Leviathan
Series: Leviathan, Book 1
By: Scott Westerfeld / Narrated By: Alan Cumming
Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
Enough History to captivate me; enough caveats to keep this from being a Fave…
Leviathan begins with a bang as Prince Alek (Feigning sleep lest he be caught playing war-games) is swept out of bed and scurried off to a walker (A Cyklop Stormwalker—a mighty machine that walks on two legs). After traveling in it for aaages, and believing himself in a mighty plot and kidnapped, he is told that his father, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his mother, Sophie, have been assassinated in Sarajevo. True to history, but the pair didn’t have a son, Aleksander, and here, rather than young idealistic assassins attempting murder with bombs and guns, the Archduke and wife were poisoned. Alek, who could destabilize the region by his very existence, is taken on the run by two loyal servants of the Archduke (Who foresaw such an event as the region and Germany were just itching for war).
Deryn Sharp, meanwhile over in England, is a girl attempting to pass as a boy so that she might fulfill her lifelong grooming to fly. She does indeed make it into the service, and she goes on to a placement on the airship Leviathan. Alek is a Clanker; Deryn is a Darwinist. Clankers (The Central Powers of WWI) use technological steampunk behemoths of war, and the Darwinists (The Allied Powers) use spliced DNA to create living beasts of war.
The two cross paths whenst the Leviathan crash lands in Switzerland where Alek has been taken to a castle fortress to hideout.
All well and good, and author Scott Westerfeld had me at Assassination in Sarajevo. Plus, the Central Powers of WWI soooo seemed just like they WOULD use technological and mechanical advancements to wage war given the chance. Living creatures to wage war? Hmmm, not so much. Deryn and Alek get into a lively dispute over whose choice of war is best, but it seemed to me that relying on living creatures is sooo NOT a good choice. Westerfeld has bats that are fed figs with metal shards in them, released and sent to drop shrapnel onto airplanes, and they seem to work well enough. Untiiiiil, the bats fly into the planes’ propellors and are shredded with cries of agony. Then too, as Deryn and her Leviathan shipmates discover, there are only so many bats to be had. Add to that, the Leviathan is dependent upon remaining a living ecosystem unto itself, and upon crashing MOST ignominiously, the crew soon realizes, with the prodding of a Darwinist Specialist, that up in the glacier where they crash-landed, there is NO place for the living entities to find sustenance to get the Leviathan up and flying again, and dude! that just seems waaaay too poor a way to run their side of the war.
Okay, my quibbles. But then, upon TRYing to help the victims of the crash, Alek helps Deryn avoid dying of hypothermia where she was found unconscious, and she turns on him and alerts the crew? Fine way to start a friendship that is to continue throughout sequels. -And Then- when Alek’s faithful crew are sent to save him where he’s been held, and Deryn dashes up and holds a knife to Alek’s throat as a hostage so that her Darwinist shipmates might coerce tons of food for the airship? Jiminy H. Cricket, I sooo was disliking Deryn, and I did NOT see her measures/thoughts as brilliant or heroic. Plus, it just illustrated just how ridiculously precarious their Living Beasties were, how eminently UN-suitable they were, how ill-thought a way to conduct a war this precious spliced-DNA stuff was.
Still, it’s all saved by Alan Cumming as narrator who’s as fine a voice actor as there ever was. He sooo has a way with inhabiting his characters, adding the many and varied accents from Austrian to Scottish to British. From cultured to lowbrow, from the high and mighty to the low and hard scrabbling. Just BRILLIANT narration.
Then too, as the two young characters are allowed to join forces withOUT Deryn enacting further egregious deeds of, well, callousness at BEST! and withOUT further squid’s-eye-musings on my own part, the story flows and weaves in enough history to keep me entertained, and Westerfeld creates enough enTIREly imaginative beasts/creatures to keep this enjoyable as well.
Not sure about using a full credit for the next in the series, but this was definitely worth the $5 dollar price tag (Oh, how I dooo love an Audiobook Sale!), and Cumming made the just over 8 hours fly by (By the way? His narration had Leviathan as the SECOND audiobook I could NOT jack my listening speed up for this week!).
Then again? I’m kinda truly all in a WWI Kick, and the flights of fancy were pretty goshdanged deLIGHTful!
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