Aleks is woken up by his tutors in the middle of the night for surprise lessons, taken to a walker, and told to drive away from the palace in pitch black darkness without making a sound. He doesn't know it yet, but his parents were assassinated and his lesson is really a mad dash to escape the same fate himself. Aleks may not be in the line of succession but he's still the only son of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and a Hapsburg by blood.

Deryn wants nothing more than to fly, even if that means she has to masquerade as a boy and join the Royal Navy. As part of the initial stages of the application process, Deryn is strapped to a beastie and sent up into the air for ten minutes then retrieved. Unfortunately a storm comes up as she starts to descend and Deryn has to cut the tether to survive. She floats away and eventually gets rescued by the great airship Leviathan. She convinces the crew to administer the rest of the midshipman exams and becomes the lowest man on their totem pole, a small but vital cog in the running of their ship. So Midshipman Dylan Sharp is born.

After picking up a boffin at the zoo - a lady scientist complete with a pet tiger and crates full of mysterious fragile eggs - the Leviathan heads toward Constantinople on some sort of secret diplomatic mission. Meanwhile, Aleks and his retainers stop for parts for their transport and are recognized. They flee to a hideout high in the Swiss Alps to wait out the war. To their surprise, a giant British warship appears on the horizon soon after their arrival and is promptly shot down by German airships. Aleks feels compelled to help as much as he can and sneaks off to bring medical supplies to the downed ship. He rescues a crewman buried in the snow, then is promptly (and apologetically) taken prisoner for his efforts when he refuses to identify himself or tell Dylan - for, of course, it was Dylan - where he's living.

Soon both the British and Austrian contingents have more trouble than either bargained for or can handle. The land high in the Alps is too barren to feed and replenish the ecosystem of the British ship, the Austrian walker too damaged to stand on its own. The Germans are returning in force and it seems like everyone is doomed. The only hope is to cobble together a single transport from the British biological and Austrian mechanical components, to work together to escape from the Germans, and to figure out what to do next if and when they survive. England and Austria may not be at war - yet - but they certainly don't like each other and have very different outlooks, experiences, and technology bases. Can they learn to mesh in time to survive? You'll have to read Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld to find out.

An alternate history with steampunk overtones set on the brink of World War I, Leviathan shows us a world where Charles Darwin not only discovers the principles of evolution but also DNA, starting an intense program of biological engineering resulting in living airships, bats that excrete metal darts, glow worms, and completely balanced biological ecosystems filling the niche of machines. As England was exploring these new advances, most of the rest of the world remained mechanical, resulting in more traditionally steampunk-y airships and ground vehicles that feel like they could perhaps have stepped directly out of Star Wars.

The book splits its time between the British and Austrian contingents, using Dylan and Aleks as the primary focal points from each side. Because Dylan loves to fly, we see the biological machines primarily in relation to their flight roles; we see the innards of the ship because midshipmen get the grunt work like feeding the bats and manning the signal towers. We see a bit less of the mechanical when we're with the Austrians because, while Aleks is a good pilot, he doesn't muck about much fixing broken parts or wander around exploring a vehicle he's seen dozens of times. It worked, though, as it gave us a way to compare the two cultures, the two characters, and the two types of technology from eyes used to seeing them and to see how someone from the other side views those things that seem self-evident to the folks who grew up within each system.

Yes, this setup really worked for me, although I admit it took me a while to really get into the Austrian side of things. I resented the first few times we left Dylan - often in precarious situations - to check in with Aleks and his cohorts. Westerfeld did a good job of drawing the two sides together, though, and I was happy to have those initial sections as background by the time he did. If you hang in past the initial slow bits (if you can call a desperate escape in the middle of the night slow), it's all worthwhile.

The book is filled with illustrations by Keith Thompson, sometimes full page scenes and sometimes little sidebar drawings in the middle of the page. These pictures are just what you'd expect from a fine book of the late 19th or 20th century - detailed ink drawings showing scenes from the book exactly. They're well done, completely in that style, and absolutely match the text, but the shading has little enough contrast to make picking out some of those little details a strain and the drawings lack the joy and sense of wonder or adventure found in the story itself. They're well done, but not well suited to this book.

My only other real complaint with Leviathan is that it's just the first installment of a larger story and has no cohesive ending of its own. I'm never a fan of this under any circumstances, but I hate being surprised by books that just end without rhyme or reason. The least they can do is warn readers so they can decide whether to read the book or wait for the next installment to be released first.

Aside from this, I really enjoyed Leviathan. The world was interesting, the characters appealing (especially Dylan), the biological engineering of traditionally mechanical things well conceived, and the ties to the real start of World War I work as an interesting way to make this book different from other steampunk or alternate histories out there. I definitely recommend Leviathan, but I also recommend having a copy of the next book (Behemoth) available at the same time.

Recommended: Yes