Barking destiny
I wrote this ‘bout a week ago after I had just finished reading Goliath. skywanderer, babe, you can come out of ninja hiding now; here is the flaily post!
Back when I was read the first book and Alek and Deryn first met on the glacier, I thought, “hey it would probably be cute if they started having feelings for each other, because y’know, this is classic boy protagonist meets girl protagonist (or: boy protagonist meets girl-he-thinks-is-boy protagonist). *reads further* And also, she notices his eyes a lot and he basically wants to BE her-possible early ship tease!
…Probably be cute.
…Wouldn’t mind.
…Early ship tease.
ha. Ha. HA.
Fair warning: these may not be the most well-formed thoughts. They are full of OTP FEELINGS.
*The Reveal! I was sooo apprehensive about how it would be executed. I thought, how could Scott Westerfeld possibly top all the fanfics and webcomics and crazy ideas that the fans have come up with? Of course he’s the original author but I have seen so many takes on it, I wonder if he could possibly still blow my mind with it.
But he did: the reveal was SO WELL DONE! Yay for Alek putting it all together piece by piece! My favorite thing about this was confirmation that Alek is not dense-because people got on his case an awful lot for…not noticing that his disguised best friend isn’t a dude. Well, ahem. He DID notice ‘Dylan’ acting dodgy about the past, he DID take note of all the times ‘Dylan’ tried and failed to spill the secret. And I looove how the chapter ends with him lying in bed and Bovril whispering it in his ear. Also, the way he coaxed it out of Deryn? “Listen to every word I say…can I trust you, Deryn?”
And it’s interesting the way she answers him, like, involuntarily. I mean she’s been in disguise for so long, but they’re so close that she doesn’t even notice that he said her real name and she answered to it, until he walks out.
*You go, Deryn! Of course she refused to let him stalk off without a confrontation. And then she hit him! Which Alek deserved for the “you’re not a real soldier” comment, let’s be honest. BUT even when they were at odds, I really like how Alek’s biggest tiff with her was that he felt it was a betrayal of their airtight friendship. Like, even when the world was upside down, he always had ‘Dylan’ for his secrets and his friendship and now (he thinks) that’s going to fall apart. And Deryn’s “I was always your friend” reply was perfect; even when she was plenty pissed (and for good reason) she’s reassuring him of that truth.
*BUT WHOA, he realized all at once that she loved him. I did not see coming so early in the book! Deryn was right after all. Annd Alek broods for two days. All around the Leviathan and mostly in the showers, ahahaha. This amuses me so much, especially because there’s a Shower of Angst pic (sort of), especially when Volger snarks about the future emperor brooding in a bathroom.
Poor Bovril, though, having to deal with mommy and daddy and their joint custody non-arrangement!
*Favorite illustration? The “Draining” one, where Deryn still has a few inches on Alek, even when he’s half-standing on a box. XD
Also:
“It’s just the way things are.” She shrugged. “It’s no one’s fault.”
“Or everyone’s,” Alek said. “Deryn.”
:flail: I don’t know, okay. I just think it’s romantic that he wants to make up for never knowing her name by using it all the time, now that he does know. I love when names are played with like that: blame Ever After for ruining me at an early age!
(Augh, I am filled with happiness just remembering this book’s everything. And this isn’t even the really shippy part yet! )
*EVERYTHING IN JAPAN. I wish we’d stayed there longer! Actually, that applies to all the places the Leviathan visited in this book. But what we got here was so delightful. Alek and Deryn at the tailoring shop, and Alek lying smoothly about her ~skin disease? HEE. I wish Keith Thompson had done a fanart of Deryn’s shit-eating grin while she watches Alek take of his jacket for the tailors (I don’t know if I’m being too gutter-minded about this or if that’s exactly what Westerfeld intended; fandom, you corrupt me.)
Then there was their their sorta-kinda-date and Deryn “unerringly” tracking down the food stall, hee.
And: “Barking destiny.” Oh, KIDS. I LOVE YOU BOTH. SO DOES BOVRIL.
Finally:
Alek: “It was awful being at war with you.”
Deryn: :laughs: “I missed you too, you daft prince.”
One of my favorite exchanges in the whole series, oh yes.
