REVIEW: Dodger by Terry Pratchett

Dodger

by Terry Pratchett

“Dodger made haste towards the house of the Mayhews while in his mind he saw the cheerful face and hooked nose of Mister Punch, beating his wife, beating the policeman and throwing the baby away, which made all the children laugh. Why was that funny, he thought? Was that funny at all? He’d lived for seventeen years on the streets, and so he knew that, funny or not, it was real. Not all the time, of course, but often when people had been brought down so low that they could think of nothing better to do than punch: punch the wife, punch the child and then, sooner or later, endeavour to punch the hangman, although that was the punch that never landed and, oh how the children laughed at Mister Punch! But Simplicity wasn't laughing...” 

It was a dark and stormy night in turn-of-the-century London. A girl's scream rips through the air as she tries to escape a carriage with two brutish men on her heels. Suddenly, a young man emerges from a sewer drain and saves her. Thus Dodger, common geezer and tosher (person who explores sewers for lost items), gets swept up in a mystery that involves Charles Dickens, Henry Mayhew, Benjamin Disraeli, and even foreign powers. Will he be able to solve the mystery of the woman in the coach, and will he be able to maintain his identity as his star rises?

Pratchett calls this book a historical fantasy, and I can definitely see how that is true. It is more like historical fan fiction, where he manipulates facts to give you a really fun story. It took me a while to get into the rhythm of his long, convoluted and clever sentences, but I really enjoyed the book.

The world was excellently drawn, almost too much so, for I felt sometimes he was letting the historical personages run wild with their opinions on the world more than letting the plot advance. However, the characters are really fun, if a bit flat. The two characters that stand out in relief from the others are Dodger himself and his mentor and landlord Solomon. Solomon is a practical, cosmopolitan Jewish refugee. He lives simply and speaks wisely, and plays his cards close to the chest. It bothered me that Pratchett seemed to be implying that Fagin from Oliver Twist was based on Solomon, for Solomon was nothing if not an amazing role model. Dickens actually went back and apologized for the anti-Semitic portrayal of Fagin in Oliver Twist, so it colored my view of Dickens in the novel.

Dodger is a surprisingly compassionate hardened geezer (clever, streetwise person). He is more complex than you realize at first, protecting his town, and if he lies and manipulates a good person, he makes sure they are recompensed. He sees all sides of a situation, and feels sympathy for those who are portrayed as "villains" in the eyes of the public. I do sometimes wish that he was actually genuinely scared or that he failed horribly once or twice in the story, because his constant successes made me hate him a little, but just a little.

I honestly was expecting a lot of horrible things to happen in this book which never happened. Perhaps, I forgot this was a Pratchett novel, and not just a regular historical/ literary adaptation where they try to take the story down dark roads.

All in all, a pleasant and fun romp through 17th century London.

Books Like This:
The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore
Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance by Gyles Brandreth

REVIEW: Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

Airborn

by Kenneth Oppel 

“Why do you need to fly so much?” she asked.
“If I don’t, it’ll catch up with me.” The words just came out.
“What will?”
I took my hands from my face, panting. I stared out at the storm.
“Unhappiness.” 

Matt Cruse is the cabin boy aboard the airship Aurora and he loves it. When his father died serving on the Aurora, Matt took his place. He feels more at home in the sky than on the ground, and he has earned the reputation of being lighter than air and a smart, capable crew member. When the Aurora rescues a dying old man in a battered hot air balloon who speaks of strange flying creatures, Matt is ensnared in an adventure. Together with the man's granddaughter, Kate, they must sail the skies, battle pirates, and save the ship, all while searching for the elusive creatures her grandfather saw.


This was a fun book! A rollicking high seas adventure, mixing Robert Louis Stevenson with a bit of Jules Verne. It reminded me a bit of the Leviathan trilogy, but lacked the depth of character and scope and detail that made that series so great. While Leviathan was a dirty, gritty, wartime story, the Aurora is a luxury liner. The story is a frivolous peace-time adventure. That is not to say the stakes are not high. Towards the end of the story, after much sneaking off to explore and outwitting authority figures, the danger becomes very real, and Oppel is not afraid to kill a few people to remind you how real it is.

