Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

1914 and the Clankers (Germany & Austro-Hungary) and the Darwinists (England, France, Russia) are at each other’s throats. The death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand provides the spark that ignites the flames of war.

The Clankers, the steampunk (or Teslapunk) element of the book, fight in walking tanks, Zeppelins and biplanes.

The Darwinist on the other hand I think you would have to class as biopunk. They have discovered how to splice the threads of DNA to create creatures to perform the same jobs as the Clankers’ machines.

The titular Leviathan is a hybrid whale that travels through the sky like a Zeppelin. Aboard you’ll encounter bats, lizards and other creatures that perform all sorts of amazing roles.

The story throws a group of Darwinists together with a group of Clankers. There’s a good mix of larger than life support characters on both sides to keep the plot interesting and the action fast paced.
The two main characters are Deryn, a Darwinist girl masquerading as a young airship officer, and Alex a Clanker prince “in hiding” who could be the key to the end of the war.

Westerfeld has succeeded in splicing his alternate reality onto our own history with only the subtlest of changes needed. Whether you’re reading about our hero charging through a forest at night in a walking tank or the heroine running across the back of flying whale it’s easy to get lost in the world he creates.

I think he also tries to convey a sense of naivety and innocence that teenagers of a hundred years ago would have had compared to teenagers of today. Although this is more evident of the sheltered prince than of Deryn who lives her life in a naval-esque world of airmen aboard the Leviathan.

Westerfeld manages to keep the action coming thick and fast while also adding intrigue and suspense into the mix. Add a dollop of amusing language, likeable characters and a fantastically well crafted world and you have a story that I highly recommend.

Just make sure you read all three books in the trilogy.


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