"Behemoth" by Scott Westerfeld

Plot summary: The bioengineered living airship Leviathan, after escaping German land ironclads in the mountains, travels to Istanbul (not Constantinople) to deliver a gift to the Ottoman Empire so they'll stop being as mad at Britain for stealing the Erin (formerly Reşadiye) and the Agincourt (formerly Osman I (formerly Rio de Janeiro)) from them. And hopefully prevent the Ottoman Empire from siding with the Central Powers in alternate-universe-World-War-I. It doesn't work.

Our female (but pretending to be a boy so she can be in the sort-of-RAF) protagonist Deryn has developed a bit of a crush on our male protagonest Alek. This is complicated somewhat by the fact that Alek still thinks she's a boy and is like "finally, someone my own age I can hang out with who won't make things weird because I'm a prince!"

Tesla's death ray also makes an appearance. Sort of. Not really. The Germans have "Tesla cannons", which are basically giant reverse lightning rods for shooting down airships with. That's not how Tesla's death ray was purported to work, but it's a neat little detail nonetheless.

Pretty much the entire book takes place in Istanbul, not Constantinople (Istanbul was Constantinople) (now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople) (been a long time gone, Constantinople) (Why did Constantinaple get the works?) (That's nobody's business but the Turks') anyway where was I? Ah yes. As you can see, whenever anyone mentioned either of those names, it set me to singing the They Might Be Giants song.

The titular "Behemoth" refers to a |giant ship-eating sea monster| that goes along with |one of the ships the British confiscated|. To be honest, that seems like |more of a Leviathan| to me, but eh, we already |used that for the title of| the last book.

I actually know quite a bit about the theft/confiscation/what-have-you of the Reşadiye/Erin and Osman I/Agincourt, thanks to my research when I was trying to write a story about them.

4 stars.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for action scenes.

(Endnote: Given the title, I thought this was going to involve |a giant dinosaur thing|.)

"Leviathan" by Scott Westerfeld

How do I even begin to describe this book? Uh...

Plot summary: During the beginning of an alternate-history World War I, a girl dresses up as a boy to join the RAF (which uses genetically engineered creatures for everything). Meanwhile, the son of Archduke Franz Ferdinand flees to Switzerland in a steampunk/dieselpunk mech tank.

It would already be epic with either the steampunk or the genetically engineered warbeasts. I can see WWI-with-monsters (we already have the-Napoleonic-Wars-with-dragons, after all), and WWI-with-steampunk almost begs to be written. It's the inclusion of both that makes this so unique and cool.

I see that this is a trilogy with two more books (Behemoth and Goliath), so I'll probably be getting those out of the library at some point.

My main quibble with this book is that it's rather too evolutiony in the British parts. If it didn't have that, I would have pretty much no quibbles.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for violence. The multiple POVs (Deryn in the RAF and Alek in his steampunk mech tank) might be a tad tricky, but it could be done.

4 stars. Could possibly have been 5, conceivably, if not for the evolution.

(Endnote: The titular Leviathan is an airship that's actually a giant genetically modified whale being. Because this is Leviathan Britain and everything is alive.)

"Lines of Courage" by Jennifer A. Nielsen

This is a bunch of stories that could have been their own individual smaller books, except the author decided to tangle them all together into one semi-cohesive narrative instead. A narrative which takes place during World War I, hence the trenches.

Felix (Austro-Hungarian) is a civilian with a dad in the military, who (Felix, not the dad) has to survive with his mom when things get really bad in their area of Austria-Hungary.

Kara (British) just wants to be a Red Cross nurse. 

Juliette (French) lives in an area of France that got fighting in it, gets separated from her family, and is alone in WWI now, trying to survive.

Elsa (German) doesn't really have her own arc; she just catalyzes those of several of the others.

And finally, Dimitri (Russian) has fallen victim to the problem that chronically plagued Russia's armies in both World Wars: their lack of such essential things as "weapons for your soldiers". Also, there are Communists.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A soft T for being set in WWI but not having graphic violence. It would most likely be rather difficult to make into a game, but it probably could be done. Would be an interesting one.

 

4 stars.

(Endnote: I don't always read historical fiction, but when I do, it's usually because I make somewhat of an exception for WWI and WWII. And Westerns.)