The worldbuilding did feel a little sloppy to me. We had airships lifted by the new element, hyrium, with its own rules, and some exciting cryptozoology, but we don't learn much about the rest of the world. It appears to be simply a steampunk novel with airships and message tubes, with everything else simply Victorian. However, there are subtle name changes that make you wonder what kind of alternate universe we are in: Pacificus and Atlanticus oceans, Angleterre, instead of England.

The characters were a bit surfacey. Kate is the plucky, headstrong Victorian girl who wants to be a scientist and doesn't care if her recklessness causes problems for other people. Matt has the dark undercurrents of pride and jealously that were so successful with Victor in Oppel's His Dark Endeavor  but the flaws did not pay off as significantly in Airborn. He is simply your Everyman with emotional baggage and something to prove. I will say, though, that the captain of the ship, even though he was rather one dimensional, had an excellent management style!

I can picture how amazing this book would be if Oppel delved just a little more. The issues of jealousy between Matt and another crew member. The evil pirate captain and those he loves. Preservation versus public access in regards to a rare species of animal. Trying to rebel and prove yourself even though it endangers those around you. Loyalty to your home versus saving someone you care about. All of these could be mined for so much more emotional gold.

Yet, however superficial the adventures seems at times, everything, even the smallest detail, comes back in a big way, and will either pay off emotionally or  become a linchpin to the plot. It is fascinating to pick up on the clues as you go, or have the "Oh my God! The thing from before!" moment when one has slipped by you.

All in all, a nice, light, fun, easy adventure read for the summer.

Books Like This
Stardust by Neil Gaiman
Leviathan by Scott Westerfield
This Dark Endeavor by Kenneth Oppel

REVIEW: Jepp, Who Defied the Stars by Katherine Marsh

Jepp, Who Defied the Stars

by Katherine Marsh

"You now act as if the stars are everything, as if the accident of birth is the only measure of a man. The stars, your parents, your past -- none of them can tell you who you are. You know who you are by the choices you make and the feelings in your heart."

Jepp grew up the happy son of an innkeeper in the Spanish Netherlands in the 17th century. Jepp is a dwarf, but his mother has always protected him from those who would ridicule or tease him. One day, a man comes from the court of the Infanta in Brussels and whisks him away to a life of luxury as the court dwarf. He and his fellow dwarfs pop out of pies, dance, sing and tell jokes for the ladies and gentlemen, and in return they are kept in style. But when a tragic event reveals the true nature of his gilded cage, Jepp must struggle with himself and the world to find if fate has predetermined his life, or if he has the power to shape his destiny.

This book annoyed me in a way only good books can. I was forced to live inside the perspective of Jepp, whose limited vision made me truly feel his frustration and confusion as to who was friend and who was foe. I was angry with Jepp for not paying attention to the signs that something was clearly wrong at court. When his friend Lia becomes withdrawn, he believes she no longer likes him and selfishly pulls away from her, rather than seeing that she was distress. However, I kept forgetting how young he was, and his naivete and childish navel gazing in the beginning really give him an excellent baseline for his growth in the second half. And grow he does!

The book really kicks off as Jepp is thrust into a new place. After his experiences at the Infanta's court, he is suspicious of everyone to a fault. Jepp slowly begins to take command of his own destiny, and as he starts to get a firmer grip on his own abilities and his self-worth, the story gains traction. After that, I couldn't put it down. Jepp's voice rings clear and heart-felt, and Marsh gives us a strong, smart, determined female character with her own very human flaws for the second half of Jepp's journey. I championed them both to the end.

I did have some difficulty with a few plot points that felt like they were going to become a larger obstacle for Jepp, and never really resolved into anything, but I realize it is because Marsh was telling a different story. The final showdown for Jepp needed to be about the phantoms of his past, not the enemies of the present.

I am sorry to be so vague! Much of the joy in this book comes with discovery, and I don't want to spoil things for you.

Overall it is an excellent read! Thanks to the lovely Miss Megan at Hooray for Books bookstore for recommending it to me!

REVIEW: Sacre Bleu: A Comedy D'Art by Christopher Moore

Sacre Bleu: A Comedy D'Art

by Christopher Moore

“I love you, Lucien, but I am a muse, you are an artist, I am not here to make you comfortable.” 

