Review: "Leviathan" by Scott Westerfeld

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Leviathan is as much about possible futures as alternate pasts.... That's the nature of steampunk, blending future and past." - Scott Westerfeld

I read the majority of this book on the train on the way back from our trip to the Melbourne Zoo. I was only able to read it because Michelle, being sensible, had packed a tree book along with her Kobo. So when my Kobo started to act up and wouldn't actually turn on (dammit), I started reading Leviathan instead.

I've been wanting to read this since it first came out, but it has languished on the 'to read' pile in part because Scott Westerfeld is a white, American male, and thus doesn't fill ANY 'special category' for reading challenges (by which I mean those 'challenges' I give to myself, rather than specific challenges.)

Anyway - I really enjoyed it. Love Nora Barlow, especially love Deryn (even though Deryn isn't a particularly feminine name to me... Scott, you're married to an Australian, surely Justine explained the evil that is Derryn Hinch?) - but then I generally love 'girl-dressed-as-boy' narratives.

Anyway. I really enjoyed the steampunk aspect, even if the beasties do worry me on occassion (I can't see "Leviathan" the ship as anything but an actual-although-modified whale, and the idea of harnessing it to a gondola... I don't know.

But I certainly enjoy the world-building, the games being played with history, and the general mood of the book. Behemoth is somewhere in the Chez Stutters collection, and I won't be surprised if I finish that one by Christmas. (I also have to dig out Richard Harland's Liberator and read it. Perhaps December will be my "books by white men" month?

Kick-ass women: 2 (Deryn and Nora Barlow)