Goliath

This post first published August 24, 2011.

Author: Scott Westerfeld
Published: September 20, 2011
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Series: Leviathan #1
562 pages (galley)
 
I feel sad that the trilogy is over now, but I can tell you, I was not disappointed at all by this final book. I loved Leviathan and Behemoth, and naturally had high expectations for book three. Goliath not only met them, but exceeded them. It’s pretty rare for each installment in a book series to raise the bar higher and higher, but Goliath has done just that. If you love Leviathan and Behemoth, I can almost guarantee you’ll love Goliath as well.

This is the final book, where all sorts of secrets start unraveling and all those events you have been hoping to read about occur (for me, that was Alek and Deryn’s relationship)! In Goliath, the Leviathan airbeast heads toward New York City, all the way in the United States. The crew has rescued a Mr. Tesla in Siberia, an inventor whose gigantic, and dangerous, weapon of mass destruction, Goliath, sits in New York. With the Goliath, Tesla hopes to scare the world into stopping the war.

Loved this book. Truly an epic ending to an epic story! It was fast paced and a thrill to read. Most of my favourite scenes involved Alek and Deryn, especially the eventual revealing of Deryn’s gender (I don’t think this is a spoiler because I think it’s kind of obvious that it would happen in this book).
The revealing didn’t happen the way I thought it would, but actually, I liked the way Westerfeld handled it much better. I think my vision of how it would happen (that is, that Deryn would just outright tell Alek) is kind of predictable and boring anyway. I have been waiting for Alek to find out that Deryn is actually a girl ever since Leviathan, and I’m so, so happy with the way it turned out:  not a perfect happily-ever-after, but the kind of ending that opens Alek and Deryn up to a zillion possibilities in their future. Their relationship just makes me feel so warm and fuzzy inside.

The characters are still as wonderful as ever. I still remember walking away from Leviathan liking the story but not really attached to any of the characters. Well, definitely by the end of Goliath I have become quite fond of the quirky cast! Dr. Barlow has become a favourite (memorable quote from her: “… I make it a policy never to appear surprised.”) and Eddie Malone, though an annoying creature to the characters, is funny and lovable (well, unless he was a real person, then I’d probably think he was annoying too, haha). And of course, I love Deryn and Alek (spoiler: highlight to read: though I am a little saddened by the fact that Alek is no longer a prince at the end of the book. Part of the appeal of Alek is that he was a secret heir … but I still love him!).

It is really amazing how Scott Westerfeld weaved his steampunk ideas into real history. Of course, the entire Leviathan trilogy is fiction, but there is an author’s note at the end of the book that points out the real historical facts that Westerfeld incorporated into Goliath and I was pleasantly surprised by how many factual elements are in the story!

This book, and its predecessors, are great books, truly! If you haven’t started this series yet, I highly recommend it. It’s good timing too, since the third book is out now, so you can read them all together! (PS. Thank you Simon & Schuster Galley Grab for this galley :)

My Rating: 5/5

Behemoth

This post first published February 12, 2011.

Author: Scott Westerfeld
Published: October 2010
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Series: Leviathan #2
481 pages (hardcover)
 
Okay, they do end up going on a ’round the world adventure. I retract my statement from my Leviathan post! (Though the dust jacket should have been more specific and meant across the trilogy … it made it sound like it would all happen in one book)! I digress.

This is book two of the Leviathan trilogy. I was excited to see a brand spanking new copy available at the library, since the first book is still very fresh in my head. Book two totally lived up to my expectations and didn’t let me down. It’s just as good, if not better, than the first one! I certainly feel that this one was more exciting, and I think I am a bigger fan of book two than book one (which was also great, of course).

In Behemoth, the great airship Leviathan lands in the Ottoman Empire, where Alek and his men decide to try to escape the ship where they are more or less held as prisoners. Unfortunately, plans never go as smoothly as you think they will, and only Alek and two others manage to get away; the other two willingly give themselves up to buy Alek time to escape. However, Alek isn’t about to abandon his other two comrades so easily.

Docked in the Ottoman Empire on the airship, Deryn/Dylan and Dr. Barlow realize that the empire is slowly being taken over by the Germans. Wanting to persuade the sultan to continue his friendship with Britain, the two attempt to offer the sultan a gift. Again, plans don’t go over too smoothly, and Dr. Barlow desperately offers the Leviathan to the sultan instead!

