Official Goliath cover. Third installment in the Leviathan trilogy by Scott Westerfeld. Why do the kids look as if they’re in their mid-twenties? I wish they just released a cover with Clanker cogwheels and gears like the first book. Anyway, I bet Thompson’s illustrations are going to be badass! And the story too. Don’t let my Alek-Deryn ship sink, Westy! :p
BOVRIL (OR WAS IT A NEW LORIS?) WITH A MUSTACHE OH GOSH I JUST DIED, SOO CUTE! Totally made my night! Scott Westerfeld gave us this adorable art from Goliath after revealing a false art from the said book last April 1. You read that right, the Goliath art reveal I posted days ago is indeed (like we all suspected) an April Fools’ joke. However, Westerfeld refused to say if it’s a part of a real Goliath art that just underwent photoshop. Need to read the book to find out.
CAN’T WAIT! :))
Crashing a Bash. Scott Westerfeld revealed another art from Goliath, the third installment in the Leviathan series. I’m not really sure if this is an April Fool’s joke, but I just can’t believe what I’m seeing in this scene! Haha. Deryn—obviously Dylan in this art, all dapper in her/his tux and all—is going to marry a girl. And it looks like Lilit, eh? Then there comes our Clanker Prince, looking badass in his uniform in his equally badass mecha, crashing the wedding. IKR, Alek? The one Deryn/Dylan’s going to marry is you, not just any girl…or boy. Just please notice that she isn’t a he. You’re so dense sometimes.
RIGHT guys I ship Deryn-Alek and there’s nothing you can do about it. *fangirl heart flutters in anticipation for the third book* Anyway, this art is created by the amazing Keith Thompson.
SECRETS IN THE ROOKERY. The amazing Keith Thompson collab-ed again with the equally amazing Scott Westerfeld for the third installment of the Leviathan trilogy, Goliath. I’m soo excited! This is the first revealed artwork from the book (chosen through a poll). I wonder what secrets Deryn and Alek are sharing in that illustration? Teehee! Well I guess I have to wait until September. :))
An Imperial Propaganda mentioned in Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld. This, in my opinion, is one of the best illustrations that describe how effective Westerfeld and Keith Thompson (the artist) worked as a team. Here is the description of the poster from the book, in the eyes of one of the characters:
At the bottom was a cartoon city labeled Istanbul, festooned with steampipes and train tracks. The city sat astride The Straits, with the Russian bear looming over the Black Sea and the British navy threatening from the Mediterrenean.
Dominating the poster was a giant chimera striding over the horizon, a Darwinist beast fabricated from half a dozen creatures. It wore a misshapen bowler hat, and carried a dreadnought in one clawed hand and a sack of money in the other. A tiny fat man labeled Winston Churchill rode on its shoulder, watching as the obscene beast menaced the tiny spires and domes below.
Who will protect us from these monsters? read the legend across the top.
You be the judge. :)
Review: Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld
Re-imagined stories have always arrested my attention—a bunch of retold fairytales, revamped legends, or alternate histories have become surprisingly refreshing all because modern authors discovered new formulas to put a wild spin on them. In my book, writers who can create new masterpieces with just the use of old material and excellent storytelling strategies receive two thumbs up. Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan takes the cake in my list of alternate histories, and so when I got my hands on its sequel, Behemoth, I’m really hoping that it will meet my high expectations set by Leviathan. And it did.
Behemoth picks up where Leviathan left off: World War I is brewing, and the Darwinist airship Leviathan is heading towards Constantinople (Istanbul) to finally deliver Dr. Nora Barlow’s cargo to the Sultan. Our main characters still struggle to protect their own identities from the world: Deryn/Dylan Sharp, a young and courageous girl posing as a boy in the British Air Force, tries hard to keep her male façade, which is slowly disintegrating; Aleksandar Ferdinand, son of the assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Princess Sophie Chotek, poses as a commoner as he is still on the run from the Germans who want to kill him. When the ship’s peacekeeping mission goes awry, Deryn takes a perilous mission to bring the Behemoth— the newest kraken-like beastie that the Darwinists created to bring triumph to the British camp—through the Dardanelles strait. Alek, meanwhile, escapes the airship after knowing that he and his men will be treated as prisoners of war after proven worthless. In Istanbul he bumps into and joins a paramilitary group with an aim to overthrow the incumbent Sultan. Deryn and Alek reunite in the City, and together they try to bring the war to a halt.
Once again, I’d like to commend Westerfeld’s skill in world-building. From a plunge into the Dardanelles to a frolic around the lively streets of Istanbul, Westerfeld effortlessly creates an intricate world that the readers can readily be drawn into. His descriptive prose is never flowery, but a concrete image of the setting would pop out immediately after you’ve read the words. Istanbul comes alive before your eyes, vividly festooned with a hodgepodge of different cultures and carefully strewn with new interesting characters. The steampunk technologies and Darwinist creations introduced are pretty awe-inspiring too: the elephantine Dauntless, the turtle-legged Clanker bed, the goddess walker Sahmeran, the fearsome barnacles, the cute and shrewd Bovril, and of course, the enormous Behemoth. Like in Leviathan, you flip through a few pages of this and you’ll finally feel like you belong in this history.
