Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
Spoiler alert! If you havent read this book and wanted to discover it on your own, it's better if you back away ;)
It is the cusp of World War I, and all the European powers are arming up. The Austro-Hungarians and Germans have their Clankers, steam-driven iron machines loaded with guns and ammunition. The British Darwinist employ fabricated animals as their weaponry. Their Leviathan is a whale airship, and the most masterful beast in the British fleet.
The man who creates the Uglies series has brought us another thrilling adventure of Leviathan. The novel is set in the midst of World War I than occur between the countries in the Europe. The war started when the Archduke Franz Ferdinand with his wife was murdered by the Germans, that leaves their only son, Aleksandar Ferdinand with his loyal crew a bunch of fugitives. At the night his parents was murdered, Alek and his crew runaway with their Stormwalker and live in hide until the Great War ends.
On the other hand, Deryn Sharp is a girl who disguised herself as a boy in order to join the British Air Service. The tragedy that took her father away made her decided to fly just as her father brought her on a balloon ride once. She successfully became one of the airman in the whale airship Leviathan and become a fine airman, but she needed to keep her secret safe if she wanted to keep working for the great whale.
But everything changed when the Leviathan was attacked by the German airship and crashed on Alek's hiding place. Alek and Deryn finally met each other and that encounter changed their life completely.
In my opinion, Westerfeld created a brilliant masterpiece of Leviathan when he emerged between historical and futuristic world. Quoted from the afterwords in his novel, "So, Leviathan is as much about possible futures as alternate pasts. It looks ahead to when machines will work like living creatures, and living creatures can be fabricated like machines. And yet the setting also recalls an earlier time in which the world was divided into aristocrats and commoners, and women in most countries couldn't join the armed forces--or even vote. That's the nature of steampunk, blending future and past."
Now this is what I called learning history in a fun way ;)
It is the cusp of World War I, and all the European powers are arming up. The Austro-Hungarians and Germans have their Clankers, steam-driven iron machines loaded with guns and ammunition. The British Darwinist employ fabricated animals as their weaponry. Their Leviathan is a whale airship, and the most masterful beast in the British fleet.
The man who creates the Uglies series has brought us another thrilling adventure of Leviathan. The novel is set in the midst of World War I than occur between the countries in the Europe. The war started when the Archduke Franz Ferdinand with his wife was murdered by the Germans, that leaves their only son, Aleksandar Ferdinand with his loyal crew a bunch of fugitives. At the night his parents was murdered, Alek and his crew runaway with their Stormwalker and live in hide until the Great War ends.
On the other hand, Deryn Sharp is a girl who disguised herself as a boy in order to join the British Air Service. The tragedy that took her father away made her decided to fly just as her father brought her on a balloon ride once. She successfully became one of the airman in the whale airship Leviathan and become a fine airman, but she needed to keep her secret safe if she wanted to keep working for the great whale.
But everything changed when the Leviathan was attacked by the German airship and crashed on Alek's hiding place. Alek and Deryn finally met each other and that encounter changed their life completely.
In my opinion, Westerfeld created a brilliant masterpiece of Leviathan when he emerged between historical and futuristic world. Quoted from the afterwords in his novel, "So, Leviathan is as much about possible futures as alternate pasts. It looks ahead to when machines will work like living creatures, and living creatures can be fabricated like machines. And yet the setting also recalls an earlier time in which the world was divided into aristocrats and commoners, and women in most countries couldn't join the armed forces--or even vote. That's the nature of steampunk, blending future and past."
Now this is what I called learning history in a fun way ;)