That’s how the story basically starts out. I was a little saddened that Deryn (whom I’ve become quite fond of, despite saying I was attached to nobody in the last book) and Alek were once again separated, but fear not, they meet again soon enough, when due to circumstances beyond their control, they need to work together along with some anarchists (or revolutionaries, depending on your point of view) of the Empire to overthrow the sultan and push the German out. If you’ve already read the first book, then this plot overview of the second one surely sounds more exciting, no??
I felt there was a lot more action, and more plot in general with this book. The characters seemed to become more ‘solidified’, if that makes sense. Like I mentioned earlier, I’ve taken a liking to Deryn despite previously saying I wasn’t fond of anyone. I’m also getting quite pumped up over Deryn’s crush on Alek. There’s quite a few times when I was so sure she would reveal she’s a girl to Alek (and there I was, gripping the pages intensely, completely into the scene), but she doesn’t, and I’m excited for book three, because surely she will reveal it to him then; it’s a trilogy, after all! I simply can’t wait for that to happen because, you know, I think they’d make a super cute couple. There’s also the whole ‘he’s a prince, I’m a commoner’ thing going on too, which makes their relationship even more complex and interesting.

I think another character may be my favourite as well. A ‘perspicacious loris’ beastie is introduced in this book, and Alek has one as a sort of pet with him in this novel. The beastie is called Bolvir and oh my, hahaha. Even though this novel is gorgeously illustrated so I know what a perspicacious loris should look like, I keep imagining Bolvir as Stitch from Lilo & Stitch. Whenever Bolvir ‘talks’, I just imagine him doing it the exact same way Stitch does!

Also, there’s giant walking robots a la Transformers/Gundams. Do I really have to say any more?!

My Rating: 5/5

Leviathan

This post first published February 5, 2011.

Author: Scott Westerfeld
Published: September 2009
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Series: Leviathan #1
434 pages (hardcover)
 
So sorry I have not properly updated my book blog in such a long time. (Explanation found here). Anyhow, I’ve returned, and my first book (that is not a school textbook, haha) of 2011 is Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld. This is a book I’ve been interested in for a long, long time now (since last summer). I first saw it in a bookstore. The title intrigued me at first (though I was thinking more of Leviathan from Final Fantasy video games, haha) and when I flipped through the page and read the summary on the dust jacket — steampunk, World War I, Darwinism, walking machines, a prince in hiding, a girl disguised as a boy — I was really, really interested!

Unfortunately this was constantly being taken out at my local library and I had no interest in being put on a six month waiting list or whatever, so I just waited until by chance I saw the book available. Lo and behold, it finally was!

Leviathan takes place at the beginning of World War I, though it is not at all a factual retelling of any sort. The story takes place in an alternate reality, where the Austria-Hungary Empire and Germany are fascinated with technology and machines, and Britain, France and Russia are fascinated with fabricating new animal species with their DNA and, well, biological technology. I think of them as being fascinated with making chimeras. The story has two main characters who meet around the halfway point of the novel: first is Prince Aleksander, the young heir to the Austria-Hungary Empire, whose parents are killed by the Germans and now he is on the run; the second is a fifteen year old girl named Deryn Sharp, a common Brit disguised as a boy in order to join the army. They meet when the two are stranded in Switzerland for different reasons and must work together despite being enemies in the war, in order to escape their situation.

I was extremely fascinated with this book. I’m no stranger to steampunk (hello, Final Fantasy VI) but I’ve never encountered the idea of using fabricated animals as part-machine war equipment. Was that hard to understand? Haha, well,  besides your traditional chimera creatures like a part-tiger, part-wolf creatures, they also use animal DNA (or life strands, as they are called) to make things like the Leviathan. The Leviathan is the name of an airship. It is an entire eco-system of an airship. The main life strands used are those of a whale, followed by glow-worms in its membrane to keep it warm, fabricated birds and bees to gather food for the whale-creature which uses hydrogen to fly in the air … I know, it sounds all very confusing, but I promise the book does a way better job of explaining the concept than me. It also has pictures to help! (Lots of pretty pictures)!

So basically, Deryn and her British crew fly around in a giant floating whale as an airship! Haha, it sounds a bit silly, but it’s actually a really interesting idea.

This book was really fun to read from start to finish for me. Though it is a ‘young adult’ novel, I feel it’s more of a children’s book, personally. That’s not to say people of all ages can’t enjoy it though!
While I can’t really say I became attached to any of the characters (I did like them though, I just didn’t really like them enough to become attached), I did become attached to the world. It’s just so fascinating! Although the dust jacket lies a bit when it says Deryn and Alek go on an around-the-world adventure. No, they really didn’t … they were stuck in one country for the most part, haha. But I’m guessing they will do more traveling in the sequel(s)? I saw the sequel Behemoth at the library too, but I was being all cautious and didn’t want to take that out too in case I didn’t like Leviathan. In hindsight, I really wish I did because the book ends off on a bit of a cliff hanger, and I really want to find out what happens next!

My Rating: 4.5/5