As for the characters, there is a lot of growing up that happened. Deryn proves to be worthy of the trophy as my favorite character, with all her flaws finally becoming clearer—a remarkable percentage of it caused by her hormones alone. For a very tomboyish lassie she seems to be a little too girly when it comes to her puppy love sort of feelings for Alek, which has developed after an awkard, brotherly hug back in Leviathan. Be that as it may, she’s still the tough girl that we see in the prequel. Alek on the other hand doesn’t think about his love life at all; he is set to bring peace to Europe and Asia as soon as possible. I like Alek’s new attitude—it’s like he’s writing his own bildungsroman, and he knows it. What I’m a little peeved and amused about is Alek’s blind faith in the Providence. I hope this—and something more about religion—will be addressed further in the third installment. All in all, both the characters are slowly being emotionally attaching to the readers, though more fleshing out (at least in Alek’s case) wouldn’t hurt.
The pace is as always fast and action-filled, though I think people who don’t like anything much about mechas (of the steampunk sort especially) would find the action scenes a little dragging. I’ve read about them before so I enjoyed every battle scene—my favorite would have to be when the Committee and our duo try to bring down the gigantic Tesla cannon that’s about to annihilate the Leviathan. Everything is just made of awesome. :3 (Whoops, I fell in a fangirly pit! Sorry!)
I’d be patiently waiting for the third installment, Goliath.
PS: How could I forget the cool illustrations of Keith Thompson? They are as beautiful and intricate as the ones in Leviathan, and they make me more engaged in reading. :3
CHARACTER OF THE DAY: Deryn Sharp from the Leviathan series (by Scott Westerfeld) aka a steampunk Mulan in World War I. She is a fifteen-year-old Scottish girl who dresses up as a boy to join the British Royal Air Force, not because she wants to fight, but simply because she likes to fly. This fondness of flying started back when she was a kid, when her father took her up in hot-air balloons. She renames herself “Dylan” when she passes as a midshipman.
At odd moments she could see tears brightening Alek’s eyes, only a fierce, relentless pride holding them back. And sometimes when they competed over stupid things, like who could climb the ratlines fastest, Deryn almost wanted to let him win.
But she could never say these things aloud, not as a boy, and Alek would never meet her eyes like this again, if he ever learned she was a girl.
“
| — |
Deryn Sharp (posing as a boy in the army, Dylan Sharp) Scott Westerfeld, Behemoth |
MY LIFE FOR THE PAST FEW NIGHTS. Making the illustrations for our literary folio (I’m done with Team Sins—Team Virtues is still WIP). I always make it a point to place an inspiration near me when I work (usually, it’s music), but this book—Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld—is a double-edged sword. Haha, I can’t get to finish my work! I pick it up to adore and study the drawings for inspiration, and a few minutes later I’ll find myself continuing where I left off. Books like these are very irresistible. :’D
CHARACTER OF THE DAY. Aleksandar Ferdinand from the Leviathan series by Scott Westerfeld. He is the son of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Princess Sophie Chotek of Hohenburg. Because his mother is a commoner, he is not entitled to the throne of Austria-Hungary, leaving him only as a Prince. He runs away with a few loyal men in his Cyklops Stormwalker after his parents are assassinated.
I’m in love with…
“Of course you’d want to be in this ship. If I weren’t…” He paused. “I mean, if things were different, I’d want to stay here too.”
“You would?”
“Well, maybe it’s silly. But the last few days, it’s like something’s changing inside me. Everything I ever knew is upside down. Sometimes it’s almost as if I’m…in love…”
Dylan’s body tightened beside Alek.
“I know it sounds silly,” Alek said quickly. “It’s quite obviously ridiculous.”
“But are you saying that…? I mean, what if things were different than you thought? If I were…or have you guessed already?” Dylan let out a groan. “Just what are you saying?”
Alek shook his head. “Perhaps I’m putting this stupidly. But it’s almost as though…I’m in love with your ship.”
“You’re in love,” Dylan said slowly, “with the Leviathan?”
“It feels right here.” Alek shrugged. “As if this is where I’m meant to be.”
Dylan let out a strange, choked laugh as he put the medal back into his pocket. ”You Clankers,” he muttered. “You’re all cracked in the head.”
Thanks for sharing those 2 books (behemoth and leviathan). I just downloaded their pdfs for free, and im looking forward on reading them. Try ko din mag-look backward. :D Salamat
No problem! It would’ve been better if you bought them though—the illustrations are amazing (not that I’m saying they won’t be amazing on your comp monitor lol)! But what the heck, it’s your call. Happy reading! :)
Hahaha! XD Walang anuman!
