Leviathan Wakes

This is the first book of a truly excellent sci-fi series! It is a self-contained story for the most part, so if you don't want to commit to the whole series, you don't have to... But you should if you like this one even a little, because it just gets better.
This novel follows two main characters and swaps between perspectives every chapter. The Holden chapters are a classic adventure style, with disaster everywhere and death around every corner, while the Miller chapters are styled like a classic mystery, with a detective that obsesses over a missing persons case that he suspects is more than it seems. The contrasting genre styles give the book a really neat feel, and with the sci-fi back-drop of a very believable future in which we have colonized Mars and a few asteroids and moons, the whole reading experience is just very fun and unique.
The characters are well-crafted, the main characters being a mix of classic archetypes (righteous hero, obsessed detective) and unique flaws, and the side characters have tons of potential which they develop in the further books. The plot is extremely original and the “villain” can send chills down your spine. And like any sci-fi book, the real-world social implications are very relevant to today. I held back on giving a perfect score because the story was fairly linear for my taste and I wanted more from the side characters. However, I have given a perfect score to some of the later books in this series.