Now. Onto the book that this is actually about. Since Behemoth is the second book in a series, I'd recommend you check out Leviathan first--the review for context, and the book itself to avoid spoilers.
Prince Alek and Deryn Sharp are now aboard the Leviathan together, and they are headed for the Ottoman Empire--Istanbul, specifically. This land at the edge of Asia and Europe has so far stayed out of the war, but can it last? The Clanker Ottomans are furious after a ship promised to them by the British was snatched up before delivery by a nervous Churchill. However, Dr. Barlow claims that her mysterious mission will somehow keep the Ottomans out of the war. Of course, nothing can possibly go that smoothly. From the beginning, diplomatic excursions are plagued by disasters--and there's the small matter of Alek's tutors feeling the need to escape the airship ASAP.
Behemoth introduces new places, new people, and new creatures for the next installment of Deryn and Alek's adventures in an alternate WWI universe where countries fight with genetically engineered creatures or huge, moving machines.
The Darwinist world gets further development, too; we see several new creatures introduced. First, there is the perspicacious loris, which is ridiculously adorable and amazing. There's also the vitriolic barnacles...and other sea creatures... Hm hm hm!
Our characters continue to develop and be amazing in their second book. Dr. Barlow is still a stylish nerd who's obsessed with her thylacine and, now, her own creations. I love Deryn more and more with each chapter; she gets a chance to prove herself so many times and dang, does she ever do it. Even if no one is around to see it, she takes on those secret missions and diplomatic forays alike and, despite them all going horribly wrong, proves her capability over and over. Alek is still annoying but still great. Volger gets some subtle development and learns some Things He Has No Right To Know. And of course decides to use said Things for blackmail. And we get new characters! Istanbul serves up secret societies complete with fascinating members. Zaven, the flamboyant Armenian dad who is excessively educated, is my favorite ever and I'm still unhappy about that end. His daughter Lilit is incredibly interesting. She's just as brilliant and showy as her dad, if slightly more murderous. I love a girl whose introductory scene involves her, in disguise, following a character and confronting him at knifepoint. She launches herself off cliffs in wing suits, goes into battle to topple giant war machines, and does lots of sneaking, snooping, and skulking. She's an obligatory favorite, and I am completely, gladly, obliged.
Behemoth continues with the same themes of gender roles as Leviathan did. So far neither one of my ideas to Do Cool Things With That has happened, but it has gone in an almost-as-interesting direction. Lilit is absolutely gorgeous and Deryn spends a good deal of time being jealous of her, believing that she and Alek have a thing going on. But then there's that great little twist at the end, after which I had to stop reading for the day because I had to think about what had happened. Without getting too spoilery, I did think it not a stretch to put this review in my LGBT tag. Smart not-straight girls who are also very feminine but can still totally see when a girl is disguising herself as a boy--they're great. And I like to think her dad knows and is totally fine.
Plot time! The plot of Behemoth is rather more interesting than that of its predecessor. There's so many details and twists and excitement and foreshadowing and it's absolutely wonderful. It's a true skulky adventure with lots of moments of low-level action and suspense.
Thompson's illustrations are once more wonderful and add so much to the story. The character expressions are particularly great in Behemoth.
One thing that seriously irked me, which was brought up in Leviathan but got to come into full, wrong existence in Behemoth, was the idea of the Ottomans as Clankers. There's this dreadful line in Leviathan that's something along the lines of "the Ottomans are Clankers because they're a Muslim country." Anyone who knows anything about Islam should know that few religions are as into science as Islam. I simply cannot see them condemning Darwinists and their creations as godless and abominable simply because they are religious. It just felt like a really ignorant thing for Westerfeld to write, that Muslims would of course be Clankers because they don't want to mess around with God's creations. That sounds wrong. I don't know how much research on Islam and the Ottoman Empire Westerfeld did for this book; maybe the Ottomans weren't as into science during WWI. Still, it jarred with me and I had to be reminded of that sentence throughout the entirety of Behemoth. At least the Ottoman version of being a Clanker involves modeling machines off of animals, and they were about to accept that ship from the British, which included a companion creature.
Westerfeld's still writing short paragraphs and not making Deryn sound particularly Scottish.
In short, I would recommend this book to anyone who read Leviathan and enjoyed it. The world gets bigger and better, the characters grow more numerous and develop, and the packed plot jogs along nicely. I'm in the midst of Goliath, the final book, at the moment, and it promises even more of what makes the first two books great. (Due to A Tale of Two Cities currently being read for school, a review could take a while... But I just might do that famous Dickens novel as I'm loving it so very much!)