alex — into the thick of interstellar intrigue. Meanwhile, on the major Belt station Ceres, a detective named Josephus Miller is given what looks like a nuisance case: finding and repatriating Juliette Mao, the daughter of a powerful Earth-based family. Holden and Miller don’t know it, but their paths are destined to collide in a momentous series of events that could change the solar system forever.
Unsurprisingly, Leviathan Wakes is great fun, full of entertaining group dynamics and space opera eyeball kicks, spun together with well engineered, tensely escalating plot turns. The writing style is straight-forward and accessible, servicing an energetic narrative, and while the momentum flags a smidge in the final act, overall the story is effortlessly read, mixing subgenres (noir mystery, political intrigue, scientific horror) in highly entertaining fashion.
