“Goliath” by Scott Westerfeld (Simon & Schuster)

Reviewed by Alyssa

The exciting conclusion to the Leviathan Trilogy

Alek and Deryn are aboard the Leviathan when the ship is ordered to pick up an unusual passenger. This brilliant/maniacal inventor claims to have a weapon called Goliath that can end the war. But whose side is he really on?

While on their top-secret mission, Alek finally discovers Deryn’s deeply kept secret. Two, actually. Not only is Deryn a girl disguised as a guy... she has feelings for Alek.

The crown, true love with a commoner, and the destruction of a great city all hang on Alek’s next-and final-move.

I am a big fan of Scott Westerfeld, and have particularly enjoyed the Leviathan Trilogy (see my review of Behemoth, the second book in the trilogy, here). Goliath delivers on all of the promise of the first two books. It is a fast-paced adventure that takes us around the globe, filled with fantastic creatures and machines. The rest of the review will contain minor spoilers for the first two books, so if you haven’t already started this series, stop reading now, track down Leviathan and start there – the Leviathan Trilogy is well worth your time.

“Behemoth”, by Scott Westerfeld (Simon & Schuster)

Reviewed by Alyssa Mackenzie

Airships in Istanbul

The behemoth is the fiercest creature in the British navy. It can swallow enemy battleships with one bite. The Darwinists will need it, now that they are at war with the Clanker powers.

Deryn is a girl posing as a boy in the British Air Service, and Alek is the heir to an empire posing as a commoner. Finally together aboard the airship Leviathan, they hope to bring the war to a halt. But when disaster strikes the Leviathan’s peacekeeping mission, they find themselves alone and hunted in enemy territory.

Alek and Deryn will need great skill, new allies, and brave hearts to face what’s ahead.

In the world of the Leviathan trilogy, the discoveries of Charles Darwin resulted in a technological as well as scientific revolution. By 1914, ‘Darwinist’ countries (Britain and its allies) have developed ‘fabricated’ creatures, which perform the functions usually fulfilled by machines: giant jellyfish are one-man aircrafts, tiny lizards relay messages in human voices, and bats that eat prunes embedded with metal spikes are used instead of guns. In the countries that reject Darwinist practices, or ‘Clankers’, purely mechanical technology has evolved very differently from our own, designed to compete with and (with the prospect of the First World War) to defeat, Darwinist creatures.

Westerfeld introduced this world in Leviathan (published in 2009), through the eyes of Deryn Sharp and Alek Hapsburg and the British airship (and self-sustaining ecosystem) ‘Leviathan’. Leviathan combines great characters and plotting with a truly masterful piece of world-building. Westerfeld creates his alternate history brilliantly, working within and against conflicts and concerns of our history to build his own. His world-building is thoughtful, detailed, and frequently playful (one of my favourite details from the novel is the image of 1914 London renowned for its air quality because of its use of fabricated creatures instead of fuel-burning machines). I thoroughly enjoyed Leviathan, and was very excited to read Behemoth, which continues Deryn and Alek’s story in fine form.

Behemoth picks up where Leviathan left off, with Deryn and Alek together on the Leviathan. Very quickly, however, both leave the safety of the airship, and follow separate paths into the exotic and politically unstable city of Istanbul. In addition to steampunk alternate history and adventure tale, the Leviathan trilogy is a coming-of-age story, for both Alek and Deryn. In Behemoth, both characters are forced to act and think independently, and as each is separated from the adults who have hitherto protected and guided them, we see both characters mature while they face tests to their judgement, strength, and ingenuity. Repeatedly, both Deryn and Alek must decide whom to trust, attempting to accomplish their goals without compromising their safety; as the story progresses, what becomes apparent is that the most important of these decisions will be to trust each other.

As in Leviathan, Westerfeld does a great job of using real-world events and conflicts to construct his narrative. In this case, Winston Churchill’s refusal to hand over a warship purchased by the Ottoman Empire (to which Westerfeld adds an accompanying fabricated creature, the titular behemoth), becomes a diplomatic crisis not only for Britain, but for the allied Darwinists who want to sway Turkey away from its Clanker sympathies. Westerfeld is very skilled at balancing the various elements of his plot, raising the stakes individually for Deryn and Alek, and the broader political situation at hand without any element of his story overpowering another; moreover, he does so in a narrative that is fast-paced, engaging, and above all, fun.

