Leviathan

I had seen this book "Leviathan" for a while but knew Scott Westerfield had written "The Uglies" and "The Pretties" and thought it would be perhaps somewhat similar. Not!

The art looked somewhat futuristic but this is not about the future at all.... in fact it is about the past but a very different past due to amazing creations of the Darwinists and the Clankers. Have you heard the term "steam punk" before? I had not but briefly it is the science fiction of alternate history using technology.

In 1914 the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated and World War I began. True. In this book Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated and Word War I began but his son Alek escaped with trusted servants in an armoured walker which is like a tank that walks on legs. In England Deryn Sharp, a young girl, poses as a young midshipman and is subsequently taken for a ride by a Huxley, a flying airship made of different animals blended together. Darwinists produce all sorts of "living things" such as the huge zeppelein-like creature with the body of a whale but infused with many other animals.

It is such a stretch of the imagination that I found it hard at first to feel the "willing suspension of disbelief" which is what I know fantasy to be. But the story, the very simple story of two young adults, enemies caught up in this war, was the story that I could not put down. It did not end but leads right into the second book, Behemoth.

For those good readers with vivid imaginations!

What are you reading today?