Lucien is a baker-by-day, painter-by-night at the height of the art explosion in Paris at the turn of the century. He is at the center of it all, drinking with Manet, Seurat, Toulouse Lautrec, Whistler, and all the greats of the era. When he gets word that Van Gogh has just killed himself by apparently shooting himself in a field, and then walking two miles to the nearest doctor, he is a liiiiittle suspicious. This line of inquiry takes him down the rabbit hole, and soon he finds himself dealing with dark, ancient artistic and mystical forces that both threaten and disturbingly inflame the artistic community of Paris.

Usually, you know immediately that you are reading one of Christopher Moore's books. Witty quips, dirty jokes, characters that defy convention. This felt like a well-researched, regular novel. It takes about two or three chapters before you see a joke that you can shake hands with and say "Oh hello, Christopher Moore's style!"

I do appreciate the time and care he has taken to really flesh out the artistic world of Paris at the turn of the century. Using letters and other primary sources as a foundation, he shocks life into artists I knew by name and by work, but never by personality. He peppers the book with images of paintings of the characters in the book (either real or imagined), painted by this small circle of artists themselves. It is a very intimate portrayal of their world.

The magical mystery is tantalizing. Who is the Colorman? Why is he always accompanied by a mysterious woman. Why do they bring death, disease and memory loss in their wake. Moore drops breadcrumb clues expertly, never revealing too much until just the right moment.

The main complaint I have about this book is the resolution. And since I can't talk about that without spoiling things, I will have to be annoying and vague. Suffice it to say that, first, I never was 100% behind the relationship of certain characters which makes part of the ending unsatisfying. Second, it is a pet peeve of mine that, in many stories, a character kills many people, friends of the protagonist even, and they show no signs of remorse, but we are asked to forget about that because they are funny and have strategically and selfishly changed allegiances all of a sudden. Third, I am unsatisfied with Lucien's place at the end of the story. It seems horribly wrong and disturbing to me. I feel he gets neither of his dreams, and he hurts people in the process.

However, I will leave you to make your own conclusions. It is still a solid, funny Christopher Moore book with great characters.

Other great Christopher Moore books:
A Dirty Job
Fool
Lamb

REVIEW: Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance by Gyles Brandreth

Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance: A Mystery

by Gyles Brandreth

"Oscar's conversation was so brilliant he could make you forget the toothache. That night we sat in a dark corner of a London club with a dead man's head in a box before us and for forty minutes thought not a thing about it."

Oscar Wilde arrives at a (potentially illicit) appointment to discover his young friend Billy Wood dead with his throat slashed. With the help of his friend Robert Sherard (Watson to Oscar's Holmes), and his friend Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar slips around London's drawing rooms and dark alleys to solve the mystery.

This book was a delightful read! The mystery itself was not that compelling, as it dragged on for months. It was predictable enough that I had it narrowed down to two suspects before the big reveal, but not so much that I knew for certain. 

The real fun of this book is Oscar himself. I loved this man before I read the book, but now, seen through the eyes of Brandreth (who was a biographer first), and through the fictional lens of his friend Sherard, I love him even more. He is at once the most commanding, jovial, and kind man you have ever met, and at the same time secretive, vulnerable and moody. He was very frustrating at times, deliberately withholding information from his friends, but you forgave him because he was such a generous and charismatic man. 

One element I found quite compelling were the comparisons between Oscar and Sherlock Holmes. In this book, Oscar is a great observer of human nature, like Holmes, and can tell everything about someone just by looking at him. Oscar also has a brilliant mind that is tainted by his one vice - in Sherlock's case, cocaine; in Oscar's case, young men. Conan Doyle also confesses (in this book) that he based the character of Mycroft Holmes (Sherlock's smarter older brother) off of Oscar, as the man who languidly sits in his club all day, until something sparks his interest, and then he can move a lot faster than you ever thought. (I LOVE that Stephen Fry has now played both Mycroft and Wilde).

I was planning on finding the book chock full of references to Wilde's works, but I could not find that many. He often quoted himself, and I'm sure he did it more often than I caught, but it seemed like he quoted Shakespeare the most. One moment that broke my heart was when he sadly muttered to himself Andrew Aguecheek's lament from Twelfth Night "I was adored once too..." 

All in all, a fun read. It would be even more fun if the whole sodomy trial wasn't looming over everything. As wonderful as Oscar's life is at this point, our foreknowledge of his fate makes everything he does part of his great tragedy. 

Books like this:

The Sherlockian by Graham Moore

All Men of Genius by Lev AC Rosen

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larsen

REVIEW: Goliath by Scott Westerfeld

Goliath

by Scott Westerfeld

"Reality had no gears, and you never knew what surprises would come spinning out its chaos." 

