Book Review - Leviathan

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld is a new young adult novel.  I thought it would be great if one of our young adult patrons wrote up a review for us.  This review is from Korbyn age 14.

The book Leviathan was more or less a fictional story about the events leading up to and the fighting of WWI. Even though some parts of the story were true, the feeling of the story leans more to the fictional side.


To start off, the book began with the introduction to two different characters across Europe where the start of WWI originated. One of the characters was Aleksander the son of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria Hungary. As you should know, WWI started with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. When Alek’s father dies, he is forced to go into hiding or face his death by the assassins of his father.

The other character is Deryn who is in the Darwinist (British) air force. She snuck her way into the air force by pretending to be a boy under the name of Dylan. She goes up in a Huxly (a flying beasty) that gets caught in a storm and is rescued by a huge airship called the Leviathan. It is a beast made up of many beasts and is on a mission. While flying, the Leviathan gets attacked by a group of German ,Clanker (Middle Europe and Russia) airships. They sustain heavy damage and go crashing into a glacier.

Meanwhile, Alek and his escapes are witnessing the crash from a castle not far away from the damaged Leviathan. Alek devised an ingenious scheme, or so he thought, to help the Darwinists. He carried some medical supplies down to the ship. It turns out that he gets arrested, but is then set free to help the Darwinists escape the Glacier and the Germans. The Germans attack the ship but the ship miraculously survives. The downside is that the engines on the ship were shot and unusable after the attack. It so happens that Alek and his escapes had a walker that was heavily damaged, but the engine was still operational. They eventually got the engine on, and narrowly escaped the oncoming German assault that was just moments away from blowing them out of the sky.

I personally thought that the book was a huge success. I love the huge war machines and fictional beasts/animals that were so extravagantly detailed. The plot and overall story was a hit and the characters were dynamic. All in all, the book was a huge success for me and if you have a passion for enormous war machines or like a fictional twist on historical events with adventure, this is a book for you.