Reflection on Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey

             Leviathan Wakes was a really cool sci-fi book. I am trying to read more fiction and this was a really good choice. One excerpt from the book sums up the setting pretty well: “Earth had been so focused on her own problems that she’d ignored her far-flung children, except when asker for her share of their labors. Mars had bent her entire population to the task of remaking the planet, changing its red face to green. Trying to make a new Earth to end their reliance on the old. And the Belt had become the slums of the solar system.” Basically, the book is all about a time in the future when humans on Earth, Mars, the Asteroid Belt and the various moons of Jupiter and Saturn enter a time of conflict. About twenty million people live on the moons of Saturn and forty-five million on the moons of Jupiter. One moon of Uranus, the farthest out, as five thousand people. Earth has tens of billions. And meanwhile, Mormons are planning a mission to go even further into outer space. At the same time, a mysterious “protomolecule” is revealed that has the power to end all human life.

            I found the two main characters of the book whose perspectives we read from not incredibly interesting. I wished that we had more perspectives like in A Song of Ice and Fire. That said, it’s not really a character-driven book, and some characters felt cliché- mainly Holden, Miller, and Fred. But that said, the plot is what keeps you reading, and I read 300 pages in the first three days I read the book. It covers really interesting parallels to modern society like misinformation and the dangers of technological development. A really good debate that happens between two characters on whether to reveal some secret information is whether the public knows too much or doesn’t know enough. That feels so relevant to modern day when I think about the effects of the internet on society. Would we fix our problems by restricting the flow of information (including misinformation), or would it be better to spread even more information out there in the hopes that the truth will be more convincing in the end?