Rating: 1 star

I have wanted to read this book for a bajillion years. Yes, a bajillion. I was so sure I was going to love it. I still don't know why, but it never occurred to me in the slightest that it would turn out to be a flop. If I was a booktuber and I made 5 star predictions videos, this would 100% be on every single list. From everything I had researched, this book should have been a new favourite for me. Out of all the reviewers I watch online, only one was negative on this book and that was Emily Fox on YouTube. Dammit I should’ve listen to her, because this book ended up being the disappointment of the century. Yes, we are only 22 years into this one, but I am already calling it.

Before I go any further, I need to preface this by saying that I am not a prude. I am not opposed to sexual innuendo in a book. I don’t need everything to be squeaky clean. I can deal with sexy themes. No, I don't particularly prefer them, but I can get past them if they are there and enjoy the book regardless. Leviathan Wakes, however, was determined to shove as many sex-themed sayings or discussions or anything even remotely scandalous in nature, down. Your. Bloody. Throat. Now I only made note of a few lines, because I got to the point where I didn't want to make the reading experience any longer than it had to be, and pausing to copy the lines down would mean even more hours of torture, so you will just have to trust me when I say that there was plenty more where this came from.

I think my main issue with all this sex stuff was it was completely unnecessary. It’s also not like it was a character that was like this. Was it trying to bring about some sort of perverted tone? The book is told in third person, and in both perspectives, (I think there were two) all of these innuendos and dialogue continued throughout. It was fundamentally needless. I mean, read this line:

We just met this man, and the first thing we absolutely must know about him is that he is fat (which is a whole other discussion entirely) and that his fastenings somehow impossibly bare a striking resemblance to people parting after sexy times. Oh, what vital information, thank you. We are talking about a person - a NORMAL HUMAN BEING - wearing a fricking uniform. We are talking about the flaming velcro around his waist. Last time I checked, velcro is not sexy. Nothing close to it. I don't look at velcro and immediately liken it to something risqué or promiscuous. That is the furtherest thing from my mind in that moment! I'm looking at bloody velcro, not a g-string!!! Are you going to look at a child's running shoes fastened with velcro and say they were pulled so tight they looked like the corset lacing on a burlesque dancer's outfit? No! What kind of sick person would use this?

Now we have this infamous gem:

I have so many questions. First of all, why a "cheap" brothel? How do prostitutes "turn" differently depending on what their place of employment charges? And if they do, then why on God's Green Earth is it relevant?! What difference does it make that we have to establish right now that this moon (whose name is Phoebe... which still doesn't sit right) turns like prostitute that is paid x amount, as opposed this other moon that turns like a prostitute worth twice as much? Do we really need to know this? Is this vital information? Truly? Because it really makes no difference (in my mind at least) how much any prostitute is worth. Second question: why is this being used in a simile? A simile is supposed to take something that people are familiar with and compare it something that people are unfamiliar with, to make that unfamiliar thing easier to imagine. Now I don't know about you, but I don't think the average layperson has an in-depth understanding of how prostitutes tend to turn, regardless of their wages. Again, I come to the question of is this tonal. Is it trying to establish some kind of edgy tone? If so, it's not working. It just makes it confusing. I am none the wiser on how this moon is rotating because of this line. It does not add to my enjoyment of this book (which was lacking in the first place) nor help me visualise viscerally this moon in the sky. It's just a pointless line that ultimately serves no purpose.

There was so many other lines too, I just glossed over them. One about something being a strategist’s wet dream... A truckload of needless innuendos and sex-themed similes and metaphors that really are in this book for no reason. Like I said, I didn't want to spend any longer on the book than I absolutely had to. For the majority of the second half of the book, I was only paying half attention. I wasn’t trying to figure out where the plot threats were going. I was just going through the paces, consuming the story.

I would say that I regret buying the audiobook, but I don’t think I could have finished it any other way. The audio wasn’t terrible, but it also isn’t something I would write home about. It didn't improve the reading experience for me, nor did it have any substantial part to play in my final rating of the book.

Reading all this back, I am just now realising that I haven’t actually talked about the book. I'll shove this paragraph in here if Future Me is curious, but to be honest I don’t remember much. It was in space. There was a detective. There was a starship captain (or starship-adjacent captain) who was called Jim (which didn’t help my brain trying to differentiate it from Star Trek). There was an explosion or something. Also, stretchy people who came from Mars or somewhere (they weren't born in Earth gravity so it made them taller than normal). And there was something that was killing people... people were definitely dying, because of some reason that the characters had to figure out. Maybe it was the titular leviathan. Plus someone’s lady died or went missing, and that was the main driving force to that character, which was fine it didn’t bother me that much.

I don't know. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe this book doesn’t have as many sexual things as I thought there were. I am, after all, writing this review several months after finishing the book and doing so without an actual copy as reference, so my thoughts/memories may be skewed. The other thing that crossed my mind is that maybe I am not this book's target audience. I’m not male in my 20s or 30s. Does that mean that this book is simply not for me? But if you think about it, most of my favourite books are recommended for men in their 20s or 30s, so is it just this book? Is this the outlier? But then, many other females who read similarly to me love this series, so maybe it is just me after all.

So I sat there with the library book on my lap and audiobook in my headphones, wishing that I could crank the speed up past 3.5, and just counting down the hours... minutes... until I could officially close this book and never look at it again. The best experience I had of reading Leviathan Wakes was seeing the back cover as I slammed it shut. I cheered when I finished this book. I had to return my copy back to the library early because someone had put a reserve on it, and I almost put a note inside the front cover, advising them of the absolute travesty they were about to read. I didn’t... but I thought about it. I seriously thought about it.

Now, believe it or not, I might actually pick up book two if I see it at the library. I know. Why would I do that to myself when I felt this way about book one. I don’t know, I guess I just have some hope that it will get better or maybe I will look past all the sex jokes and appreciate it for what it is. If I happen to see book two available, I may give it a shot. I can't promise I'll finish it, but then again I can't promise I will finish any book I start. Maybe I want to keep trying because I was really looking forward to starting The Long Price Quartet at some point, which is by Daniel Abraham aka half of James S.A. Corey. Now I'm not so excited...

So... I clearly had a bone to pick with Leviathan Wakes. This book let me down so much, that I really needed to rant about it, huh. I still can't believe it has such a high rating on Goodreads. Now obviously, I don't fault anyone who likes The Expanse series. I can acknowledge that I am in the vast minority here, even amongst my Goodreads friends (who have an average rating of 4.02), and my opinion is by no means definitive or fact in any way, so I don't want anyone reading this review to think that Leviathan Wakes is objectively a bad book. No... In fact it is a terrible book. It's as terrible as the female escort you ordered turning out to be your sister. 




Ok. Sorry... I had to. But see, this just proves my point that thERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO NEED-