During a live stream today, Orbit Books officially announced the title and cover for the final installment of James S.A. Corey’s science fiction series, The Expanse: Leviathan Falls, which will hit stores sometime in 2021 .
The novel is a long time coming—Corey (the pen name for authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) published the first Expanse novel, Leviathan Wakes, back in 2011, and followed it up yearly (or nearly so) with new installments: Caliban’s War, Abaddon’s Gate, Cibola Burn, Nemesis Games, Babylon’s Ashes, Persepolis Rising, and Tiamat’s Wrath. That last novel hit stores last year, and fans have been waiting to find out how the series will come to an end. Now, we’ll find out in 2021 with Leviathan Falls.
Set in the distant future in an inhabited solar system split between three major factions (Earth, Mars, and the Asteroid Belt / Outer planets), Leviathan Wakes follows the crew of an ice hauler—captain James Holden, XO Naomi Nagata, pilot Alex Kamal, and engineer Amos Burton—after they encounter a ship in distress. A private company unleashes an alien substance known as the Protomolecule, plunging the system’s various factions into a major conflict as they vie for power.
The substance is essentially a technology that can replicate itself and manipulate matter, and it eventually links our solar system to a vast network of other gates and habitable planets, allowing humanity to expand into the galaxy. In the latest pair of novels, Abraham and Franck jump decades into the future, where a lost Martian task force returns—having used the Protomolecule to create some advanced technologies and set up a fascist civilization—and are bent on creating an interstellar empire.
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In 2014, the Alcon Entertainment picked up the rights to adapt the series, and broadcast it on the Syfy Channel. The series lasted for three seasons on the network before it was eventually canceled, only to be picked up by Amazon for its streaming video platform, Prime Video. It debuted a fourth season last year, and renewed the show for a fifth season, which has yet to be released.
Orbit didn’t release any synopsis for the book, but Abraham and Franck did explain that the novel will provide a definitive ending for the series.
During the live stream, Abraham and Franck answered a handful of reader questions. In addition to Leviathan Falls, they plan to have another novella that’ll come out after that final book, which will provide a “nice grace note” to some hanging threads from the series. Abraham noted that he’s been waiting to write the story for “years.”
Franck explained that they don’t plan to write any novels in the world, but that Alcon could always put together another Expanse-related project for television.
After The Expanse, they do have some other projects in the works: A new, three-book series. They haven’t begun working on it just yet, but with The Expanse coming to a close, they’ll be devoting their attention to that shortly. “It’s a very different project [from The Expanse],” Abraham said. Where The Expanse drew its inspiration from authors like Larry Niven and Alfred Bester, “the new ones will be much more Frank Herbert.”
Leviathan Falls will hit stores sometime in 2021.
Leviathan Falls! Slowly I turned, step by step, inch by inch…
“Babylon’s Sashes” sounds like a fashion show in ancient Mesopotamia.
I don’t know what’s better, the fact that this book is going to be amazing and will live up to all the hype, or the fact that Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck are already planning a new series inspired by Dune. Good news all around. With the way that 2020 has played out thus far, I’ll take it.
@3 Inspired by Frank Herbert – not necessarily Dune. Could it be….the Dosadi Experiment?
Of the new 3-book series, Abraham added: “…I think Ty’s description of this was ‘the disappointing love child of Frank Herbert and Ursula Le Guin.’ So that’s what we’re aiming for next.”
Love the title.
Perfect bookend to Leviathan Wakes.
@5: they’ve told me that they’re drawing on books like Dune, Hyperion, and Left Hand of Darkness for this new trilogy: https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/11/16962264/the-expanse-author-james-sa-corey-science-fiction-space-opera-book-series
I really need Tor to re-release the first three books in Hardcover, so that we can have a full collection.
And I really hope this will be January 2021, or March at the latest.
I’ve to admit the second half of the series lost a lot of interest for me: ok, the plucky group of space rouges find themselves at the center of all the solar system intrigues, that’s a lot of cohincidences but whatever: right people at the right place. Ok, as the series goes on they continue to be at the center of said intrigues: let’s say that’s consequences of previous events… but when it turn out that almost all of those plucky space rogues had a Mysterious Past related to the events that are shaking the system? what are the chances that the random survivors of a single mining ship have all Main Plot Relevant backgrounds?
What’s this, a role playing game campaign? This level of meta are very immersion breaking for me.
If it had been purely tongue-in-cheek space opera that could have been fine, but this series had pretenses of realism, and realism is not only getting the science mostly right.
Oh, I will still read it at some point, but it was enough to deprioritize it for me from “hardcover copy as soon as it’s out” to “lets’ wait for the discounted paperback” (in fact, I’ve yet to read the last 3 books! at this point I’ll wait for the series to end and do a full reread)
I have not read the books, but I’m an avid fan of the show.
Knowing there is an ending in sight is bittersweet, but I have a thing for a well-concluded story arc.
Sometimes less is more, and never-ending series tend to run out of steam halfway through and then do the zombie thing…
I will probably read the whole thing once it’s done.