Leviathan Falls by James S.A. Corey

The Laconian Empire has suffered a series of reversals in its war against the unknown entities that killed the creators of the protomolecule. The alien are conducting strange assaults on our reality, affecting consciousness and the laws of physics. High Consul Winston Duarte, whose enforced self-evolution to take on the aliens, is now MIA and the Empire is leaderless at the precise moment it is facing its greatest military challenges. As usual, it falls to the crew of the Rocinante to influence events and bring the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced to a successful conclusion...if that is even possible.

All epic stories have an ending, sometimes one that is full of fire and brimstone and lots of explosions and major character revelations, and sometimes one that is quiet and reflective and bit melancholic. Leviathan Falls, wrapping up The Expanse after nine books and eleven years, manages to do a bit of both. It's a book that, like many of its forebears, gives good space battle, but it also factors in an element of weariness to the narrative. Our central quartet of heroes and almost-heroes and not-really-heroes - Naomi, James, Alex, Amos - have been through hell and back many times over the thirty years they've been living with the threat of the protomolecule-builders and their even more enigmatic and dangerous enemies, whilst all around them various human factions have played their game of space thrones which have been more like messing around with musical chairs whilst the room itself burns.

You could be forgiven going into this finale thinking that Leviathan Falls will refocus the story on that conflict, which has mostly been relegated to enigmatic moments and epic cliffhangers in previous novels. Surprisingly, it doesn't. The battle for reality as we know it is instead relegated to a mostly off-page game of tug of war between a protomolecule-enhanced character and the unseen aliens banging on the walls of our reality (occasionally punching through with bizarre effects, like rewriting the laws of physics on a local level or knocking billions of people unconscious). Some may feel a bit let down by that, but given the strangeness of the aliens and the weirdness of the protoculture-powered technology opposing them, perhaps it was a wiser choice not to try to depict that cosmic struggle on page. Instead we get intermittent senses of the history of that conflict via two protomolecule-resurrected Laconians interfacing with an alien archive (which also gives a better sense of the history of the conflict between the protomolecule builders and their foes). This is all good stuff, though there is a nagging sense of it being a case of more tell than show.

Some of the weaknesses of earlier books remain - there are story beats in the finale here which feel pretty much just Xeroxed from earlier books, particularly Babylon's Ashes - but there is a melancholy air to the novel I wasn't quite expecting. The team have a new enemy, a ruthless Laconian soldier with kick-ass super armour given ill-advised total authority to deal with problems any way she sees fit, but even her heart doesn't seem to be entirely in it. The resistance is on the back foot and the Rocinante crew are struggling to hold it together, but similarly the Laconians are reeling from their own problems (particularly the losses of several of their most powerful warships) and aren't at their best. Both sides even spend some time wondering why they're shooting one another whilst the real enemies, the ultra-powerful extradimensional aliens, are trying to kill everyone.

The book does a solid job of wrapping up the character arcs for its major protagonists: Jim Holden's moral certainty, which both impresses and annoys, once again is put under the spotlight, whilst Naomi gets to lead the resistance. Amos, semi-hybridised with the protomolecule, is still pretty much Amos, whilst Alex gets a very low-key presence, despite his son playing a surprisingly important role through the book. We've spent nine books with this crew and the authors wisely choose to spend a fair amount of time on them doing what they do best: argue, roar across the Solar system getting into trouble, getting shot at, and playing an ace when least expected to win the day.

Other elements are less successful: new protagonist Aliana Tanaka has potential, but pulling a brand new antagonist out of nowhere in the last book of the series makes it very hard to invest much interest in her. She does have some intriguing characteristics, but it feels like the series might have been better to have set her up in an earlier volume, or had a more consistent set of enemies in the Laconian side of the story across the three books in which they are major players. 

The real question is does Leviathan Falls give us an ending worth more than a decade's build-up? The answer is a resounding and definitive, "kinda, yes". The authors have stumbled a bit in the past with lower-key finales to shorter story arcs, with both Nemesis Games and Persepolis Rising doing brilliant jobs of establishing new threats and enemies which then Babylon's Ashes and Tiamat's Wrath resolved rather hurriedly and perfunctory. Leviathan Falls does take another tack, building to an ending to the entire series which does feel somewhat familiar, but allows the characters to shine. There's a fair few unanswered questions here, which the epilogue (which jumps forwards a long time after the rest of the series) doesn't do much to address, but ultimately the novel rattles along and delivers a reasonably interesting ending, even if it's maybe not the one you were expecting.

Leviathan Falls (****) wraps up the Expanse series in a reflective mood. Never quite the decade-defining series it's sometimes been hailed as (and certainly not as important in SF literature as its TV counterpart is in SF TV), it's nevertheless delivered reliably entertaining space opera on a near-annual basis, and the ending certainly continues that fine tradition. I'll be interested to see what the authorial team can come up with next (though for Daniel Abraham, at least, that question will be answered by his new epic fantasy series which starts in a few weeks with Empire of Ash).