James S. A. Corey
1 universe1 series9 books
Universes (1)
Series (1)
Books (9)
Leviathan Wakes
The Expanse
2011
A ship's executive officer and a burnt-out asteroid belt detective stumble onto the same conspiracy from opposite ends. Jim Holden survives the destruction of his ice freighter and broadcasts what he knows to everyone, setting the solar system on a path to war. Detective Miller on Ceres is looking for a missing girl named Julie Mao. What they both find on the asteroid Eros will change humanity forever. The novel that launched the series combines noir detective fiction with hard science fiction and large-scale political thriller.
Caliban's War
The Expanse
2012
A child goes missing on Ganymede, the solar system's most important agricultural station, during a firefight between Earth and Mars that nobody officially started. Holden and the Rocinante are drawn into the search while Martian marine Bobbie Draper tries to report what she actually saw, and UN politician Avasarala manoeuvres between the great powers trying to prevent a war that several parties are actively trying to start. Introduces the series' strongest supporting cast and significantly expands its political scope.
Abaddons Gate
The Expanse
2013
The protomolecule has built a massive ring structure beyond the orbit of Uranus and humanity has sent a fleet to investigate. Holden and the Rocinante are there, and so is a church pastor, a security officer, and a Martian marine with unfinished business. When the ring activates and traps the fleet in an alien space, the danger is less the unknown technology than the humans trapped alongside it. Closes the first act of the series and opens the door to everything that follows.
Cibola Burn
The Expanse
2014
The gates to new worlds have opened and the first wave of settlers has already landed on a habitable planet they are calling Ilus, only to find a corporate colony ship arriving to claim the same ground under a UN charter. Holden is sent to mediate. Neither side wants mediation. Meanwhile something on Ilus is waking up. The most self-contained novel in the series, structured as a siege story on an alien world, with the highest environmental stakes of any book in the sequence.
Nemesis Games
The Expanse
2015
For the first time in the series, the crew of the Rocinante splits up. Each goes home, or to whatever passes for home, while Holden stays with the ship. Then the solar system falls apart. The most character-driven novel in the sequence, revealing backstories that were carefully withheld across the first four books, and delivering consequences that reshape the series from this point forward. Widely considered the best entry point for readers who bounced off the earlier books.
Babylon's Ashes
The Expanse
2016
The Free Navy has shattered the inner planets' supply chains and humanity is starving. Holden and a coalition of desperate allies have to stop a war of attrition they are already losing. The most politically complex novel in the series, told through the largest cast of POV characters, including the enemy. Asks seriously whether the Belt's grievances justify its methods and does not give a clean answer.
Persepolis Rising
The Expanse
2017
Thirty years have passed since the gates opened. The crew of the Rocinante is older, the political landscape has shifted, and a new faction with overwhelming military force has come through one of the gates to claim the entire network. The beginning of the third act. Darker in tone than its predecessors, structured more as an occupation narrative than a thriller, with the series' most morally complex antagonist to this point.
Tiamat's Wrath
The Expanse
2019
The Laconian Empire controls the gates and the solar system, and the underground resistance is outgunned at every turn. Something is attacking ships near the gates, the same force that destroyed the builders of the protomolecule, and it is becoming more active. The penultimate novel tightens the series' two largest threads - the human political story and the alien mystery - into a single existential question, and answers several of them at significant cost.
Leviathan Falls
The Expanse
2021
The final novel. The entity beyond the gates is accelerating its campaign and the only solution anyone can find would end human individuality as a concept. Holden, Naomi, Amos, and Bobbie face the end of the story they have been living for forty years. The series concludes the way it began - with a small crew on a single ship, a problem too large for any of them, and the stubborn insistence that it matters how you behave even when the stakes are civilisational.