But! Leviathan! I haven't read a good fantasy-ish bit since February (The Lazarus Gate does not quite qualify as "good", I'm afraid). And it hasn't been an adventure since January or so. I've enjoyed everything I've been reading lately but how I have missed this stuff!
After his royal parents are killed in Sarajevo, Aleksandar finds himself piloting a mechanical walker through the forest with a small band of men who will tell him nearly nothing, trying to outrun the forces of his own country who pursue him. Meanwhile in England, Deryn Sharp vies for a place in the Air Service, hoping her disguise as a boy will fool all the boffins, middies, and bosuns and keep her in her home, the sky. War is coming to Europe, and tensions between the mechanical-engineering Clanker countries and the bioengineering Darwinist countries are worsening. But aboard the huge airship Leviathan, Darwinist Deryn and Clanker Alek are both pursued by Germans and must ally to save themselves and their countries.
Let's talk characters--our lovely characters! Alek is great--realistically portrayed for his age, upbringing, and circumstance. He comes complete with a deep well of sadness and secrets, which always promises some interesting plot points. But really I want to talk about Deryn, because she is my animal-appreciating Scottish aerospace engineer child and I love her very much. To be honest, if my name was Deryn, I would not go with Dylan--another name that does not have any particular gender connotations--as my definitely-a-boy disguise name. And when your fake name sounds a lot like your real name you probably find it harder to stay disguised. Also I'm still glancing curiously at Scott Westerfeld trying to figure out why he decided that Deryn and Dylan were both names that an early 20th-century Scot might have. Because I'd probably have gone with Mairi and Malcolm or something like that. But then again, her older brother's name is Jaspert. (For some reason I keep imagining John Green saying it and really spitting out that last T.) Perhaps Westerfeld intends that his UK has very different ideas about names than our UK.
But this has turned into a wandering meander about weird names. No matter the strangeness of the name "Deryn Sharp", the character is amazing. She and Alek are foils in many respects. Of course there's their difference in engineering alliance (I don't know what else to call it...), but there are other things as well. Alek is quiet, thoughtful, rather troubled, etc. Deryn has sparkle and freshness and energy. She's just brilliant and funny and effortlessly says the most creative and unique things. She's also got a lot of exclamations (such as "bum-rag!", "barking spiders!", and "oi, beastie!") that fill out her character. Her backstory is nearly as interesting as Alek's. Her love for the sky and for the creatures who carry her through it is infectious. She kinda salts everything; her fellow crew members' reactions always assert her as the Leviathan's master of retorts and snark. She's a regular old-fashioned lovable character. I really appreciate that Westerfeld made his moments of comic relief come mainly from one of his main characters, while allowing her to be so much more. That's truer to life and gives the story a better flow.
I also really like Dr. Barlow. It's kind of obvious who she really is when she starts muttering about her grandfather and bees, but she doesn't need to be a mystery to be interesting. She's just a stylish nerd who's obsessed with her thylacine. And the temperature of the strange box of eggs that she's taking to the Ottoman Empire. "Egg duty" becomes a grim, resigned phrase among the Leviathan's middies.
Let's not forget the illustrations, dear readers! The chapters are interspersed with lovely black-and-white illustrations of the world, the characters, and the events of the story. The pictures of the various machines and fabricated beasts are so helpful in visualizing the world, although I still have some difficulty in seeing how the airship's crew move about the flanks. Then there's the additional joy of searching for Thompson's signature, which he sometimes hides carefully, in every one...