Surprised to see me again so soon? Me too! I read this book in 3 days!

Goliath is the thrilling conclusion of the Leviathan/Bohemoth/Goliath steampunk WWI series. Goliath finds our intrepid team of Prince Alek and Deryn/Dylan still on the Leviathan, off on a secret mission to Russia to rescue an eccentric scientist, Nicola Tesla, who claims to have a weapon that will end the war.

This book basically covers the rest of the world: Book 1: Europe, Book 2: Ottoman Empire: Book 3: Russia, Japan, Mexico and the USA. While each country adds their odd quirks and flavor to the Clanker and Darwinist technology, they didn't have the depth and texture of Book 2's Ottoman culture. Granted, they only leapfrogged to each country, and couldn't stay too long. We get a nice historical figure cameo parade, though; we meet Tesla, William Randolph Hearst, Pancho Villa, and a few minor figures here and there.

This book was a lot less epic in scope than I expected. Spoiler alert: the war does not end. In fact, America is only just joining the war as the curtains come down on the trilogy. But I realized it is not the story of the war, it is the story of Alec and Deryn and their relationship, and that story ended very satisfactorily.

Alek finally discovers that Deryn is a girl, and the shock and betrayal and sulking, and eventual awkward reconciliation, tension, and intimacy are incredibly emotionally rewarding. Deryn's struggle with her growing feelings for Alek is much more compelling than other books I have read recently (see my review of Hunger Games if I ever get around to finishing them), because she doesn't spend hours moping and then never resolve anything. She thinks about it, basically says "Well, that sucks" and moves on. Or she does something about it. Or she ignores it and does her job. She's one tough chick. Yet, Westerfeld allows her moments of incredible vulnerability in this book, and it makes her and Alek's relationship that much more special that she allows her veneer to slip a little when they are alone together.

Alek also has to come to terms with his "destiny." He feels he is meant to end the war, since his family started it.  He backs Tesla, even though the inventor is bat-shit crazy, because Tesla claims he can end the war with Goliath. When Alek discovers the purpose of Goliath, however, he is caught between ending the war quickly at the cost of innocent lives, or letting the war drag on, perhaps at the cost of more.

The story weaves together their struggle between their duty to the war/ stations in life, and to each other. While the plot itself is a bit thin, the emotional payoff is fantastic. The two have grown so much since we first met them in Leviathan, and it kinda makes you proud. Well done them.

Oh, and read this book just for the perspicacious lorises, the mystery beasties we were introduced to in the 2nd book. They have some of the best lines in the series. Trust me.

All in all, a solid, clever, quick YA read.

My reviews of the rest of the series:
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld

REVIEW: All Men of Genius by Lev AC Rosen

All Men of Genius
by Lev AC Rosen

"Furthermore, I don't recommend emulating the behavior of any of the characters contained within.

They're all quite mad.

The truth is, I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Except about love. We all know a little about that.

Or nothing at all."

- Author's Note

This book is a basically a steampunk mashup of Twelfth Night and The Importance of Being Earnest. Need I say more? Well, I will anyway.

Violet Adams is not your typical Victorian girl. She spends her spare time up to her elbows in grease and gears in her family's basement inventing wonderful things. She is serious and bullheaded, and frustrated that because she is a girl, she will never be recognized for her genius by her scientific peers. Her twin brother, Ashton, is the opposite: an easy-going poet and all around foppish cleverboots. 

She hatches a plan to dress as a boy so she can enter Illyria College, the best scientific school in the city. Along the way she makes friends and enemies (an excellently bitter and entitled Malcom Volio), falls in love, fights against an evil plot, is awesome and smart, and fights an incredible battle to win her place in the scientific community. 

I. LOVED. THIS. BOOK. It is crammed with characters and references to both Twelfth Night and Importance of Being Earnest, but it is not slavishly devoted to either story. You get themes, characters, delightful flavors, and sometimes direct quotes, but Rosen makes them his own. For example, Mariah from Twelfth Night is Miriam Issacs, a "Jewess" born in Persia, married and widowed in Paris, and then employed as governess to Cecily (Cecily/Olivia). Miriam's relationship with student Toby Belch warms my heart. Cecily is as naive and youthful as Cecily Cardew, and falls for Violet-dressed-as-a-boy a la Olivia. Violet herself (after a long struggle) falls for Earnest, Duke of Illyria. Another example: One of the Professors is named Bunburry, and he rather accident prone. 

