James S.A. Corey's LEVIATHAN FALLS

 I finally allowed myself to finish my first read-through of Leviathan Falls, the absolutely perfect concluding volume of the two-headed author monster we call James S.A. Corey's Expanse series, but had my mother not been patiently waiting to read it after me, I might still be dragging my feet and would not yet know that it is an absolutely perfect conclusion to one of the greatest science fiction series I've ever read. Though I had inklings right from the start because Corey hasn't let us down yet, not even a little bit.

I realize there is a bit of a lacuna with regards to this series on this blog because I read its later volumes during my hiatus. I'll write about them someday, especially about Tiamat's Wrath which wrung my heart out completely just in time to drown it in tears, or something, but we're here to talk about endings, how to stick the landing, and how they should now just go ahead and teach this series in every writing class ever.

Leviathan Falls was completed during the pandemic, but this shows in only the best of ways. As the unknown threat that destroyed the Builders* looms ever larger as an existential threat to all of humanity, no matter how far we have scattered via the physics defying technology the Builders left behind, we are reminded again and again, that we are in way over our heads, here. When the Builders began defying physics, they harnessed energies from a whole 'nother universe and damaged it terribly, earning them the wrath of whatever kind of force called that other universe home, and that force wiped the Builders out completely. Now that humans have sort-of harnessed some of the Builders' left-behind technology like a civilization sized John Frum cult, we've inherited the Builder's exterminating enemy as well. But where the Builders actually understood their technology and, to a degree at least, the forces it harnessed, and seemed to have a degree of unity within their civilization-or-species as to look to us like a hive mind, we, as series heroine Naomi Nagata observes several times, are having to do it all with humans. Who have not evolved beyond what they were when confined to just one gravity well, that of good old Earth. Jumped-up primates with brains that weren't even capable of the level of civilization we associate with, say, the Stone Age without a great deal of violence, coercion, kluges and savagery. Why, at the very height of our material culture (late 1950s/early 1960s USA, say), we were still involved in a Cold War with others of our same species, only allowed a minority subset of our population to own property, move freely about the country, hold political power, etc.

I make it sound like there's a lot of preaching in this book but that's not it at all. It's just that the very plight the Expanse's civilizations finds itself in mirrors our own current jackpot of existential threats, and it's the flaws of our individual primate brains that stand in the way of implementing the solutions that people are just barely capable of dreaming up. As people in our own world deny climate change, refuse life-saving vaccines and public health measures, etc, people in the Expanse's world, though many have been kept in the dark about the overwhelming nature of the Big Threat, are also incapable of seeing the big picture and following through on the strategies devised to save it. For instance, it's been known for a few novels now that the Gate system that has allowed humans to colonize distant solar systems within fractions of a human lifetime has its limitations, and a big one of them is the frequency with which it will bear traffic.** Exceed the discovered safe volumes and speeds and some ships "go dutchman", as in the Flying Dutchman, a famous ship from the Age of Sail that disappeared without a trace. While in previous novels, traffic through the gates was controlled, first by the Transport Union (a somewhat ad hoc authority cobbled together out of the remnants of Belter culture to supervise the weird not-space between the Gates) and then by the Laconian Empire (originally a renegade Martian military faction who stole a sample of protomolecule, disappeared through a Gate and emerged years later as a powerhouse of such overwhelming force that its leader, Winston Duarte, wound up being the Emperor of Everything); with both of those forces removed from the board, the Gate network is a free-for-all. Our girl Naomi has devised a brilliant way to manage traffic and keep anybody from dying/disappearing/whatever it is that happens to people when ships "go dutchman" but it requires things like cooperating, giving a shit about other people, being patient and other things that individual humans still aren't very good at, left to their own devices. Sigh.

But while this is going on, Naomi and what's left of her crew are back together on the Rocinante, and while Jim Holden has even more PTSD than he already did after years and years and years as a captive of the Laconian Empire, and while Alex Kamal has his mind on other things from time to time like the fact that out there in the churn is not only his son but a newborn grandson whom he might never even get to meet, and while Amos Burton has been transformed into something kind of unearthly even though he still mostly acts like our favorite Murder Mechanic, it's still the Rocinante's crew and it's as wonderful for us as it is for them to have them all breathing the same recycled air. And beloved characters from past novels turn up here and there, too, notably Elvi Okoye and her husband Fazal, now Science Big Shots for the remains of the Empire, and young Theresa Duarte (heir to the Empire but no she doesn't have blue skin or red eyes) and her aging but still intrepid dog, Muskrat are along for the ride, too, and you KNOW you've always wanted to see what it's like to have a dog in space. In zero G. Oh, man, if your head doesn't explode into candy every time Muskrat is center stage, see a therapist soonest.

We even get to see [REDACTED] again!

We only get to enjoy this a little bit, though, because not only is the Big Threat out there threatening, but so is Winston Duarte, who, through protomolocule monkey business over the course of several novels has metamorphosed from capable miltary officer to renegade leader to founding father of a nation state to immortal dictator of all of humanity and has since become... something even stranger and more dangerous. He poses very nearly as big a threat to humanity as the Big Threat, and is incommunicado unless he feels like manifesting as a sort of super-intense hologram of himself where he's least expected and there were so many times in these last few Expanse novels that I was nearly won over to liking him a bit so even this revelation of his inhumanly inimical intent hits hard in the feels, even before his daughter Theresa comes looking for him.

All of this is resolved satisfactorily, which would be awesome just for this novel, but also the whole giant series, which has covered the Rocinante's crew's entire adult lifetimes into old age, is also resolved more than satisfactorily. Even as I sat there sort of guarding myself the way someone anticipating a gut punch flexes her stomach muscles, I was in awe of how well all of this was being accomplished before my eyes, even as, a few times, I shook my mental fist at the two-headed author-monster for emotional distress inflicted on the way. So while I swore in the months before Leviathan Falls was finally released that I was not ready to see this go, no, not ever, I am pleased that it was ended so perfectly.

And I'm busily trying to carve out time to read the whole series again from the beginning as one, big expanse of novel, someday. Amidst all my other projects.

It's worth it.

*The eventual name of the civilization-or-hive-mind that were the original creators of the protomolecule that has been wreaking havoc with humanity since Leviathan Wakes first graced our literal and electronic bookshelves a decade or so ago

**Not can: will. For all we ever learn the Gates can handle whatever we throw threw them, but the Big Threat notices if our traffic through them gets too dense, and it strikes when it notices.