I really enjoyed seeing the world of Leviathan extended beyond the specifically Clanker or Darwinist worlds of Austria and Britain. In addition to showing a different, slightly more organic version of Clanker technology in Istanbul, Westerfeld introduces his first North American to the story: Eddie Malone, an American reporter. Americans seem to take a much more relaxed attitude than any other characters, comfortable with both machines and fabricated creatures. Eddie was one of my favourite new characters. The perspicacious, monkey-like loris named Bovril was also an amusing addition to the cast, showing an ability to pick out the most important (and, frequently, the most awkward or embarrassing) words and phrases from conversation and repeat them. The loris will clearly play an important role in the final book of the trilogy, but how is as yet unclear. Manipulated into Alek’s care by Dr. Barlow, all it seems to do at present is threaten to make trouble.

Behemoth is an excellent read, featuring a fun and suspenseful plot within brilliantly-realised alternate history. Keith Thompson’s illustrations are a great addition to the book – they do a good job of capturing the spirit of Westerfeld’s story and characters. I am definitely looking forward to Goliath.

Highly recommended.

The Leviathan trilogy: Leviathan (winner of the 2010 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Fiction), Behemoth, Goliath (October 2011)

Westerfeld’s “Behemoth” final cover?

According to Wondrous Reads, this is the final cover for Scott Westerfeld’s Behemoth:

I’m not sure that I like it, to be entirely honest. The previously proposed UK artwork, I thought, was more appropriate:

Not only that, it matches the cover artwork of Leviathan, the first in the series, which is also pretty cool:

Not only that, this ‘darker’ design matches the design of the author’s website. Westerfeld seems happy with the new cover (read his thoughts, here).

Here’s the banner head from the site:

See? The darker blue makes more sense.

Am I being unreasonable? Any thoughts?

On a related note, regardless of what you might think of this new cover, one this is for certain: the UK covers are better than the US versions…

(Latest) Incoming!

Another post to highlight some highly anticipated, upcoming reviews for the site. I’ll let the synopses do the talking, and have scribbled some initial thoughts after each. There are a couple here that will be reviewed immediately (see, once again my carefully considered plans have been thrown out the window…), with the others also edging higher up the schedule:

2010 is really shaping up to be an excellent year for books.

Stephen Deas, “The Thief-Taker’s Apprentice” (Gollancz)

The beginning of a new fantasy trilogy

Berren has lived in the city all his life. He has made his way as a thief, paying a little of what he earns to the Fagin like master of their band. But there is a twist to this tale of a thief.

One day Berren goes to watch an execution of three thieves. He watches as the thief-taker takes his reward and decides to try and steal the prize. He fails. The young thief is taken. But the thief-taker spots something in Berren. And the boy reminds him of someone as well. Berren becomes his apprentice… And is introduced to a world of shadows, deceit and corruption behind the streets he thought he knew.

Full of richly observed life in a teeming fantasy city, a hectic progression of fights, flights and fancies and charting the fall of a boy into the dark world of political plotting and murder this marks the beginning of a new fantasy series for all lovers of fantasy - from fans of Kristin Cashore to Brent Weeks.

This will be my first novel by the author, and I’m quite looking forward to it. The premise sounds interesting and somewhere in the same genre/vein as Brent Weeks’s Night Angel Trilogy, which I loved. I have the author’s first novel, The Adamantine Palace, yet I’ve never found the time to dive into it – on my shelf-of-books-yet-unread, it’s situated next to Patrick Rothfuss’s In The Name of the Wind, Sam Sykes’s Tome of the Undergates, MD Lachlan’s Wolfsangel, and Joe Abercrombie’s First Law Trilogy (all series/books I feel bad for not having starting or read yet). I’ll be reviewing this book next, so expect a review within a week.

I should also point out that Mr Deas himself actually sent this to me (signed), so a huge thank you for that!

Brent Weeks, “The Black Prism” (Orbit)

The highly anticipated start to a new series

Gavin Guile is the Prism, the most powerful man in the world. He is high priest and emperor, a man whose power, wit, and charm are all that preserves a tenuous peace.

But Prisms never last, and Guile knows exactly how long he has left to live: Five years to achieve five impossible goals.

To say I’ve been looking forward to this would be a big understatement. The Night Angel Trilogy was brilliant, and I devoured each volume as soon as I could get my hands on them. I selected the whole trilogy as my best read of 2008. I told everyone about it. I even bought the trilogy for a friend.

So, there’s a lot of anticipation for The Black Prism. I’m anxious that it might not meet my ludicrously high expectations, but I can’t wait to start it. I’ll review this immediately after Thief-Taker’s Apprentice, so hopefully by the end of next week (or there about). Fingers crossed…

Gail Carriger, “Soulless” (Orbit)

Jane Eyre meets Supernatural?