* So kissing works on sleeping princes too. OMIGOSH, YES. Made of win: Alek’s narration zigzagging from Deryn to Dylan to Deryn again. And Alek’s whole concussed I-am-looking-at-your-face-up-close. OMG, you-are-a-girl ramble. XD And the fact that Deryn initiates the kiss, but of course.
*Nothing will ever be more precious than Alek watching The Perils of Pauline and getting ~palpitations from imagining Deryn as a the movie’s action heroine (and probably himself as the starcrossed lover). Nothing.
*SO, everything that happened in Mexico. I…have no words for all that. I think the pic with Alek and Deryn squeezing hands speaks for itself. You’re a cool guy, Pancho Villa, but you’re too late to warn these two ridiculous and ridiculously-in-love people!
Which brings us to…
*I adore that Alek gets to take care of Deryn for once, after she’s injured. In the first place, I already adored the whole gender role switcheroo they’ve got going on, where Deryn is always swooping in and saving Alek and Alek’s the more sensitive one who ~talks about his feelings a lot~. So it’s extra great that they’re put in a position where the guy gets to do the saving and it feels new.
One of the images that just sticks with me is Alek helping her walk all the way to the bathrooms and then guarding the door and then keeping her company all through the boredom and the misery. I just…THESE TWO.
*I think my heart is still dented from the part where Deryn’s cooped up in her cabin and they are both painfully avoiding the elephant in the room that is the commoner/prince rift. And they’re trying not to make it anything more and leaving everything unsaid because they don’t even want to begin feeling that sort of thing for each other. The stilted goodbyes at the ball? Ouch. …Westerfeld wrote the angst incredibly well, I must say. I’m not usually sold on characters in this kind of romantic trope
Even when they were preparing to let go and everything hurt, I was so proud they were both studiously committed to their duties and seeing the war to its end. Young people making the horribly difficult choice because they think it is right. This is what I love in YA literature, you know.
*From here on out, this is the Saving-Each-Other Tango, isn’t it? I seriously did not expect many happy shippy feelings once the Leviathan left New York, but oh they were there. Like when the Leviathan goes back to save Alek from the fire because of that one person who was looking out after him. Like when Alek gives up his last, most dangerous secret so his “mad airgirl” won’t be found out. Like when Deryn gets anxious because Alek is down there without her to protect him (I don’t remember the exact quote, but I remember that it was beautiful).
*AND THEN THE CLIMAX. I have one bone to pick: it was a bit anticlimactic to go back and forth between an Alek who was coming to blows with Tesla and a Deryn who was watching the battle with the walkers. Yeah, I understand that Deryn was injured (and that was important to the plot); I understand that this was a game-changing battle that had to have the presence of the Leviathan’s highest officers . But a climax where she’s not daredevil-ing around feels so…off.
Alek’s part, though. Holy emotions, Batman. I thought Volger would end up killing Tesla-totally not expecting Alek to do it. For Deryn. For Deryn.
(…And oooh, I just noticed that Alek is in his fencing pose while holding out the walking stick.)
*The ending! Shipping endgame-wise, it is everything I could ever want. It is happy. It is sappy, which delights me (YOU GO AND TOSS THAT SCROLL, BOY).It is beautifully earned and it…has a swearing loris who likes to talk about chests while Deryn laughs and Alek blushes. XD No more secrets and three more makeouts!
…Sure, there’s a dash of bittersweet because Alek and Deryn are leaving the Leviathan. But it ends with a promise of another adventure and of a life together. That’s all I could ever ask for them.
*“You, lucky Austria, shall marry.” Heaaarts in my eyes.
Thoughts on the other characters:
-THE LORISES ARE THE ACTUAL BEST. They know aaall. Also, they are total troll shippers.
(What were their true purposes, though? I mean, besides being unresolved sexual tension sniffers? Why on earth did Dr. Barlow want them to imprint on Alek in the first place?)
-Newkirk leveling up and even getting to do some Deryn-style shizz! Good on you, kid; I was starting to think you’d be the butt monkey up to the very end.
-Oh yesss, Dr. Barlow can kill you with her brain. And she will take zero shit from anybody no matter what part of the world you plonk her on or what crazy Clanker scientist tries to challenge her. Also, hee! at her reaction to Deryn’s revelation. “I had no idea. But I make it a policy never to be surprised.”
…As fun as tht line is, I still don’t believe that she didn’t know about Deryn’s gender. Come. On. I think she had it figured out way back in the first book.
