Leviathan Falls

Ich habe die Serie mit diesem Buch dann abgeschlossen. Erstaunlich wie schnell das ging und auch, wie sich das alles dann zurecht geruckelt hat. Die letzten 2-3 Kapitel muss ich aber noch einmal lesen, um wirklich zu verstehen, wie das aufgelöst wurde.

Eine Tolle Serie

Every saga has to end, for sure. The saga, as art form, is problematic, because the individual installment will often not convince as novels. That is especially true for thing like "the expanse" when the narrative sets out to follow a set of characters linearly over decades of in-story.

But we, the readers, have little right to complain: It is the sort of story we crave after all, because we crave a deep immersion into the narrative.

"Leviathan Falls" stays true to its predecessors: It shies away from potential narrative arks to focus on its characters and do them justice. Overall, that is the right decision.

The "closing of the gates" ending must have felt too defeatist to authors, so they added an epilogue where humanity is traveling between the stars again. It kind of works.

A decent ending which does not try to be more than just that.

Awwww. I was heavily emotionally invested in this and overall enjoyed the read but it all fell a bit flat for me.



SPOILERS



Having just come off the back of reading some of Le Guin’s Earthsea cycle, a series that purposefully avoids the deeply limited and flawed rubric of killing the bad guy to save the day, the way the whole collective consciousness thing is over from killing Duerte was highly disappointing. Like surely it should be harder than that, and what kind of plot is that!



The existential threat of the unknown aggressors never really felt powerful enough. I mean what they can do is powerful but I never really felt it, the fear, the crisis.



The sphere/ring space/gates drawing power from from another universe had been hinted at already and rang true but again, the actual idea that the gates were doing active harm to other sentient forces wasn’t really explored. The ethical dilemma of the sins of the father, of what to do about knowing this technology is causing harm yet it being necessary for progress etc just wasn’t there. I mean I can understand it, but the book didn’t explore it, it never lent it any emotional weight. Whether it be climate change or colonialism, the story of our time is very much about how we live with and in the ruins we have made. Surely the ring gates could be great way of exploring this but the authors have nothing really to say on it.



Destroying it all felt inevitable and without weight or depth. The whole crew/family are pretty gritted against loss over the 9 books so emotionally, that everyone isn’t weeping over each other rings true for the characters but unfortunately, I didn’t care that much either. Weirdly, the stakes, and in reality we’re talking about the fate of the entire human species, didn’t feel high enough.



Finally, the little epilogue was kinda fun and silly but also really bad. I guess it was necessary, being a series about humanity’s expansion into the universe and having destroyed the gates, we needed the payoff that we’d make it back out there in the end, but Amos being there was even more unnecessary and silly.



So that makes it sound terrible. I think I’m negging because I am disappointed but, I did enjoy the read, just not where the journey ultimately took me.



On a more positive note, the characters are still great and the relationships get to play out nicely and you do feel the warmth of the crew/family.