Alexia Tarabotti is labouring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. Second, she’s a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette.

Where to go from there? From bad to worse apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire — and then the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate. With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia responsible.

Can she figure out what is actually happening to London’s high society? Will her soulless ability to negate supernatural powers prove useful or just plain embarrassing? Finally, who is the real enemy, and do they have treacle tart?

Soulless is a comedy of manners set in Victorian London: full of werewolves, vampires, dirigibles, and tea-drinking.

Alyssa’s already reading this one, so the review should be forthcoming. She seems to be enjoying it a great deal, and initial feedback is that it’s funny, original, but a tad predictable in the love-interest aspect of the novel.

I think I’ll probably pinch it back after she’s finished with it, so I can give it a try – the premise of this novel sounds pretty quirky and interesting, as do the second and third in the series.

Robert Jackson Bennett, “Mr. Shivers” (Orbit)

Historical horror?

It is the time of the Great Depression. Thousands have left their homes looking for a better life, a new life. But Marcus Connelly is not one of them. He searches for one thing, and one thing only: Revenge.

Because out there, riding the rails, stalking the camps, is the scarred vagrant who murdered Connelly’s daughter.

One man must face a dark truth and answer the question – how much is he willing to sacrifice for his satisfaction?

I’m not entirely sure what genre this book falls into, but I’ve read one review of it, a while back, which made it sounds really interesting and original. I’m interested in reading something set in this time period, too, as it’s not one I’ve come across too often.

Expect it to be reviewed relatively soon, but probably not in time for its publication date.

Scott Westerfeld, “Behemoth” (Simon & Schuster)

Steampunk sequel to the critically-acclaimed Leviathan

The behemoth is the fiercest creature in the British navy. It can swallow enemy battleships with one bite. The Darwinists will need it, now that they are at war with the Clanker powers.

Deryn is a girl posing as a boy in the British Air Service, and Alek is the heir to an empire posing as a commoner. Finally together aboard the airship Leviathan, they hope to bring the war to a halt. But when disaster strikes the Leviathan's peacekeeping mission, they find themselves alone and hunted in enemy territory.

Alek and Deryn will need great skill, new allies, and brave hearts to face what's ahead.

I’ve not read Leviathan, but both of my review-minions Emma and Alyssa have, and they both loved it. The lovely peeps at Simon & Schuster sent through an ARC for Behemoth, and Alyssa’s nabbed it already for a review (she has really quick hands…). My general consumption of steampunk is actually, thusfar, nil – somehow, I’ve managed to not read a single novel in the genre, despite its growing popularity. I have recently purchased the eBook of Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker, though, and I’ll be trying to get reviewed soon (ah, plans grown from the best of intentions…).

Having flicked through the Behemoth ARC, I’m intrigued by the premise and also the world Westerfeld has come up with (steampunk alternative history). The internal illustrations (by Keith Thompson) are also great, but I’m not sure how that would effect my reading of the novel: it might feel a little bit like being told how to imagine the story and the world… Anyway, everyone I know who’s read the first in the series, as I mentioned, has loved it, so I’m going to try to give it a read as well at some point. Maybe after I finish my PhD.

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And on the non-fiction side of things…

Jay Dobyns, “No Angel” (Canongate/Random House)

An ATF agent goes undercover with the Hell’s Angels

The first federal agent to infiltrate the inner circle of the outlaw Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, and the inside story of the 21-month operation that almost cost him his family, his sanity, and his life.

Getting shot in the chest as a rookie agent, bartering for machine guns, throttling down the highway at 100 mph, and responding to a full-scale, bloody riot between the Hells Angels and their rivals, the Mongols – these are just a few of the high-adrenaline experiences Dobyns recounts in this action-packed true story.

Dobyns leaves no stone of his harrowing journey unturned. At runs and clubhouses, between rides and riots, Dobyns befriends bad-ass bikers, meth-fueled “old ladies”, gun fetishists, psycho-killer ex-cons, and even some of the “Filthy Few” – the elite of the Hells Angels who’ve committed extreme violence on behalf of their club. Eventually, at parties staged behind heavily armed security, he meets legendary club members such as Chuck Zito, Johnny Angel, and the godfather of all bikers, Ralph “Sonny” Barger. To blend in with them, he gets full-arm ink; to win their respect, he vows to prove himself a stone-cold killer.