-Volger, Volger, you cranky coot. Even when you’re being a bit of a grouch, you will still protect Alek all the freaking way. I laughed a lot when he used reverse-psychology on Alek when they first discussed assassinating Tesla. It rankled me a bit that he kept trying to dissuade Alek from even being friends with Deryn, but ah, well. He was probably thinking of Franz and Sophie and how that all went pear-shaped with their forbidden romance. Alek’s reaction was awesome, though. (“Get stuffed.” Ahhh, don’t you love how even Deryn’s lingo rubbed off on him?)
I wonder how Volger reacted when he learned Alek tossed the scroll? It was not pretty, I imagine. And then he probably strapped on snowshoes and went off to get the gold bars that Alek tossed into the Alps. (VOLGER: “I shall need the two of you to act professional on this mission. None of that kissing business.” DERYN AND ALEK: *grump* *go make out in a snowdrift the moment Volger’s back is turned*)
-Adela Rogers was fun! Kinda fluttery and still very dedicated to getting the story right. I like what she said about bell captains. ; )
-Ugh, Eddie Malone. That was pretty much my reaction whenever he shows up and pokes his nose all in everyone’s business. Then again, his terribleness makes him a great character, and he does inadvertently give me some of my biggest shipping flails in the series. So you go, Malone, with your purple prose and your ever present trolling!
-Alek’s men are the greatest, all of them rallying to his side in the eleventh hour when everything was going to hell. :D I love how Klopp is all, “No, no, I am too old for this battle, Your Highness…HERE, HAVE A SMOKE BOMB.” So glad they all got fancy new jobs at Ford.
-I loved how Bauer said that the war was over from the moment Volger and Barlow started plotting. HEH. Also: I know it is sooo wrong (she’s married! Apparently.) but I can’t blame the fandom for wildly theorizing they had some sort of fling going on! I mean, there was moment at the end of Behemoth when Volger’s like, “We have been hovering around each other and this Doctor is a most interesting woman,” and Alek reacts with a mental ‘GOD’S WOUNDS, I CANNOT UNSEE, AND YOU ARE BOTH OUR MENTORS, AND GROOOSSS. D:’.
-Lilit! I wish we’d had more of her, particularly her being a badass and also…there was no Alek-Lilit interaction in this book, was there? I wish there was!
I feel really bad for her that she had to leave the Ottoman Empire, but at the same time, I’m very glad she’s in a place where she can better assert her autonomy. And I loved the movie date with Lilit and Deryn exchanging military secrets…and love life advice, heheheh. The gal is gonna get along fantastically with the suffragettes! (Steampunk suffragettes…why does that sound so awesome?)
-Nikola Tesla was…um…interesting. Sometimes uncomfortable. I am not the biggest fan of his “mad scientist” portrayal. I prefer to think he was deluded but still wicked intelligent and capable of the destruction he spoke of. I actually wish Goliath had been a bigger danger instead of the cosmic accident that it turned out to be! Among other things, I was sad that it meant poor Alek indeed got yanked around on a chain, controlled by someone he wanted to use his status. It reminded me of what happened to Katniss in the third Hunger Games book.
Well, anyway…even if Goliath didn’t work, Tesla was willing to kill, to wipe a city off a map. I wish Scott had focused more on his motives and that evil intent of his rather than defaulting to “he was deranged”.
Miscellaneous:
-Deryn seems more world-weary in this book than in the last two, doesn’t she? I can’t really explain it, but she does. It all ties into Deryn and Alek’s polar opposite world views: Alek sees himself as a figurehead destined to stop something; Deryn sees herself as a part of a whole, working for something beyond her power.
Both of their views somewhat met in the middle, which I think is cool.
-Don’t know what to make off Deryn’s gender not being revealed to the rest of the Leviathan. I think most of the crew would have been surprised but they would have
accepted her. I so wanted a Mulan-like moment where they all honored Deryn as a woman after knowing of how hard she’s had to work and realizing how many times she’s saved others! Come on, why does that have to happen only after the war is over?
-Yeah…that. I’m disappointed that we didn’t get to see the war actually end and just got those implications that it would end soon.
-I kind of missed Alek piloting walkers. They’re like an extension of him by now.
-What IS the real nature Zoological Society then? Dr. Barlow made it sound so mysterious-definitely on purpose, on Westerfeld’s part-but I want to know it in detail! Are Deryn and Alek going to be zoo ninjas? Are they going to be spies? Will fake-out make-outs be involved?
