Leviathan Wakes characters

Also known as Juliette Andromeda Mao

Appears from the start

The daughter of a wealthy Luna family who walked away from her inheritance to live among Belters, an accomplished racing pinnace pilot who signed on with a small ship in the Belt. When the story opens she is locked in a storage compartment aboard that ship, its crew taken away and something happening in the corridors outside her door.

Also known as Jim Holden

Appears from the start

Executive officer of the ice hauler Canterbury, which runs water from the rings of Saturn to the stations of the Belt. An Earther and a former UN Navy officer who left the service under a cloud, he is capable but deliberately unambitious, content with a berth that asks little of him. He has a stubborn streak about honesty and an instinct to make what he learns public rather than sit on it, which shapes everything that follows once his ship answers a distress call.

Appears from the start

The Canterbury's chief engineer, a tall Belter raised in low gravity, calm and extremely competent. She keeps a failing ship running on improvisation and holds its crew together, and she is willing to argue with Holden when nobody else will. She is private about her past and unimpressed by authority of any flag.

Appears from the start

The Canterbury's mechanic, a heavyset Earther out of Baltimore with a flat, friendly manner and no visible squeamishness about violence. He treats Naomi's judgement as a substitute for his own and is unquestioningly loyal to the handful of people he has decided belong to him.

Appears from the start

The Canterbury's pilot, a Martian from Mariner Valley with a drawl and a long career in the Martian navy behind him. Talkative and easy company, he is an exceptional ship handler who can get performance out of hardware that should not survive it.

Appears from the start

The Canterbury's young medic, cheerful and easygoing, more interested in a comfortable berth and small pleasures than in the politics between the inner planets and the Belt.

Appears from the start

Captain of the Canterbury, an aging and pragmatic spacer counting down the years to retirement, who would rather not risk his ship on a distress signal but is bound by the salvage laws of the Belt.

Also known as Josephus Miller

First appears in chapter 2

A detective with Star Helix Security, the corporation contracted to police Ceres Station. A Belter born and raised in low gravity, he is middle-aged, divorced, drinking more than he should, and long past caring about promotion. He works cases on intuition and a deep network of informants, and he is handed a routine side contract to locate a wealthy family's runaway daughter and put her on a ship home whether she wants to go or not.

First appears in chapter 2

Miller's partner on Ceres, an Earther recently posted to the station and still adjusting to low gravity and to Belter resentment of anyone from the inner planets. Earnest and willing, he knows his origins make him a liability on the streets he polices.

First appears in chapter 2

Miller's superior at Star Helix on Ceres, a Belter who runs station policing as much by politics as by law, weighing corporate instructions against what the station's population will tolerate.

First appears in chapter 2

A wealthy Luna-based industrialist whose family fortune rests on shipping and engineering contracts, and the father of the runaway daughter whose retrieval he has quietly paid to have arranged.

First appears in chapter 14

Commanding officer of the Martian Congressional Republic Navy battleship Donnager, flagship of the fleet patrolling the Belt. Rigid and duty-bound, she takes Holden's survivors aboard to answer for the accusations they have broadcast across the system against Mars.

First appears in chapter 14

A Martian naval intelligence officer aboard the Donnager who interrogates Holden's crew. Polite, patient and methodical, he is unconvinced by their account of what destroyed their ship and equally certain that Mars did not do it.

First appears in chapter 21

A former UN Marine colonel remembered across the Belt as the Butcher of Anderson Station for the massacre he commanded there. He resigned his commission afterward and became the most prominent public figure in the Outer Planets Alliance, running Tycho Station and its enormous shipbuilding operation. He wants the OPA treated as a government rather than a terrorist movement, and he offers Holden's crew shelter and a purpose.

First appears in chapter 42

The scientist directing the secret research program behind the alien material, an articulate and courteous man who can lay out the project's atrocities as a rational trade and genuinely expects to be understood and joined.