Leviathan

Leviathan, by Scott Westerfeld, is a YA book set in an alternate world at the onset of WWI, a world in which the British allies use bio-engineering for their war machines and the German allies use mechanical engineering (some reviewers, like Amanda, call it steampunk, I think largely because of its neo-Victorian illustrations, and Westerfeld discusses the applicability of the steampunk label in his "Big Idea" piece at Whatever).

It's quite a good story and I am full of regret and irritation that I bought it this fall. Why Scott Westerfeld thought he could write part of a story and publish it as a finished book is explained, I guess, by the current plethora of series novels, especially in the YA section. But I'm feeling very cross about it. Westerfeld sets up a fascinating world in which a hero, Alek, and a heroine, Deryn, (alternating narratives at first) meet and learn to cooperate. While the heroine's story comes to a sort of conclusion (she's gotten what she thought she always wanted by pretending to be a boy called Dylan), the hero's is just getting started at the end of this novel. What really gets to me is that some mysterious eggs are introduced on p. 153, and on p. 434 the author cuts us off by reminding us that we still don't know what's inside the dern things. Maybe I felt extra-grouchy because I read the book while I had the flu. But still.

The illustrations, some of which you can see on Westerfeld's Leviathan page, help to tell the story; every time my daughter shows someone the book she opens it to p. 104 and says "see? here's the spider-dog." I also like the illustration of the heroine's, Deryn's, early flight with a creature based on a medusa jellyfish on p. 35. The illustrations really give readers the contrast between the soft, billowy sides of the biological tools (made by "Darwinists") and the sharp, armored edges of the mechanical ones (made by "Clankers").

The mechanical or "clanker" tools we see the most of in this book are the "walkers," such as Alek's "Stormwalker," and the two-legged variety do bear a passing resemblance to the Star Wars image. But the illustration of the "giant metal spider" variety on p. 165 shows more of the range of possibility for such machines.

The most interesting part of the tale is discovering the differences between the way the "Darwinists" and the "Clankers" think, and how they learn to cooperate. In one exchange, Alek is repulsed by the "glowworms" the Darwinists use to light the inside of their ship, Leviathan, and asks
"'Haven't you Darwinists discovered fire yet?'
'Get stuffed," Dylan said. We use oil lamps, but until the ship's all patched, it's too barking dangerous. What do they use on zeppelins, candles?'
'Don't be absurd. I imagine they have electric lights.'
Dylan snorted. 'Waste of energy. Bioluminescence worms make light from any kind of food. They can even eat soil, like an earthworm.'
Alek eyed the cluster of worms uneasily. 'And you whistle at them?'
'Aye.' Dylan brandished the pipe. 'I can command most of the ship's beasties with this.'
The Leviathan is an ecosystem, as the story itself illustrates when the ship crashes on a glacier and is in need of food, which only Alek can provide, to repair itself.

In fact, however, the Clankers and Darwinists end up working together when neither of their vehicles will work. They put the Stormwalker's engines in the Leviathan, giving it powers neither Clanker nor Darwinists vehicles have had before. And they share knowledge; another of my favorite parts is when Deryn explains the way the Leviathan uses bats in aerial warfare:
"'Did I hear Dr. Barlow say something about bats?'
'Aye, the flechette bats. You should see those wee beasties at work.'
'Flechette? Like 'dart' in French?'
'That sounds right,' Dylan said. 'The bats gobble up these metal spkes, then release them over the enemy.'
'They eat spikes,' Alek said slowly. 'And then...release them?'
Dyland stifled a laugh. 'Aye, in the usual way.'

At the end of the book, the Darwinists and Clankers are headed off together to Constantinople (leaving me with the "Istanbul not Constantinople" earworm), Deryn with her secret still intact and Alek with his destiny still unfulfilled. And the eggs as much a mystery as ever.

Westerfeld plans three books in this series, with the last one planned for publication in the fall of 2011. My advice would be to wait and get all three together. In the meantime, if you haven't read his earlier books (So Yesterday and the Uglies, Pretties, Specials, Extras series are my favorites), this would be a good time to do that. If he weren't such a good writer, I wouldn't be so frustrated by the lack of resolution to the story he begins with Leviathan.

The Latest in YA

YA is such an onomotopoetic acronym, isn't it? I picture 10 to 17 year olds (the target audience for Young Adult books) swinging into the library on vines to return these books, shouting "YA!" at the top of their lungs.

There have been some lively discussions online lately (a summary is available at Bookshelves of Doom) among publishers, librarians, and readers about what should be classified as YA literature and whether adults are embarrassed to browse in that section. I certainly have never been embarrassed to check out the YA section, ever since I found that Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game (a book that current college students pick overwhelmingly as "most influential") had moved from the SF section to the YA section. And if you want to read Scott Westerfeld, as anyone who likes books with interesting ideas in them should (the discussions note this), you have to go to the YA section.

I can't believe we missed the first day to buy Rick Riordan's newest Percy Jackson book, The Battle of the Labyrinth. I just went out and found it at a local bookstore this morning. If you don't yet own it or the three that precede it, get yourself to a real or virtual bookstore before the week is out!

I loved Edward Bloor's book Tangerine, and I liked Crusader a lot. He manages to integrate contemporary issues with good writing and plots more complicated than usual in YA fiction. So my expectations were high when I found his newest YA title, Story Time, at the library. Perhaps they were too high. I found the reading of the book tedious, even though the issues (standardized testing in schools is the main one) were worth exploring. I'd like to see someone do it better.

Clare B. Dunkle's brand-new The Sky Inside is one of the best post-apocalyptic YA novels I've read since How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff. You get thoroughly involved in the present-day mysteries of how the characters live in their domed suburb before you begin to get any answers to why, and the big picture doesn't even begin to be revealed until p. 192. Finally the apocalyptic events are explained on p. 214, and this is the beginning of the explanation:

Close to a hundred years ago, our nation was slowly decaying. Handhelds and robots had just been invented, and that meant factories didn't need so many humans to work in them anymore. The armies didn't need them either, because war was changing, too. Killing people wasn't important. It was which factories and machines you could blow up, and the robots were getting better at doing that than the humans were. All these unneeded people were crowding up the cities--suburbs, you'd call them--eating food and getting sick and demanding medicine. They cost more to keep than they could earn, and they were fouling up the air and water, too. New people were being born every day.

I'm almost sure that this novel was not written in answer to Michael Moore's movie Sicko (the timing is too tight, for one thing). But it presents a very plausible future, and that makes it powerful. Also it has a satisfying ending. I think that's an important qualification for good YA post-apocalyptic novels; they shouldn't just peter out with the idea. They should resolve the crisis somehow. The author should have some vision for this unsatisfactory world.