Their armored vehicles now run on diesel fuel, but instead of rolling on tractor treads they walk on legs, like giant insects or spiders carrying battleships over land. Meanwhile, in the opposing half of Europe-the half devoted to developing machine might beyond the coal-powered whimsies of the Steampunk era-the so-called “Clanker” powers have been gearing up for a war to end all wars.

Suddenly, thanks to weight restrictions, Dylan finds herself one of only two middies left on board.

Then a female boffin (that’s British slang for “scientist”) comes on board with a load of luggage and a secret cargo meant to play a role in sensitive negotiations with the Ottoman Empire. So she cuts her hair, puts on a boy’s uniform, and enlists under the name Dylan, relying on her androgynous looks, her innate “sky sense,” and her incredible natural courage to overcome the disadvantage of being the one girl among a midshipmen’s berth full of boys. So by the dawn of what we call World War I, they have vehicles drawn by elephantines and wolftigers, bio-engineered krakens serving in lieu of submarines, and most exciting of all, living airships ranging from single-passenger “Huxleys” (giant, hydrogen-breathing jellyfish) to airborne battleships built around flying whales like the good ship Leviathan herself!Įnter Deryn Sharpe, an aviator’s daughter whose only ambition is to serve in the Royal Navy of the sky. Britain, France, and other “Darwinist” aligned nations have gotten a head-start on high tech, using these artificial beasties instead of gadgets and motors. Not content with disabusing half of Europe of their belief in a divine creator, the Darwin of this world founded a branch of science devoted to combining the “life threads” (read “what they called DNA before they discovered DNA”) of different animals into fabricated creatures that had all kinds of uses.

The alternate universe in which Leviathan takes place seems to have split off from the Steampunk waveform at the time of Charles Darwin. This book takes the world of Steampunk into the next generation, and gives it a twist all its own. So when I saw the cover of this book, I thought I was going to really plunge into the world of Steampunk once and for all. LaFevers are about as close to that type of story as I have wandered, more by chance than by design. Books I have read by Stephen Elboz, Kenneth Oppel, and R. The whole “alternate history of Queen Victoria’s era with armed airships and high-tech high jinks” concept holds an immense appeal for a fantasy and historical fiction buff like me, but somehow I have only grazed the edges of this flourishing field. I surprise myself when I look back on the thousands of books I have reviewed and see so few, if any, that really belong to the Steampunk genre.

Leviathan scott