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attackfishSo I may no longer have any ambitions of making podfic, but I have found other uses for my books on tape. It turns out I have free membership to a local gym through my dad’s work, and I need something to listen to while I work out. Anyway, this means more books on tape, and since my grandmother wants to encourage my workout routine, she’s footing the bill! You hear that? Someone else is buying me books! This hasn’t happened since I was ten and my parents concluded I didn’t need their help in becoming literarily inclined.
Since her father’s death in a hot air balloon, Daryn Sharp has thought of nothing other than getting to fly again, but with her mother and aunts ready to force her into petticoats and corsets and being a proper lady, the kind who would never fly again, Deryn runs away to join the new Royal Air Navy, disguised as a boy. Growing up, Prince Aleksander of Austria-Hungary has always known he was not in line for the throne, and that as the son of a lady in waiting and her Archduke husband, the court hates him. But when his parents are assassinated and Europe edges into war, Alek discovers that his parents’ enemies are far more deadly than he dreamed.
Westerfeld’s worldbuilding is elegant, complex, and absolutely fascinating without ever being a distraction. Despite the dozens and dozens of Really Cool Ideas Westerfeld has slipped into this book, he never lets them take over and become the point. This is what disenchanted me with golden age sci fi. The story was all about showcasing some new concept, and not about characters and adventures. Since this is a common complaint among young readers, Westerfeld’s ability to write YA sci fi with fantastic worldbuilding and great characters and fast paced adventure is what makes him so able to stand out. It was like I wanted to get lost in the world, but that would have to come later, because I was a little busy following Alek and Deryn, and I was having too much fun to leave them quite yet. Leviathan gives the best of both.
Each time the novel switched perspectives, I spent a few moments going “No, I like that other character/storyline, get back to it!” before I realized I liked this one too! I wanted to know what was going to happen next, and I got so easily wrapped up in each storyline in turn that I didn’t want to be pulled away. I’m not sure whether this is a criticism or a complement to how engrossing both storylines and compelling both Deryn and Alek are. I did feel like each segment was too short, and he should have combined several of them together to make fewer, longer sections, especially at the beginning when he kept flipping back and forth between Alek getting chased and Deryn riding the Huxley, however.
Leviathan, especially in the parts from Deryn’s point of view, is the unholy (and wonderful) lovechild of Horatio Hornblower and Tamora Pierce’s Tortall books. With giant flying testicle monsters. Of course it reminds me of Alana’s quartet, with Deryn crossdressing to join the air navy, but it also reminds me of Kel’s books, in the descriptions of what it’s like acclimating to living with a pack of boys. It’s a whole way of doing things that Deryn has never been taught and has to learn quickly if she’s not to be ostracized, or worse, discovered. Boys on the airship are in constant open competition, they’re brash, they swagger, they even look at their nails differently than girls do. Yet when Deryn meets Alek, the thing he admires most about her are her “and what are you going to do about it?” confidence and bravado, things he doesn’t have even though he has never been anything but a boy. It’s gender as performance, and like everything else in Leviathan, it’s just there without ever getting in the way of the reader’s good time.
As he flees, Alek has to learn the sharp realities of the political world that he has never thought would be his job to learn. The consequences of surrendering to the British crew of the Leviathan that Count Volger has to make clear to him terrify him. He has no idea what to make of them. However, they give me hope that the next books in the trilogy will have some political intrigue in them. Alek is primed to be a major player.
In his afterword, Westerfeld talks about how Steampunk blends the past and the future, and how Leviathan more specifically was a mixing of the potentials of future technology, gene modification, walking weapons of war, with the social mores of the past. The most obvious example of this is Deryn needing to disguise herself as a boy to join the service, but Alek’s periodic, offhand bouts of complete non-understanding of the way normal people have to live (thinking the peasants’ conversations he overhears are “trivial” because how could anybody be that interested in sick pigs and the harvest, when it’s precisely those things that keep the peasants, and in the end himself, from starving, looking around at the unwashed masses and their ignorance wondering how anybody could think they should have a say in government, without ever once thinking about how to educate his people, etc.) that really brings this home for me as a reader. It’s partly these social mores and partly the set of tropes (a girl dressed as a boy, a prince on the run, even talking animals) Westerfeld uses that actually make the series feel more like a fantasy than the sci fi it is.
Now that I’ve said what I want to say about the book, I thought I should mention that Alan Cumming’s reading for the audiobook is wonderful. His narration is understated, and flows with the story, ratcheting up the tension when he should, and scaling back during the less high drama moments. His character acting is distinctive and believable, his women’s voices sounding feminine without becoming obnoxious and nasal, his accents are spot on and consistent, and his emotions just right. As I am moving into the next book in the series, I can’t help but keep hearing his voice, and I don’t mind at all either. It was an impeccable performance.
Listening to Leviathan only while I work out is an exercise in delayed gratification, because this book is just that good. Seriously, I’ve exercised more than I planned just to listen to it faster.