Back when I was read the first book and Alek and Deryn first met on the glacier, I thought, “hey it would probably be cute if they started having feelings for each other, because y’know, this is classic boy protagonist meets girl protagonist (or: boy protagonist meets girl-he-thinks-is-boy protagonist). *reads further* And also, she notices his eyes a lot and he basically wants to BE her-possible early ship tease!
…Probably be cute.
…Wouldn’t mind.
…Early ship tease.
ha. Ha. HA.
Fair warning: these may not be the most well-formed thoughts. They are full of OTP FEELINGS.
*The Reveal! I was sooo apprehensive about how it would be executed. I thought, how could Scott Westerfeld possibly top all the fanfics and webcomics and crazy ideas that the fans have come up with? Of course he’s the original author but I have seen so many takes on it, I wonder if he could possibly still blow my mind with it.
But he did: the reveal was SO WELL DONE! Yay for Alek putting it all together piece by piece! My favorite thing about this was confirmation that Alek is not dense-because people got on his case an awful lot for…not noticing that his disguised best friend isn’t a dude. Well, ahem. He DID notice ‘Dylan’ acting dodgy about the past, he DID take note of all the times ‘Dylan’ tried and failed to spill the secret. And I looove how the chapter ends with him lying in bed and Bovril whispering it in his ear. Also, the way he coaxed it out of Deryn? “Listen to every word I say…can I trust you, Deryn?”
And it’s interesting the way she answers him, like, involuntarily. I mean she’s been in disguise for so long, but they’re so close that she doesn’t even notice that he said her real name and she answered to it, until he walks out.
*You go, Deryn! Of course she refused to let him stalk off without a confrontation. And then she hit him! Which Alek deserved for the “you’re not a real soldier” comment, let’s be honest. BUT even when they were at odds, I really like how Alek’s biggest tiff with her was that he felt it was a betrayal of their airtight friendship. Like, even when the world was upside down, he always had ‘Dylan’ for his secrets and his friendship and now (he thinks) that’s going to fall apart. And Deryn’s “I was always your friend” reply was perfect; even when she was plenty pissed (and for good reason) she’s reassuring him of that truth.
*BUT WHOA, he realized all at once that she loved him. I did not see coming so early in the book! Deryn was right after all. Annd Alek broods for two days. All around the Leviathan and mostly in the showers, ahahaha. This amuses me so much, especially because there’s a Shower of Angst pic (sort of), especially when Volger snarks about the future emperor brooding in a bathroom.
Poor Bovril, though, having to deal with mommy and daddy and their joint custody non-arrangement!
*Favorite illustration? The “Draining” one, where Deryn still has a few inches on Alek, even when he’s half-standing on a box. XD
Also:
“It’s just the way things are.” She shrugged. “It’s no one’s fault.”
“Or everyone’s,” Alek said. “Deryn.”
:flail: I don’t know, okay. I just think it’s romantic that he wants to make up for never knowing her name by using it all the time, now that he does know. I love when names are played with like that: blame Ever After for ruining me at an early age!
(Augh, I am filled with happiness just remembering this book’s everything. And this isn’t even the really shippy part yet! )
*EVERYTHING IN JAPAN. I wish we’d stayed there longer! Actually, that applies to all the places the Leviathan visited in this book. But what we got here was so delightful. Alek and Deryn at the tailoring shop, and Alek lying smoothly about her ~skin disease? HEE. I wish Keith Thompson had done a fanart of Deryn’s shit-eating grin while she watches Alek take of his jacket for the tailors (I don’t know if I’m being too gutter-minded about this or if that’s exactly what Westerfeld intended; fandom, you corrupt me.)
Then there was their their sorta-kinda-date and Deryn “unerringly” tracking down the food stall, hee.
And: “Barking destiny.” Oh, KIDS. I LOVE YOU BOTH. SO DOES BOVRIL.
Finally:
Alek: “It was awful being at war with you.”
Deryn: :laughs: “I missed you too, you daft prince.”
One of my favorite exchanges in the whole series, oh yes.
* So kissing works on sleeping princes too. OMIGOSH, YES. Made of win: Alek’s narration zigzagging from Deryn to Dylan to Deryn again. And Alek’s whole concussed I-am-looking-at-your-face-up-close. OMG, you-are-a-girl ramble. XD And the fact that Deryn initiates the kiss, but of course.
