World War I as no history book ever described it...
Summary: Scott Westerfeld reimagines World War I through the experiences of two young people, Prince Aleksander of Austria and Dylan Sharp of Britain. After the assassination of his parents, Prince Alek and a few of his countrymen are on the run as enemies of the state. Dylan Sharp is actually Deryn, a girl pretending to be a boy so she can fight for her people on her country’s largest airship, the Leviathan, a creation of the Darwinists, scientists who have harnessed the power of DNA to create massive warcraft by genetically weaving together life strands from hundreds of species. The Leviathan’s body is that of a giant whale, with hundreds of other species living inside and on its surface, working together to make the ship fly and to defend Britain. The Darwinists’ enemies are the Clankers of Germany and Austria-Hungary, who reject biological science and embrace mechanics with their walking robots and spider-like craft.
Think it might be difficult to envision all of these strange creatures and battling robots? No worries—included in the book are Keith Thompson’s detailed illustrations to help you really see the giant airbeast and the monstrous metal fighting machines.
Leviathan belongs to the genre steampunk, a subcategory of science fiction and fantasy that blends the past and the future in one book. The author uses the genre to rethink what might have happened during World War I in an alternate reality and to explore what is possible—not only in an alternate past but also in the future. According to the author, Leviathan “…looks ahead to when machines will look like living creatures, and living creatures can be fabricated like machines” (439). Leviathan is the first book in a trilogy; the following two books are Behemoth and Goliath.
Think it might be difficult to envision all of these strange creatures and battling robots? No worries—included in the book are Keith Thompson’s detailed illustrations to help you really see the giant airbeast and the monstrous metal fighting machines.
Leviathan belongs to the genre steampunk, a subcategory of science fiction and fantasy that blends the past and the future in one book. The author uses the genre to rethink what might have happened during World War I in an alternate reality and to explore what is possible—not only in an alternate past but also in the future. According to the author, Leviathan “…looks ahead to when machines will look like living creatures, and living creatures can be fabricated like machines” (439). Leviathan is the first book in a trilogy; the following two books are Behemoth and Goliath.
Bibliography: Westerfeld, Scott. Leviathan. Illustrated by Keith Thompson. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009.
About the author: http://scottwesterfeld.com/about-the-author
About the illustrator: http://blog.keiththompsonart.com/search/label/Leviathan
About the author: http://scottwesterfeld.com/about-the-author
About the illustrator: http://blog.keiththompsonart.com/search/label/Leviathan
Germ file resource prepared by Karin Kipp for LIS590SML (Peggy Burton and Anieta Trame, instructors) as part of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.