Like Neverland, it is nicely crammed, and there is hardly any space between one reference, and another, but if you don't know either play, you can appreciate the book for its own merits. And if you do know both plays, you will not be ruined on the story. 

It sounds complicated, but it doesn't feel that way while you are reading it. Reading the book feels like surfing, where you ride the rhythms of each section, and switch to the next wave of text as it comes. It is easy and exciting, and flows really well. And then, like a video game, you collect the little gold coins of allusion as you ride. 

The 3rd person point of view slides just as easily. Each character, including all the minor ones, gets their moment (or more) of perspective. You get to look through the eyes of of the all main characters, of course, but then you have moments when you are in the brain of Lothario Prism, the aging professor, to get his unique perspective on the science faire set up at the Crystal Palace, or Fiona, the burlesque actress Violet hires to be her maid, and who ends up seducing Drew Pale (a still pitiful, but happier Andrew Aguecheek). 

I also loved Violet's character development. At the beginning she was brash and fearless because she was naive and young. As she matures, she hones those features into a genuine bravery and strength of character. She learns that femininity is not weakness, and she that she can be both a girl, and fully herself. 

The book is also chock full of imaginative, steampunky science, which for the most part I loved. However, biology class made me cringe a bit. The biology class's sole purpose is to experiment on animals. Rosen does have Jack Feste upset when he kills an animal in his experiment, but the idea of "improving" animals (giving ferrets bat wings, or switching animal's voice boxes), while it lead to comical outcomes, made me uncomfortable.

Other than that, this book was probably the best book I have read on a long time. It is not a heavy, weighty tome of genius, but it was clever, funny, engaging, exciting, and had wonderfully detailed characterization.

Books like this:
Leviathan, Behemoth and Goliath by Scott Westerfield

Unfinished Book: The Affinity Bridge

The Affinity Bridge

by George Mann

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am sorry to say this so early on in my blog, but I could not finish this book. I vowed to give it 100 pages before I gave up, and I did. However, I did learn a lot from reading it, especially about my own taste and style, so I thought I'd devote some time to it on the blog. 

The story takes place in steampunk Victorian London, where Sir Maurice Newberry (a paranormal investigator) and his new assistant Ms. Veronica Hobbes try to solve the mystery of the crashed airship and the glowing murderous bobby, while trying to avoid the zombie plague. This is a recipe for awesomeness, yes?

Alas, it does not fulfill its potential. First, the characters are incredibly flat. Sir Maurice is a good-natured, reserved middle-aged English gentlemen. He accepts a woman as his assistant and treats her as a (delicate and feminine) partner. He is extremely attentive to her. He has a problem with laudanum, which is probably his most interesting attribute. But there is absolutely no color or texture in his character, no unique voice.

Ms. Hobbes was even more disappointing. When I see boy/girl detective partners, I expect playful snarky banter. Maybe I've been spoiled on too many episodes of Castle, Warehouse 13...or really any other boy/ girl detective paring. I wanted it to be Emma Peel and John Steed. I got bland, restrained, grey, blah. For example, I have no idea why she was hired. Sir Maurice has complete confidence in her abilities, though all we saw her do in the first 100 pages was clean well, make tea, state the obvious (at which everyone gasps and sputters to hear such wisdom from a girl), and vomit at the sight of bodies. I would have loved to see some glimpse at the extraordinary, a reason why a woman would get that position, a reason why Sir. Maurice treats her like trusted friend only after a few days. They are quite touchy-feely too, and makes you think there are romantic flutterings, when that does not seem to be what the author intends. 

The style bothered me the most. It may be because I recognized a lot of my own flaws in his writing, but it got to the point where I got so annoyed by the frequent blunders, couldn't read any more. It was like being beaten to death with a swarm of cotton balls. 

1) Repetition: First, he repeats metaphors mere pages apart. For example, he describes a crashed airship as a beached, dead, half-rotted whale, and then a page away describes it as a dead ancient primordial beast (with the skin rotted in places, and the ribs exposed, etc). Second, he repeats information. For example, he mentions in a telegram to Newberry and Hobbes that 50 people were killed in the airship crash. When they are told the same information at the crash site, Ms. Hobbes gasps in surprise and horror. Third, he has a bad habit of describing the same action from two different POVs without adding anything new to it: He describes Ms. Hobbes pulling her cloak to her because she is thinking of the dead bodies from the airship, and a few lines later, he has Sir Maurice observe her pulling her cloak to her because he presumes she is thinking about the dead bodies from the airship. We know.