Scott Westerfeld can be found online at scottwesterfeld.com. Keith Thompson, the series illustrator can be found at keiththompsonart.com.
Since her father’s death in a hot air balloon, Daryn Sharp has thought of nothing other than getting to fly again, but with her mother and aunts ready to force her into petticoats and corsets and being a proper lady, the kind who would never fly again, Deryn runs away to join the new Royal Air Navy, disguised as a boy. Growing up, Prince Aleksander of Austria-Hungary has always known he was not in line for the throne, and that as the son of a lady in waiting and her Archduke husband, the court hates him. But when his parents are assassinated and Europe edges into war, Alek discovers that his parents’ enemies are far more deadly than he dreamed.
Westerfeld’s worldbuilding is elegant, complex, and absolutely fascinating without ever being a distraction. Despite the dozens and dozens of Really Cool Ideas Westerfeld has slipped into this book, he never lets them take over and become the point. This is what disenchanted me with golden age sci fi. The story was all about showcasing some new concept, and not about characters and adventures. Since this is a common complaint among young readers, Westerfeld’s ability to write YA sci fi with fantastic worldbuilding and great characters and fast paced adventure is what makes him so able to stand out. It was like I wanted to get lost in the world, but that would have to come later, because I was a little busy following Alek and Deryn, and I was having too much fun to leave them quite yet. Leviathan gives the best of both.
Each time the novel switched perspectives, I spent a few moments going “No, I like that other character/storyline, get back to it!” before I realized I liked this one too! I wanted to know what was going to happen next, and I got so easily wrapped up in each storyline in turn that I didn’t want to be pulled away. I’m not sure whether this is a criticism or a complement to how engrossing both storylines and compelling both Deryn and Alek are. I did feel like each segment was too short, and he should have combined several of them together to make fewer, longer sections, especially at the beginning when he kept flipping back and forth between Alek getting chased and Deryn riding the Huxley, however.
Leviathan, especially in the parts from Deryn’s point of view, is the unholy (and wonderful) lovechild of Horatio Hornblower and Tamora Pierce’s Tortall books. With giant flying testicle monsters. Of course it reminds me of Alana’s quartet, with Deryn crossdressing to join the air navy, but it also reminds me of Kel’s books, in the descriptions of what it’s like acclimating to living with a pack of boys. It’s a whole way of doing things that Deryn has never been taught and has to learn quickly if she’s not to be ostracized, or worse, discovered. Boys on the airship are in constant open competition, they’re brash, they swagger, they even look at their nails differently than girls do. Yet when Deryn meets Alek, the thing he admires most about her are her “and what are you going to do about it?” confidence and bravado, things he doesn’t have even though he has never been anything but a boy. It’s gender as performance, and like everything else in Leviathan, it’s just there without ever getting in the way of the reader’s good time.
As he flees, Alek has to learn the sharp realities of the political world that he has never thought would be his job to learn. The consequences of surrendering to the British crew of the Leviathan that Count Volger has to make clear to him terrify him. He has no idea what to make of them. However, they give me hope that the next books in the trilogy will have some political intrigue in them. Alek is primed to be a major player.
In his afterword, Westerfeld talks about how Steampunk blends the past and the future, and how Leviathan more specifically was a mixing of the potentials of future technology, gene modification, walking weapons of war, with the social mores of the past. The most obvious example of this is Deryn needing to disguise herself as a boy to join the service, but Alek’s periodic, offhand bouts of complete non-understanding of the way normal people have to live (thinking the peasants’ conversations he overhears are “trivial” because how could anybody be that interested in sick pigs and the harvest, when it’s precisely those things that keep the peasants, and in the end himself, from starving, looking around at the unwashed masses and their ignorance wondering how anybody could think they should have a say in government, without ever once thinking about how to educate his people, etc.) that really brings this home for me as a reader. It’s partly these social mores and partly the set of tropes (a girl dressed as a boy, a prince on the run, even talking animals) Westerfeld uses that actually make the series feel more like a fantasy than the sci fi it is.
Now that I’ve said what I want to say about the book, I thought I should mention that Alan Cumming’s reading for the audiobook is wonderful. His narration is understated, and flows with the story, ratcheting up the tension when he should, and scaling back during the less high drama moments. His character acting is distinctive and believable, his women’s voices sounding feminine without becoming obnoxious and nasal, his accents are spot on and consistent, and his emotions just right. As I am moving into the next book in the series, I can’t help but keep hearing his voice, and I don’t mind at all either. It was an impeccable performance.
Listening to Leviathan only while I work out is an exercise in delayed gratification, because this book is just that good. Seriously, I’ve exercised more than I planned just to listen to it faster.
Scott Westerfeld can be found online at scottwesterfeld.com. Keith Thompson, the series illustrator can be found at keiththompsonart.com.