Hardest of all is leading a double life, which has him torn between his devotion to his wife and children, and his pledge to become the first federal agent ever to be “fully patched” into the Angels’ near-impregnable ranks. His act is so convincing that he comes within a hairsbreadth of losing himself. Eventually, he realizes that just as he’s been infiltrating the Hells Angels, they’ve been infiltrating him. And just as they’re not all bad, he’s not all good.

This has been described as the new Donnie Brasco and the most in-depth account of the world of Bikers since Hunter Thompson’s seminal work, Hell’s Angels (which I might also review one day). As this isn’t fiction, it’ll actually be reviewed on the other (sadly less active) site, but I thought I’d include it in this list – I consider it among my reading-for-pleasure books, and one that might hold wider interest for general readers.

I’ve been watching Sons of Anarchy, which is utterly brilliant and has put me in the mood to learn/read/watch more about bikers and their culture, so I ordered this book on the strength of a Newsweek excerpt I remember reading a couple years ago, when the hardback edition was released in the US.

The TV show has really got under my skin, and all I want to do at the moment is buy a motorbike, put on my leather jacket and shades, and cruise along a sun-drenched US highway… (I’m a PhD student – if we’re not working, we’re fantasising about things that are far more interesting and exciting than our research…)

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So, that’s the latest taste of things to come on the website. Hope you come back to check out the reviews when they’re up.

“The Secret Hour”, by Scott Westerfeld (Atom)

Reviewed by Alyssa Mackenzie

Re-release of an excellent YA series

As the new girl at Bixby High School, Jessica Day expected some unwelcome attention. What she didn’t expect was to feel an instant connection to a stranger in the corridor…

Who is this boy dressed in black? And why can she feel his eyes following her wherever she goes?

The answers will have to wait until the sun goes down, for here in Bixby, midnight is the time for secrets; secrets that Jessica is going to find out, whether she wants to or not.

Reading the back of this re-release of Scott Westerfeld’s The Secret Hour (the first in his Midnighters trilogy), you could easily form the impression that this book will have a lot in common with Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight. Given the success of the Twilight series, it’s not surprising that the publisher would choose to highlight their similarities – both tell the story of a teenage girl moving to a small town and finding herself enmeshed in supernatural activity. That, however, is where the similarities end. Readers of The Secret Hour will find a very different kind of novel.

In Bixby, Oklahoma, there is a twenty-fifth hour to every day, compressed into the instant of midnight. Soon after her arrival in Bixby, Jessica learns that she is one of the few people aware of this hour, able to experience the town when time appears to be frozen. She joins Rex, Melissa, Dess, and Jonathan, all awake to the secret hour because they were born at midnight, in a world that is at once exhilarating and dangerous. Westerfeld does an excellent job of evoking this in-between world, both the magic and the horror of it, through Jessica’s first encounters with it.

The novel unfolds through the perspectives of all five ‘Midnighters’, varying chapter to chapter. Westerfeld’s characters are individually well-drawn, and their relationships nuanced. His greatest strength, however, is his representation of their dynamics as a group. In many ways, they fulfil the requirements of a classic group of superheroes. Each character, when in the “blue time” of the midnight hour, has their own special power, which combined with the others enables them to defend themselves against the dangerous creatures that populate this hidden world. However, Westerfeld’s characters resist the easy unity, of both mindset and purpose, that this can imply. Each of Rex, Melissa, Dess, Jonathan, and Jessica experience the secret hour differently, and so relate differently to the group. The very term ‘Midnighters’ suggests a unity that is almost immediately undermined – coined by Rex to describe their group and people like them, it is a label that Jonathon refuses to acknowledge.

The narrative of The Secret Hour is fast-paced and engaging, with Westerfeld revealing the mythology of his world, both fascinating and complex, skilfully throughout the novel. We generally learn things as newcomer Jessica does, which, given the rapidity with which events move, is often piecemeal, and on the run. Even after Jessica is given a lengthy lesson on the nature and history of the Midnighters, we are left with the impression that she – and therefore we – cannot know the whole story. Westerfeld effectively builds revelations about the Midnighter mythology into the tension of his plot, which should leave readers eager to discover not only how his story turns out but also more information about his world.

The Secret Hour is an excellent piece of YA fantasy – an enjoyable read, with a quickly-moving plot set in a well-imagined world, it is a very good introduction to the Midnighters trilogy. The novel was originally published in 2004; this new edition boasts an attractive new cover design.

Highly recommended.

Midnighters Trilogy: The Secret Hour (Winner of the 2004 Aurealis Award for Best YA Novel), Touching Darkness, Blue Noon