I would have a hard time recommending this book to a teenager that wasn't already interested in science fiction or alternate history adventure. They might not find their way past the issues I discuss below. But for a younger reader, or an older reader that is predisposed to this type of story, this is quite fun.

What works for me is the richly-built world, the well-rounded and differentiated characters, and the rousing adventure story. All these jump out from the very first page and don't quit until the end of the book. The different viewpoints on science, engineering, and politics came alive on every page.

Some things didn't work. The juvenile and repetative PG-rated swearing became tiresome after a while. The premise that a girl could pass for weeks and weeks as a boy in the closed in environment of an airship did not quite ring true. The young main characters tended to act quite a bit younger than their age, which seems the opposite of what would be typical for the time period when children would tend to grow up more quickly than they do now.

The biggest disappointment came in the final pages, where the story seemed to just end, rather than come to a satisfying conclusion. But I will be there for the next chapter, Behemoth. ( )

listened to about half of it... need to finish

Adorably started, these children stole my heart right from the very start. Because I read all three of these novels in one week, they all kind of blur in my head. So I'm going to write them all one big review pretty much.


This series is promising to become one of top ten my favorite mini-series I would read in the early part of this year/all of 2012 (so far, as we area only 1/3 of the way in). I was captivated with how things happened, the slow reveal, how our characters learned things, how they handled ending up places, what was more important morality among people or loyalty to a cause.

The illustrations made my heart sore every time. I like that the children aren't super-people by the end, but still feeling their way through the world. I adore madly the Lady Boffin and The Count. I want to know ssssoo much more about the gifted pets, because you know they go, continuing to be awesome.


If you have not read this series (and I was already one of the late, late comers, with the series already completely when I found it), You Should Be Now. Go, go. Get copies. Giggle and love it. ( )

I was really excited about this book, but then I felt a little disappointed at first. About halfway through I put the book down for a couple of weeks, but I found that the story was stuck in my head and I needed to find out what happened. It's always a sign of a good book when the characters get stuck in your head like that. I think the story would have been more interesting at first if Scott Westerfeld had described the strange wold of CLankers and Darwinists more fully. I didn't realize until the end that this is the first book of the series, and I'm excited to read more about this bizarre world. ( )

Like Marie Lu, Scott Westerfeld is an author who walks the line between middle grades and young adult. Each of his series, and there are many, including the Uglies, are accessible reads for middle schoolers, high schoolers, and adults alike. His effective storytelling and dynamic characters insures that one will never be bored when reading his books and they have great staying power – Uglies, published over 10 years ago, is still a staple in bookstores and on school reading lists.

But I wasn’t particularly intrigued by Uglies, I was much more intrigued by Westerfeld’s take on the start of World War I and his Darwinists and Clankers. The British Darwinists have woven together the “life-threads” of various animals to create everything from great flying whale ships to messenger lizards and many “beasties” inbetween. The German & Austrohungarians have crafted mechanical machines, referred to as “clankers.” Main characters Alek and Deryn are often trying to one-up each other in terms of determining which are better, beasties or clankers. Steampunk definitely suits Westerfeld’s storytelling style.

Leviathan, told in third person but in alternating perspectives between Deryn (Dylan) and Alek, weaves together a complex tapestry of the motivations behind the start of World War I, blending fact and fiction until you have to forcibly remind yourself that the British didn’t set off across the continent in a giant whale zeppelin. As with Legend, Leviathan is the perfect book for both boys and girls of all ages, especially for teenagers who love a good adventure that doesn’t center on romance. ( )