*Nothing will ever be more precious than Alek watching The Perils of Pauline and getting ~palpitations from imagining Deryn as a the movie’s action heroine (and probably himself as the starcrossed lover). Nothing.
*SO, everything that happened in Mexico. I…have no words for all that. I think the pic with Alek and Deryn squeezing hands speaks for itself. You’re a cool guy, Pancho Villa, but you’re too late to warn these two ridiculous and ridiculously-in-love people!
Which brings us to…
*I adore that Alek gets to take care of Deryn for once, after she’s injured. In the first place, I already adored the whole gender role switcheroo they’ve got going on, where Deryn is always swooping in and saving Alek and Alek’s the more sensitive one who ~talks about his feelings a lot~. So it’s extra great that they’re put in a position where the guy gets to do the saving and it feels new.
One of the images that just sticks with me is Alek helping her walk all the way to the bathrooms and then guarding the door and then keeping her company all through the boredom and the misery. I just…THESE TWO.
*I think my heart is still dented from the part where Deryn’s cooped up in her cabin and they are both painfully avoiding the elephant in the room that is the commoner/prince rift. And they’re trying not to make it anything more and leaving everything unsaid because they don’t even want to begin feeling that sort of thing for each other. The stilted goodbyes at the ball? Ouch. …Westerfeld wrote the angst incredibly well, I must say. I’m not usually sold on characters in this kind of romantic trope
Even when they were preparing to let go and everything hurt, I was so proud they were both studiously committed to their duties and seeing the war to its end. Young people making the horribly difficult choice because they think it is right. This is what I love in YA literature, you know.
*From here on out, this is the Saving-Each-Other Tango, isn’t it? I seriously did not expect many happy shippy feelings once the Leviathan left New York, but oh they were there. Like when the Leviathan goes back to save Alek from the fire because of that one person who was looking out after him. Like when Alek gives up his last, most dangerous secret so his “mad airgirl” won’t be found out. Like when Deryn gets anxious because Alek is down there without her to protect him (I don’t remember the exact quote, but I remember that it was beautiful).
*AND THEN THE CLIMAX. I have one bone to pick: it was a bit anticlimactic to go back and forth between an Alek who was coming to blows with Tesla and a Deryn who was watching the battle with the walkers. Yeah, I understand that Deryn was injured (and that was important to the plot); I understand that this was a game-changing battle that had to have the presence of the Leviathan’s highest officers . But a climax where she’s not daredevil-ing around feels so…off.
Alek’s part, though. Holy emotions, Batman. I thought Volger would end up killing Tesla-totally not expecting Alek to do it. For Deryn. For Deryn.
(…And oooh, I just noticed that Alek is in his fencing pose while holding out the walking stick.)
*The ending! Shipping endgame-wise, it is everything I could ever want. It is happy. It is sappy, which delights me (YOU GO AND TOSS THAT SCROLL, BOY).It is beautifully earned and it…has a swearing loris who likes to talk about chests while Deryn laughs and Alek blushes. XD No more secrets and three more makeouts!
…Sure, there’s a dash of bittersweet because Alek and Deryn are leaving the Leviathan. But it ends with a promise of another adventure and of a life together. That’s all I could ever ask for them.
*“You, lucky Austria, shall marry.” Heaaarts in my eyes.
Thoughts on the other characters:
-THE LORISES ARE THE ACTUAL BEST. They know aaall. Also, they are total troll shippers.
(What were their true purposes, though? I mean, besides being unresolved sexual tension sniffers? Why on earth did Dr. Barlow want them to imprint on Alek in the first place?)
-Newkirk leveling up and even getting to do some Deryn-style shizz! Good on you, kid; I was starting to think you’d be the butt monkey up to the very end.
-Oh yesss, Dr. Barlow can kill you with her brain. And she will take zero shit from anybody no matter what part of the world you plonk her on or what crazy Clanker scientist tries to challenge her. Also, hee! at her reaction to Deryn’s revelation. “I had no idea. But I make it a policy never to be surprised.”
…As fun as tht line is, I still don’t believe that she didn’t know about Deryn’s gender. Come. On. I think she had it figured out way back in the first book.
