It took a while to get into it, but I'm hooked on the series now! (Currently on the second book).

 

I found the prologue absolutely electrifying, and couldn't wait to unravel the mystery, but the book made me work for it! The first third of the novel has parts that just don't seem to take us anywhere (though they ultimately do; I learned a lot of patience!). Once the threads converged and everyone was moving towards the same goal, though, I couldn't put it down. I also love how open the end was. There was a world of possibilities for some of the main characters, and I'm curious to see when they'll pop up again.

Book themes for Hanukkah: Any book whose main character is Jewish, any story about the Jewish people –OR– where the miracle of light plays a significant part in the stories plot.  

 

Joseph Roth's novella about Nissen Piczenik, a coral merchant in the small town of Progrody. Nissen has never been outside of his town, deep in the Russian interior, and fantasizes that a Leviathan watches over the coral reefs. 

 

 

 

Narrated by Jefferson Mays

 

Series: The Expanse #1

 

I quite like this book although the conflation of speed and acceleration still irks me. This was a reread, obviously.

 

It was also my first audiobook listened to via the Kobo app, and I have to say that my experience was pretty good. Inside the listening screen, Kobo likes to just give you a rounded number of hours left and display the chapter time counts but the screen before that gives both the percentage read and exact time left in the book (which I didn't realize at first, so I was frustrated by the chapter display).

Post-reading:
This novella did not redeem itself for me. Curran has a great idea here with his time gateway, which is the only reason I am giving this 2 stars instead of 1. My copy is marked up with spelling, punctuation, grammatical, and consistency errors. I would love for the author to see all of the ridiculous, simple mistakes that he allowed his book to be published with! I stated in my previous review (below) that I was hoping his monster would make the story great for me. But it didn't. Godzilla destroyed Tokyo, this guy destroyed a small fishing village. It left me craving originality. I would love to see the time gateway premise utilized in a longer work by a writer with more talent and vision.

Pre-reading:
The very first thing that bothered me about this book was obvious before I even cracked the cover. I purchased it online and didn't realize the spacing/formatting error on the back cover until I physically had the book. I am usually put off by books that are just thrown together without consideration for obvious errors. Like the skipped line in the middle of the sentence on the back cover. It seems that was just the beginning of my disappointment with Leviathan. By page 8, I had already found several very blatant errors in tense and hyphen usage, as well as 'your' instead of 'you're'. As a copyeditor, it's very clear there was no professional editing of any sort done on this. The language is much rougher and more vulgar than necessary. (Vulgarity is not an issue for me in itself, however it is excessive and detracts from the story.) And finally, I found the ridiculous amount of name and brand drops in the first couple chapters very annoying. Despite the language, grammar, and syntax wearing on the English nerd in me, I still plan to finish this little book with the hope that the story itself can distract me from everything else. I LOVE leviathans, denizens of the deep, all the giant prehistoric monsters. Hopefully Curran's monster can redeem this novella for me!

I got into two different conversations lugging this around. So, apparently there's a new Sci Fi series based on this series of books. And it's good, I hear. You know what I liked best about it, besides the old-school sci fi space opera vibe? Ethics. I know, right? Lots of thought time and discussion given to ethics and morals and what is the right thing to do. It doesn't drag the plot down at all, there's still plenty going on, and big battles and such. And I liked the hardboiled cop storyline enormously.

Female characters at maybe 1 in 10, and mostly they exist for dudes to fall for, so points off for that, but the dudes are falling for clever, creative, hard-working characters, so it's not like reading Golden Age sexism, but there is definitely room for improvement. And Yay! everyone isn't white, so that's nice, too.

My library only has this one volume. So, does anyone know if the series is driving an uptick in reading? I want to ask them to get all the books, but not if I'm the only one who'll check them out.

Library copy