Finally, I want to bring up something unique to this book, and that is its dealing with masculinity and gender roles in general. Deryn needs her secret to stay safe not only to avoid getting thrown out of the air service (and possibly getting worse punishment from them), but also to stay away from her family in Scotland. Since her father's death, the women in Deryn's family have tried to make her more feminine. Deryn has resisted, and finally left with her brother to join the air service. She thinks a lot in the beginning about all the little things she has to adjust in order to fit in with the boys, and how hard it is. Then she gets used to it and doesn't worry as much that she's not acting boyish enough. Really, there is no place for her. At home, she's forced into strict femininity; in the air, she can't be just a tomboy, but must be a full-on boy if she is to stay aloft. It's rather sad that she has to sacrifice something to be the place she feels happiest. It sure makes the book and Deryn interesting, though. One moment that stood out to me the most of all the moments created by Deryn's gender expression and gender perception deal was when Alek thinks that he wishes he could've been the boy that "Dylan" is. He thinks that if he'd had a normal childhood, he might've. He sees this young airman as the ideal of boyhood and young masculinity, and the young airman is really a young airwoman. It's fascinating.
In a similar vein, I wish Westerfeld would go further. I don't think I will find that he did, but I wish he'd do at least one of these things:
1) Make Deryn trans! I'd love to read the story of a trans boy who enters a male-only space full of people who would kick him out if they knew who he was, but enters this space anyway because it is the only place he can really be himself while just telling his family (winking at Jaspert here) that he's "disguising himself as a boy" to sneak in. Or the story of a trans girl (tomboyish or not) in a male-only space who can conform to the expectations of gender presentation because it's what's been forced on her for most of her life, but who doesn't like them or feel comfortable with them. Ahhh, it would be so cool!!
2) Maybe don't read this if you don't want a bit of a spoiler. Honestly it didn't surprise me much because the back of the book kind of hints at it, but... Proceed at your own risk. So. Spoiler starting here. Yep. SPOILER. Beware. It seems like Deryn might be headed for a serious crush on Alek (the indications are kind of cute though, so I don't have to sigh about trite, forced romances, at least for the time being). I think it would be really neat if Deryn was into Alek and Alek was into Deryn still thinking that Deryn was a boy, and then when Deryn finds out that Alek still thinks she's a boy and likes her, she tells him that she's actually a girl but he still likes her because he's bi. Long sentence. Sorry. SPOILER ENDS. I wish it wasn't quite so spoilery because I would love for everyone to consider that. Perhaps a fanfiction opportunity if anyone who fanfictions finds it interesting...
Gripe time. While Westerfeld has a good writing style, I have a couple minor quibbles. First, Deryn sounded way more Cockney than Glaswegian in my head. She's Glaswegian. She should sound Glaswegian. This may be particularly important to me because I have an inexplicable fascination with Glasgow and the way people talk there. (Blame it on James Herriot, probably.) I had to really think about it to get her to sound even a bit Scottish in my head, and even then I couldn't maintain it for long. She'd have some bit of dialogue that would sound particularly London and it would mess me up again. Sigh. Cha bhi Beurla Leathann ann an Leviathan, I guess (I FEAR I HAVE BUTCHERED A THING BUT I TRIED).
Another quibble with Westerfeld's writing is that his paragraphs are darn short. And this is in a book with rather wide-spaced type! There's not anything inherently wrong or bad about short paragraphs, but I noticed it pretty quickly and it just didn't sit well with me for some reason. So I guess all I can say about this is: Dislike short paragraphs? You're forewarned.
Well this was a nice review. I really enjoyed this book and enjoyed writing about it. Also I would love it if someone (ah, some fine steampunk aficionado) could tell me whether steampunk (which maybe this book isn't even but it's my closest descriptor...) is generally considered fantasy or scifi. I reorganized my bookshelf this summer by genre (and, within the genres, alphabetical by last name of author, which was my former system). I don't have enough even vaguely steampunk books to make it its own genre, but I don't know if I should put Leviathan into my tiny Scifi section, my enormous Fantasy section, or my nearly as large Fantasy? section (for books that don't seem to think much of genres but could loosely be called fantasy). It's a challenge. But I digress, dear readers.
In short, I would recommend Leviathan to anyone who enjoys fantasy, scifi, steampunk, historical fiction, and glowing, slightly salty air kids. It's a delight, and I look forward to reading the next books (after Americanah, which is for school, but is so amazing that I might have the energy to review it even after picking apart its conflicts for English class!).