"The Dreadnoughts" by David Howarth

(Image is a bit small because this is like the only picture of this book I could find, and it looks weird if I scale it up. Sorry about that.)

This is part of a series about seafarers and ships throughout history. I will most likely not review the other books, but I'm doing this one, because I like dreadnoughts. (I know they're not the largest warships--WWII destroyers were actually bigger--but they have the coolest name, and they were the first warships to be super overpowered compared to everything else. They basically rendered all the other warships at the time obsolete.)

 

[EDIT: They actually weren't the first to way outclass all the others. That honor goes to the ironclads.]

The book is fairly dense, but it's not a bad density, if that makes sense. It's not dense because of overly flowery language or not getting to the point, it just has a lot of information per cubic meter. (What units would that even use? Fact/m^3?)

My favorite anecdote from this is when the British were building a new dreadnought and a bunch of British nerds (including Virginia Woolf) (I think the book called them "literati," so basically nerds) pretended to be the king of Abyssinia and his entourage and tried to get a tour. They got one, too, and convinced everyone until a few days later when someone figured out it was a hoax. At which point the British realized they should probably keep secrecy a bit tighter.

Were this a videogame, its subject matter would get rated: T15+ for violence (people getting explodified by artillery--it does talk about the Battle of Jutland).

However, the book handles it in a way that's more: T. 

4 stars.

(Endnote: The dreadnoughts' purpose in WWI was basically to stop the enemy's dreadnoughts from stopping your dreadnoughts from stopping the enemy's dreadnoughts from marauding all your puny other boats. Even at Jutland, none of them ever sank each other.)

"A Very Bookish Thanksgiving" collection

This is a collection of Thanksgiving stories that are each inspired in some way by a classic book. I know it's past Thanksgiving now, but eh; I read this when it was still seasonable.

Anyway, there are five stories in here, and I'm going to give each one of them a mini-review, complete with videogame rating and star rating. I'll also stick an overall rating on the end.

(Note: My mom reviewed this a while back, so you should probably read her review first. At least, it would make mine more intelligible.)

A Promise of Acorns by Kelsey Bryant (Jane Eyre)

Not my cup of eggnog. It's about someone taking care of a curmudgeonly professor's grandchildren, and it just... didn't have enough plot for me? I don't know. I don't have any reasons to dislike it, I just don't have any reasons to like it much either.

Rating this E, though it's a bit boring for young children. 3 stars.

As Long as I Belong by Sarah Holman (Mansfield Park)

Probably my favorite, or at least tied with The Windles and the Lost Boy (see below). Theoretically, it would seem like this one would have a lot of the same problems for me that A Promise of Acorns had. I think I like the emotional-ness of this one better, if that makes sense? Like, APoA had its main character be more serious and subdued, and As Long as I Belong's main character was... not that? She seemed like she cared a lot more about things than APoA's main character did, even though the text of APoA informed us that the main character did in fact care.

This one doesn't seem like the sort of story that would appeal to me, but it did. If you told me that this one was going to be my favorite, I would have laughed at you (and been predisposed to not like it, but that's another thing entirely).

This mini-review got long. I'm rating this E again, and 4 stars. (Honestly, if I had half-stars, I'd probably give this 4.5 stars instead. But I didn't exactly like it enough to give it 5, so here we are.)

The Windles and the Lost Boy by Rebekah Jones (Peter Pan)

My other favorite. I think this one has the most exciting plot of all of them, and it's probably the only one I might have picked up if it wasn't in an anthology my mom said I might like. It's a tad bit farfetched, but then, so is Peter Pan.

Rating this E10+ for mild violence and mentions of abuse. (It'd probably get T from the ESRB as a game, though.) Also, 4 stars.

Grand Intentions by J. Grace Pennington (Great Expectations)

A young aspiring writer is invited to house-sit for her grandmother, who's going on vacation for six months. While there, the writer develops a crush, falls in with a group of (unintentional) baaaad influences, and gets some character development. I usually end up skimming parts of this one when I read this collection; nothing untoward, I just don't like reading them.

Rating this E10+ for mild alcohol use. 3 stars.

