Whew…where do I begin? First off, let me tell you this is my first steampunk experience, which will definitely not be my last. At work, I’ve had a few of my co-workers recommend this book to me, along with about fifteen other steampunk titles. I ignored them. Steampunk just wasn’t my bag. It seemed too…too…what’s the word?...ridiculous. Months passed. But every time I needed a new book to read and review for my job, I always found myself looking at LEVIATHAN. The cover art is pretty cool; but just not cool enough for me to read it…or so I thought. Then, last night, as we were closing shop, I dared myself to read this title. I’m not much into YA literature either, so my hopes were not great. I thought: If I can just read 50 pages, then I could tell them that this type of stuff isn’t for me.

Well, my wife and kids went to bed early, so I opened this book. And man oh man, did I have a fun few hours. As the night grew older, I kept saying, “Just one more chapter.” I ended up reading half the book.

The story revolves around an alternate history of what precipitated the events that triggered (no pun intended for those history buffs reading this review) WWI. In the real history, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was killed by an assassin’s bullet. In this version, the Duke and his wife are killed by poison after having survived two previous attempts. Their deaths leave their son, Aleck, now heir to the Austrian-Hungary Empire alone, save for two loyal officers that whisk him away in the dead of the night. This all happens within the first ten pages. I liked this. It kind of had an Ender’s Game feel to it.

As the story progresses, we find out that the world basically split into two factions: the Clankers, and the Darwinists. The Clankers live and die by technology. Machines are their future. In fact, their machines seem to serve one purpose only: advancement of military might. Darwinists are a bit different. Yes, they use technology, but this technology is fused with the life forms of earth. These are called Beasties. A great example of these Beasties is the Leviathan itself. This monstrosity has the body of a whale, but is actually an amalgam of ecosystems working together. It looks and acts like a zeppelin, the difference being, it is alive. Needless to say, the world-building in this story is incredible. I could see and smell and hear all what was happening, both in the Clankers world and in the Darwinists’.

I won’t spoil the story, but here are a few themes throughout: bravery, technology versus nature, overcoming odds, redemption, acceptance of loss, and loyalty. There are epic battles and escapes. Daring rescues. Science and speculation. Strange eggs. Descendants of Charles Darwin. Fusion of past and future concepts. A girl posing as a boy as to serve her country in war. (Possible romance in the next books?) And, my favorite, bats that eat pieces of metal so they can be used as missiles when attacking enemies. (You can probably guess as to how these projectiles are ejected from the bats!!)

The two major criticisms I have about this novel are: sometimes the language seems needlessly juvenile. This doesn’t happen often, but when it does it is jarring to the story. The other is the illustrations. I found this book to be dark. Not in violence or topic necessarily, but it is about war and is filled with war scenes, the illustrations detract from the story, sometimes making it less urgent or compelling. Had these been drawn to show the darker elements of the story, they would have added greatly.

Still, this was an awesome novel. I will proudly eat my own words and say steampunk is fun, good reading, and YA literature has a lot to offer.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED