Just a brief synopsis of this book and why you maybe have heard of it. It's tough to describe what it is exactly but it is an alternate reality for World War 1 times in Europe with countries being named the same thing but the characters mostly being fictional or something that sounds familiar, but is a fictional person. It's also, guess you could say Steampunk or perhaps Science-Fiction in that it has equipment being used in it that are not real to life. I suppose it is a bit of fantasy as well.
Scott Westerfeld might be a somewhat recognizable name because he is a best selling author and the other of the Pretties series of books, which I recently read and they lead me to this trilogy.
My new Kindle displays the title of the book I am reading when it is switched off and I like this feature since I regularly forget what I am reading and who it is by
This book was originally published in 2009 but I wouldn't say that it sounds at all dated. It DOES, however, sound very formulaic and designed to lure young readers in (which is a good thing) by using certain tactics that were not just employed by Westerfeld before and after this, but also by other sort of youth-oriented books such as Twilight, and even Harry Potter.
There are also illustrations in the book which I did kind of enjoy because that's just nice every now and then when someone is describing something that the real world has never seen so some sort of reference is handy.
For example: The main ship we are spending some time around is called the Leviathan and it is a huge organic airship that is based around the living body of a whale but outfitted with various rooms. This is difficult to visualize so the illustrations were very useful in this regard. The other things we are told about such as small walkers that would be like a Star Wars At-At of sorts but without lazers, are kind of nice to have drawn for us as well.
The story is told through they eyes of two primary youths. "Alek" is a prince that is rushed away from his homeland in the night as war breaks out and "Deryn" is a common girl working on Levithan who is disguising the fact that she is in fact, a girl.
The two sides that these groups are affiliated with is the mechanical people referred to as "Clankers" and the "Darwinists" who have devised methods of getting animals to be their weapons of war. Some of it is interesting, others seem a bit absurd and impractical. I just rolled with it because I do enjoy a bit of fantasy every now and then.
Where the book (and this is a trilogy that I probably will not read the last 2/3 of) loses me is the fact that it gets quickly turned into a "teenagers rule the world" sort of story that is pretty common with these kinds of writings. We haven't reached the point yet where all adults are idiots and only the children can possibly save them, but I can see that this is where it is heading. Also, even though by the end of this book Deryn has sill managed to keep the fact that she is a girl a secret, I can all but guarantee there is a love story between her and Alek that we are definitely going to be subjected to later. That's just the way that Scott Westerfeld writes so while I have no intention of getting that far in the follow-up books of Behemoth and Goliath, I would bet good money that this is the path it goes down.
Here's the pros of this book and I am assuming it remains the same in the next 2.
- The chapters are short and easy to follow
- Having essentially the same story told from two different perspectives is quite interesting because the two factions operate in very different capacities
- The technology is interesting to anyone that appreciates a bit of fantasy or sci-fi in their stories
- The book is easy to read and not complicated. You can scan chapters because a lot of it isn't terribly relevant information.
This leads me to the cons of the book
- Much of what is presented isn't terribly relevant to the overall story so you can easily scan entire paragraphs or even entire pages or chapters because the dialogue is kind of useless a lot of the time
- The made up slang that Westerfeld puts into the mouths of the lower class is kind of lame. I'm not judging the guy. Actual slang IRL is lame too so completely making up new slang can't be easy
- This book is following the same formula that so many other books follow to the point where you can see where the story is going long before it happens. It seems as though this book was brought to life with the express intention of turning it into some sort of trilogy of films later on. Although I have not seen them, I read that there is an anime on Netflix that was released in July of this year.
I like anime to some degree so maybe I will check that out but alas, I don't really think I have it in me to read the other 2 books of this series.
Westerfeld is a master of creating books for mass consumption. He proved this with the wildly successful Uglies books which were published just a few years before Leviathan was released. If you have read any of the Uglies books you can definitely see that they are by the same author because they are told in exactly the same in style and pacing. They also feature primarily teenagers who are going to save humanity. No offense to Scott: If I discovered a type of writing that sold like hotcakes I also wouldn't concern myself with it being essentially the same stories regurgitated provided that they continued to sell... and they have.
That being said I believe that Leviathan might be a bit too childish for my liking and it also tries really hard to be rated PG by avoiding swearing and instead having a completely made up slanguage that I could do without.
If you are a young adult or even a child who has some interest in reading, this might be something that would hold your interest but for me, I think I am arriving to this party about 30 years too late.
I have so many other books loaded up and ready that I am not going to spend any more time on something that I only kind of enjoy. Next up, is Lucifer's Hammer which I have already read a bit of, but not enough to have an opinion.
If you have read Leviathan and would like to share your thoughts, please do so.
For me this one is a hard pass for adults and a perhaps for children or young adults with an interest in a relatively easy read that has fantasy elements.