(Book #13): The Leviathan by: Scott Westerfeld
Audio book #2 - narrorated by ALAN CUMMINGS!!!! - why not. It was only 7 dollars at the Borders going out of business sale....
Side-bar: Okay Borders!!! Out of business, it was alway a major store since forever! I find it sad, cause I looks like more people are downloading books then the actually book in hand. I know I order from Amazon, I love amazon. But I order books the real thing. It's sad that I'm starting to see the death of the written word. At least Barnes and Noble is still open...for now!
Back to the book...
I am a huge fan of Scott Westerfeld, really big fan. I read all of The Uglies series, and then So Yesterday. And I'm about order the The Midnighter's Series!! Really good author! Hope that The Uglies becomes a movie, just say - very cool-making!
Scott Westerfeld has this wonderful nack of creating a world with it's own language and slang using the English langauge..make sense?? If you read The Uglies and So Yesterday...it's just a theme. Now The Uglies was based in the future, So Yesterday was based in the present and The Leviathan was based in the past starting when The Arch Duke was assassinated in 1914? 1917? 1917 right??? Anyway....but first this book is NOT historical fiction, it's fiction taking some historical events and changing them a bit. First of all this world is sort of like ours (like Lyra's Oxford is like our world but not!) but really not. And it took a chapter or two to really understand this world of Alex's (the Arch Duke's Son) to get what was going on.
The imagination of Mr. Westerfeld is amazing. There are too schools of thought in this world, first of the 'Clankers' those who depend on machines in huge scale (in my head I was using images of Star War's AT-AT's...and the machines from the movie 9 (actually the book reminded me of 9 alot!)) and then the whole school of thought was of the Darwinism, where scientist use the gene make ups of different animals and combine them with Machines to make vehices and wephons - that took more imagination on my part. Like The Leviathan is a huge air-ship that is like the body of a Whale with different animal parts...I know weird...but I had to make it work in my head.
And of course those two worlds clash and combine to help each other out by helping to make Alex's escape out of Austria-Hungry happen. Very thrilling and a good listen too. But I have to say that 'The Uglies' are still my favorite by Scott W., though I just picked up book two of the sersies....I'm hopeless when it comes to books!