-Volger, Volger, you cranky coot. Even when you’re being a bit of a grouch, you will still protect Alek all the freaking way. I laughed a lot when he used reverse-psychology on Alek when they first discussed assassinating Tesla. It rankled me a bit that he kept trying to dissuade Alek from even being friends with Deryn, but ah, well. He was probably thinking of Franz and Sophie and how that all went pear-shaped with their forbidden romance. Alek’s reaction was awesome, though. (“Get stuffed.” Ahhh, don’t you love how even Deryn’s lingo rubbed off on him?)
I wonder how Volger reacted when he learned Alek tossed the scroll? It was not pretty, I imagine. And then he probably strapped on snowshoes and went off to get the gold bars that Alek tossed into the Alps. (VOLGER: “I shall need the two of you to act professional on this mission. None of that kissing business.” DERYN AND ALEK: *grump* *go make out in a snowdrift the moment Volger’s back is turned*)
-Adela Rogers was fun! Kinda fluttery and still very dedicated to getting the story right. I like what she said about bell captains. ; )
-Ugh, Eddie Malone. That was pretty much my reaction whenever he shows up and pokes his nose all in everyone’s business. Then again, his terribleness makes him a great character, and he does inadvertently give me some of my biggest shipping flails in the series. So you go, Malone, with your purple prose and your ever present trolling!
-Alek’s men are the greatest, all of them rallying to his side in the eleventh hour when everything was going to hell. :D I love how Klopp is all, “No, no, I am too old for this battle, Your Highness…HERE, HAVE A SMOKE BOMB.” So glad they all got fancy new jobs at Ford.
-I loved how Bauer said that the war was over from the moment Volger and Barlow started plotting. HEH. Also: I know it is sooo wrong (she’s married! Apparently.) but I can’t blame the fandom for wildly theorizing they had some sort of fling going on! I mean, there was moment at the end of Behemoth when Volger’s like, “We have been hovering around each other and this Doctor is a most interesting woman,” and Alek reacts with a mental ‘GOD’S WOUNDS, I CANNOT UNSEE, AND YOU ARE BOTH OUR MENTORS, AND GROOOSSS. D:’.
-Lilit! I wish we’d had more of her, particularly her being a badass and also…there was no Alek-Lilit interaction in this book, was there? I wish there was!
I feel really bad for her that she had to leave the Ottoman Empire, but at the same time, I’m very glad she’s in a place where she can better assert her autonomy. And I loved the movie date with Lilit and Deryn exchanging military secrets…and love life advice, heheheh. The gal is gonna get along fantastically with the suffragettes! (Steampunk suffragettes…why does that sound so awesome?)
-Nikola Tesla was…um…interesting. Sometimes uncomfortable. I am not the biggest fan of his “mad scientist” portrayal. I prefer to think he was deluded but still wicked intelligent and capable of the destruction he spoke of. I actually wish Goliath had been a bigger danger instead of the cosmic accident that it turned out to be! Among other things, I was sad that it meant poor Alek indeed got yanked around on a chain, controlled by someone he wanted to use his status. It reminded me of what happened to Katniss in the third Hunger Games book.
Well, anyway…even if Goliath didn’t work, Tesla was willing to kill, to wipe a city off a map. I wish Scott had focused more on his motives and that evil intent of his rather than defaulting to “he was deranged”.
Miscellaneous:
-Deryn seems more world-weary in this book than in the last two, doesn’t she? I can’t really explain it, but she does. It all ties into Deryn and Alek’s polar opposite world views: Alek sees himself as a figurehead destined to stop something; Deryn sees herself as a part of a whole, working for something beyond her power.
Both of their views somewhat met in the middle, which I think is cool.
-Don’t know what to make off Deryn’s gender not being revealed to the rest of the Leviathan. I think most of the crew would have been surprised but they would have
accepted her. I so wanted a Mulan-like moment where they all honored Deryn as a woman after knowing of how hard she’s had to work and realizing how many times she’s saved others! Come on, why does that have to happen only after the war is over?
-Yeah…that. I’m disappointed that we didn’t get to see the war actually end and just got those implications that it would end soon.
-I kind of missed Alek piloting walkers. They’re like an extension of him by now.
-What IS the real nature Zoological Society then? Dr. Barlow made it sound so mysterious-definitely on purpose, on Westerfeld’s part-but I want to know it in detail! Are Deryn and Alek going to be zoo ninjas? Are they going to be spies? Will fake-out make-outs be involved?