2) Word choice: "pucker up that resolve." Really? Not pluck? Pucker just sounds dirty. He also loves the phrase "reminiscent of..." when presenting a metaphor. And his metaphors often are not well-chosen either. He describes "an army" of men, which he clarifies a sentence later as "at least ten." Most of the time he sounds like a man with a limited vocabulary using a thesaurus. 

3) Violent Emotional Reactions: I believe this is not a character trait, but a style snaffoo. When Sir Maurice is introduced to a character, we get a description of that character, and a sudden declaration from Sir Maurice that he admires or loaths the character, without making it clear what was to admire or loathe.   He also has violent reactions to any opposition. When police or a clerk won't give him information -- they don't know who he is -- he gets very shocked and huffy, and waves his Crown credentials around, and then the peons go scurrying. It does not match with his fatherly academic demeanor, and makes the reader think he is a dick. 

4) Don't Tell Me, Show Me: My favorite writers are able to give you character by describing how a character picks up a pen. Alas, this book is Tell City. For example, there is a passage where the author illustrates Sir Maurice in his study. Mann tells about about the character's relationship with the room using cliches, his "haven" and "the one place he could relax, and feel free to become himself" (though I saw no difference between himself inside or outside the study). I would rather have seen his relationship with the study through the way Sir. Maurice interacted with it (entered it, threw things, flopped, argued with his housekeeper about keeping out, etc). Telling runs rampant throughout the book. 

5) "These do indeed 'seem' for they are actions that a man might play": Mann has a tricky POV. Sometimes he is in Sir Maurice's head, and other times he is in Veronica's head (not that it really makes any difference). However, sometimes he is in 3rd person omniscient, and still his characters "seem" or "look like" they are doing things. Why the hell can't they just do them? Whose eyes are we looking through that we are guessing? I do this all the time in my own writing, so I don't have to fully commit. COMMIT! It makes the writing stronger. Don't say "seem" unless there is some doubt about the action.  

I think George Mann desperately needed a good editor. 

Please take my review with a grain of salt, as I have not finished the book (and I feel it an extreme defect in  a mystery novel if I don't care what happens). Please, if anyone has finished the book, and feel that I have misrepresented something, let me know!

REVIEW: Behemoth by Scott Westerfield

Behemoth 

by Scott Westerfield

Ah, the exciting world of altered history, where Darwinists (the Allied powers who manipulate DNA to create animal-based machines) and the Clankers (the Central powers who are all iron, steam and electricity) vie for the world in a surprisingly accurate, but steampunk-colored WWI.

We return to this fantastic series to find our plucky heroes on their way to Constantinople (or Istanbul, depending on who you ask). Alex, the son of the murdered archduke (see WWI, causes) and his mustached German entourage are, as Andrew from Buffy the Vampire Slayer would put it, "guestages" (not quite hostages, but not really allowed to leave either) on the British airship, Leviathan. Deryn/Dylan is still disguised as a boy to serve in the Royal Air Service. They are accompanying Dr. Barlow (a very important and bossy female scientist) to the east to deliver a Top Secret beastie to the Sultan. The Sultan, however, is mad at England for "borrowing" a state of the art war beast (the titular Behemoth), and Germany is cozying up to the Turks with shiny battleships and Tesla cannons. It is time for Alex to seize his destiny and try to end the war his family started, while Deryn must be awesome and badass and do really cool things.

This second book of the series turns it up a notch. Westerfield has established his world and characters in the first book and now he just winds up his Clanker and Darwinist toys and sends them wirring all over turn-of-the-century Europe. The world of Constantinople is richer and more complex than the airfields of Britain or the Swiss Alps in Leviathan. It is textured and cosmopolitan, melding myth and science with Turkey's more spiritual slant on machinery. The Turkish government models their machines off of animals (elephant walkers, etc). Each culture within the great city of Istanbul has its own special name for their machine walkers: the Jews have metal Golems, the Greeks have Minotaur, the native Turks name them after goddesses. The Sultan has a Oz-like machine of himself in the throne room which mimics his movements, emphasizing his divine power. The reader's imagination just sparks with the layered and laberynthine city in which the characters play.

