Title: LEVIATHAN
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Illustrator: Keith Thompson
Series: book one of Leviathan
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Publication Date: October 2009
Pages: 440
Price: $22.99 CAD, $19.99 USD, £12.99 GBP
Status: keeper
TBR Status: neutral. I added this after 1 Jan 2009.

LibraryThing Info

Amazon Info

Alek longs for a chance to prove himself on the battlefield, so he's thrilled when his tutors wake him up in the middle of the night for a training session with one of the army's mechanical walkers - a training session that turns out to be anything but.

Deryn has disguised herself as a boy and joined the Royal Air Service. When a routine training session goes awry, she finds herself on the airbeast Leviathan, shuttling a mysterious cargo across a Europe on the brink of war.

Scott Westerfeld's UGLIES books set the bar pretty high. They were thought-provoking, action-packed, and hella fun to read. They led me to expect great things from Westerfeld's other books. I did have fun with both PEEPS and the first MIDNIGHTERS book, but neither has stayed with me like the UGLIES series.

LEVIATHAN will. It will and then some.

Y'all know I love me some steampunk, and Westerfeld delivers the goods. LEVIATHAN is set during the first days of World War I, which is later than most steampunk offerings, but all the trappings are there. Fabulous, anachronistic technology? Check. Interest in the ethical implications of said technology? Check. Focus on class and gender issues? Check. Add in a healthy dose of action - which Westerfeld does - and you make Memory a happy girl indeed.

I mean, look at the imagination on this guy! In Westerfeld's alternate world, legs are far more prevalent than wheels. The Clankers' magnificent machines walk on two, four, six or even eight legs. Their massive landships tromp through terrain that would leave a truck out in the cold. At the same time, the Darwinists' fabricated beasts stand in for many common machines. I think airships are pretty damned awesome to begin with, but living airships? Airships that are actually ecosystems? Darlin', you'd better believe I was all over that.

And even though the technology is wildly different from what we really had back in the 1910s, it still feels real. You can tell Westerfeld's done his research; he blends the might-have-been together with the flat-out-impossible so seamlessly that you'd never know the difference between the two. Everything feels plausible, from the Guild of Mechanicks to the bats that shit spikes.

The story moves along at a decent clip, too. Westerfeld alternates between Alek and Deryn's perspectives every couple of chapters, which serves to draw us deeper and deeper into both stories. I couldn't read fast enough. I was always eager to see what would happen next, and I couldn't wait for the two characters to come together. Their eventual meeting did not disappoint.

Keith Thompson's illustrations add another dimension to the book that I'm sure many readers will appreciate. His detailed full-page plates show us both the mechanical walkers and the fabricated beasts in all their glory. Many smaller illustrations highlight particular scenes from the text or add a little oomph to certain passages. They're as enjoyable as the story.

I'm trying to think of negatives, and I'm coming up short. The ending does leave a few things unresolved, but that's only to be expected in a series-opener like this. Still, I'm mighty put out that I can't read the sequel right now. You can bet I'll be getting it as soon as it hits the shelves next year (unless Simon Pulse would like to send me an ARC a little sooner than that?)

4 stars

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