A Fine Day Tomorrow by Amanda Tero (Little Women)

The one I skip most often. It's definitely not bad, but I'm not super fond of Little Women, and I think I had the same problem with it that I had with A Promise of Acorns. It's set during the First World War, which is one of my favorite eras to learn about... but it really focuses more on the Spanish Flu pandemic, which was just grey and depressing, as I've lived through a pandemic (though I'm thankful that the COVID-19 plague was nowhere near as bad as the Spanish Flu).

Rating this E but boring. (Hey, maybe I should make that a separate category; "nothing objectionable, but small children wouldn't bother" or something?) I'm also giving it 3 stars; as I said, it wasn't bad, it just didn't appeal to me.

All right. Were this collection a collection of videogames, the whole thing would get rated: E10+ for mild alcohol use, mild violence, mentions of abuse, and... yeah, that's pretty much it.

 

Overall, I give this 4 stars. I know the average is actually 3.4 stars, but not everything has to work like math.

(Endnote: These are all Christian fiction, and they all manage to have at least some discussion of Christian faith. How well that was worked into the story--basically, how much it felt shoehorned in, if at all--varied from story to story.)

"The Great War: Perspectives on the First World War" edited by Robert Cowley

So, as you can see, I don't review much nonfiction. (Caveat lector: the newer, smaller "nonfiction" tag is for nonfictional stuff that I have reviewed since 2021. The older "non-fiction" tag is for nonfiction reviewed before then; I don't quite disown anything under that tag, but it's kind of terrible.)

Anyway, this book is rather obviously about World War One, aka the Great War, aka the War to End All Wars. It's a collection of essays on various WWI topics ranging from the Battle of Jutland (Jutland, by John Keegan; pages 154-177) to the Red Baron (The War Lover, by Robert Wohl; pages 271-285) to the First Battle of the Falklands (The First Battle of the Falklands, by Ronald H. Spector; pages 124-140). The essays are of varying quality, ranging from 2 to 4 stars. I'll summarize particularly notable ones below.

One of the earlier ones (possibly even the first; can't remember which) had an approximately 3-page documentation of the etymology of the phrase "no-man's-land". It was super boring. If you ever read the book, just skip that, unless you're into 3-page etymologies.

 

The Christmas Truce (pages 50-64), by Stanley Weintraub, was about the Christmas truce of 1914. It was a weirdly heartwarming episode in the middle of an otherwise super horrific conflict, and almost assuredly one of the more... kid-friendly essays in here. Pretty sure I smiled all the way through it, only to stop smiling again when the next essay was about the Battle of Aubers and had a horrifically huge death toll again.

(Side note: You may notice I use the word "horrific" twice there. This was World War 1, it killed 15 to 22 million people.)

Section 3 was the polished jewel of the collection, containing only 25% lackluster essays and some of the book's best. (Note: I am biased to essays/books/what-have-you describing large machinery, so bear that in mind.) I mentioned Jutland and The First Battle of the Falklands earlier, and the only other noteworthy one was The Wreck of the Magdeburg (pages 141-153) by David Kahn. 

The German warship Magdeburg was a normal small cruiser (smaller than a light cruiser), which went aground off an island in the Gulf of Finland. It was carrying important stuff and they couldn't let it get captured, so they blew it up. 

Except it didn't work completely, and Russia was able to recover some stuff. This included what they termed "Codebook 151", which they sent to the British codebreaking agency, and... well, they broke it. Knowledge ensued.

On pages 215-216 (territory of Kut, by Robert F. Jones), there's a description of a death march. I don't actually know how graphic it was, because I saw the words "death march" and skipped to the end of the essay. Let the prospective reader beware.

 

"These Hideous Weapons" (pages 307-319), by Bruce I. Gudmundsson, is about flamethrowers. I learned some interesting stuff about them, including that they were mostly operated by former firemen (remind you of anything?) and that the French ones were manufactured by a maker of cigarette lighters.

 

Die Pariskanone (pages 404-409) was about a giant cannon capable of firing shells 65 miles and hitting Paris with them. It was broken up at the end of the war, but then some guy in the 60s "[left the Canadian government] to pursue his real interest: very big guns." That line just cracked me up. (The guy ended up going to prison and eventually being assassinated for supplying very big guns to various less-than-savory countries who could pay for them.)

 

Were this a videogame, its subject matter would get rated: M. Possibly AO. It was WWI.

However, the book handles it in a way that's more: T15+.

Overall, this book gets 4 stars. It had its boring parts.

Link to the actual post.