Our old friends from Leviathan have grown up a bit. Alex, the Austro-Hungarian princeling, has taken the backbone he earned in book one and used it as a jumping off point for his rather reckless plotting, spying and adventuring in this book. 

Deryn is still as badass as ever, using her brain and her guts to save her airshipmates in spectacular ways. Again, her "oh deary me, I am a girl wearing boys clothing" situation is nicely underplayed. It still follows the cross-dressing formula: Act I: girl meets boy and there is some attraction (though in book one, this was fulfilled in one understated sentence), Act II: enter second girl to vie for boys heart, and cross-dressed girl can't say anything (accomplished in two hushed intimate scenes). I assume, in Act III. she will reveal her cross-dress-edness and they will have lots of final-scene-of-Twelfth-Night-ity. However, unlike most cross-dressed heroines, she does not moon over the boy. She kicks ass, and only entertains the possibility of hormones when nothing else really crucial (saving a fellow airman from a burning jellyfish hot air balloon or singlehandedly rescuing a elephant walker from saboteurs) is going on. 

Dr. Barlow, the bossypants scientist woman is still an old ironsides, but has sparkling moments of humor and vulnerability. And the introduction of a new friend, a rather perspicacious beastie, is absolutely delightful! I can't wait to see how he grows.

An excellent step up from book one. I am excited for the series' climactic third book!

If you liked this book, you may like:

Leviathan by Scott Westerfireld

Terrier by Tamora Pierce

The Artemis Fowl Series by Eoin Colfer

All Men of Genius by Lev AC Rosen

ARCHIVED REVIEW: Leviathan (6/13/11)

Leviathan

by Scott Westerfeld

"Maybe this was how you stayed sane in wartime: a handful of noble deeds amid the chaos. "

I had fallen off the YA bandwagon for a while, and felt the genre was too simple for my taste. Leviathan has changed all of that!

The world is quivering on the brink of WWI. However, it is WWI with a Steampunk twist. The "Clanker" nations (read "Axis powers") have developed not tanks but walking war machines. They rely on metal and steam for their incredibly complex technology. The "Darwinist" countries, the allies (mostly England), have gone the opposite route. Darwin not only discovered natural selection, but DNA and how to manipulate it. British technology is entirely biological, using genetically modified animals, and built-in ecosystems to make their nation run. For example, their zeppelin-like Leviathan is actually a large sky whale with a hollow interior that produces its own hydrogen with the help of the bees and birds who give it its needed fuel every day. Hydrogen sniffers (dog/ spiders) run along its skin to make sure no leaks have sprung.

Enter our protagonists: Alex, a prince of Austria, who dreams of battle, and finds himself dragged out of bed one night, his parents murdered, and forced to run for a safe haven in the Swiss Alps. Deryn, a girl pretending to be a boy to join the British Air Service, finds herself on an important mission to escort a female scientist and her secret cargo to an unknown location. Of course, their story lines crash together and they must work together to survive.

This book was incredibly well-written. The world building alone is admirable and wonderfully creative. The world of the Clankers is easy to imagine, but the world of the Darwinists takes a bit of a stretch. Some might balk at the idea of genetic modification, but Alex and Deryn constantly argue which lifestyle is better, and you get to see both sides. The book also contains intricate illustrations, as even the best descriptions in the book do not fully capture the complexity of creatures like Huxleys (hot air balloon jellyfish creations).

The two main characters are also highly developed and have a clear journey throughout the book. Alex starts as a spoiled brat, but is forced into situations that make him mature with surprising strength and fiber. I was immensely impressed with how Westerfeld treated the character of Deryn. She has small moments where her disguise is mentioned and she has to struggle to hide her girlhood. However, most of the time he treats her as a human being, not a fish out of water. She is gutsy, brash, wry and impertinent. She is a skillful flyer from the get-go, and only improves. As to the inevitable romance looming in every YA book, it isn't mentioned until the end of the book, and even as a mere blip on the radar.

The one...flaw? I found was that it read as the first half of a book. It is the first of two books, but it felt cliffhanger-y, like the first part of a Doctor Who two-part episode. It has a small resolution, but I would have rather had one big book than two small ones. It was certainly not a large enough to put me off the book!

If you liked this book, you may like:

Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer