"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.)

"Breath of Bones" by Tricia Goyer & Nathan Goyer

This book asks a very important question: What was the Golem of Prague doing during the Holocaust?

(Disclaimer: I know the Golem of Prague was probably not real.)

Anyway. This book revolves around what the Golem of Prague was doing during a fictionalized, steampunk version of World War Two. Also an angry resistance guy who builds things like flamethrower hammers (that eventually get reworked into |rocket hammers| because he |made the fire bit too big|) and a reporter girl who keeps trying to secretly expose the Nazis' evil deeds, only to |get shut down| by her father every time |for her own safety|.

Overall, I think the idea of a steampunk / urban fantasy version of WWII is pretty cool. "Fantasy but in a non-medieval time period" is such an underused genre, and it's also one I really enjoy (to the point that I actually wrote a couple things with that premise). Or, honestly, a different location as well; I get that the standard fantasy setting being medieval Eurasia is because it works well, but medieval Africa and the Americas also have promise and their own legends, as do most other time periods. Why can't we have the Civil War with dragons? Native Americans fighting the orc armies? Mayans and Incas and all their... actually let's not go there.

Anyway, that was a tangent and I should talk about the book itself.

The writing was good, except when the two leads were in proximity to each other and cognizant of the fact that the other one was attractive; one of the authors is a married woman (her co-author is her son) so I'd assume she knows something about love, but it read like she didn't really have much experience and was just writing what she thought it would be like. It was clunky. (Now, granted, I also don't have any romantic experience so I haven't got much idea either, but I've read less clunky 'wait a sec that person is hot' things.)

I really liked the golem itself. He's clearly just trying to protect the Jews in the city, and doesn't want to hurt anyone, but people keep telling him to murder Nazis. (Granted, the Nazis could use a little murdering, but it's really sad to see this really nice robot-clay-person just sort of... snap and go on an killing spree. I get that that's how the original legend kinda is, and it makes sense here, but still.)

Oh yeah, this is also Christian fiction! Sort of. One of the main characters is Christian and one is Jewish, and the writer seems to be a Christian as well.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A stern T for graphic violence and prominently involving the Holocaust.

4 stars. Ends on somewhat of a down note, but since that's also a hook to draw people into the next book in the series, I don't fault it too much.

(Endnote: I was hoping the later books in this series would feature similar little-considered legends and not-really-understood historical stuff and urban-legendy stuff from the countries involved in WWII, like the Antikythera Mechanism or Baba Yaga or Britain's Angels of Mons or that thing with King Arthur and his guys coming back in Britain's darkest hour. Unfortunately, from reading the synopsis of book 2, that doesn't seem to be the case.)

"Raising Steam" by Terry Pratchett

Plot summary: In which a guy named Dick Simnel unleashes upon Discworld... steam trains. The dwarves are not happy about this (well, some of the dwarves; Discworld dwarves can't agree on anything). Lord Vetinari is also not particularly happy about this, mostly because he's not in charge of it, so he assigns a guy named Moist von Lipwig to oversee the creation of the new railway.

(Note: Lipwig. Lip wig. Fake moustache. I finally got that joke halfway through the book.)

Dick Simnel's dad makes a brief cameo in Reaper Man (probably the review after this one) inventing the combine harvester, which I like as |he's dead in this. He exploded himself trying to make a steam engine before the book started|.

This makes me want to find and read Going Postal, the book that I'm pretty sure introduces Moist von Lipwig, solely because I want to find out how he met his wife. Moist himself is a conman / thief / jack-of-all-trades-as-long-as-they're-not-particularly-legal-and-don't-involve-manual-labor who somehow got pressed into service by Lord Vetinari to run various parts of the government.

Also, Commander Samuel Vimes shows up in this. He really is very good at his job.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for swearing and crude humor.

4 stars. Because trains.

Favorite lines:

    ...steam was here to stay.

    Page 34. This line isn't particularly hilarious, but what it is is a reference to "The Big Race", a story Pratchett wrote when he was in his teens (I think) and much later included in Dragons at Crumbling Castle. And which we quote a lot.

Appearances of Death count: 5

(Endnote: In this one, we are also introduced to possibly Discworld's newest goddess: |Iron Girder, the first steam engine Dick Simnel built. She appears to have ascended to goddesshood via the collective fanboying and fangirling of Discworld's nascent train enthusiasts.|)

Mini-Reviews 1: And now for something slightly different

This is a collection of three short reviews of books, because I don't have enough to say to make a macro-review out of any of them.

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

This may seem like a steampunk book, but it's actually more of a hydrogen-punk book. Or, if it is steampunk, we never actually see any steam. (It does mention ornithopters a couple times.)

The cover blurb makes it sound like the book is about trying to find a bunch of mysterious flying angel-bird-things. It isn't. The book is actually about an airship  (with its passengers) which gets attacked by pirates.

The hydrogen substitute that keeps the book's airships aloft is called "hydrium". My brain could not seem to wrap itself around that word; it kept saying "hygrium" (which doesn't mean anything) or "hydrargyrum" (which is Latin for mercury).

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A stern T for some swearing and mildly suggestive material. Nothing untoward is ever actually going on between the main character and love interest, but adults keep thinking it is. This could be a fairly fun videogame in the right hands.

3 stars. The thing that made it get T was also annoying enough to me that it didn't get 4.

Tags for this one: 3-star, adventure, a kissing book, rated T, steampunk

A Royal Guide to Monster Slaying by Kelley Armstrong

I think this was a bit below my general reading level. This could have been a really good book if it had been YA instead, and the main character was actually doing monster slaying instead of monster befriending.

Which... I can understand books about monster befriending, too. But this one should have at least been honest about its subject. Out of like ten, one monster is ever actually slain in this book.

I really shouldn't complain about the book being written for people a lot younger than me when I am looking for books in the kids' section. Oh well.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for fantasy violence and spiders. If you made the slaying an actual integral part of the story, I might play a videogame of this. But as it now stands? Not really.

3 stars. Not terrible, just boring.

Tags for this one: 3-star, adventure, fantasy, rated T

 

 

 

The Threads of Magic by Alison Croggon

 

Meh.

 

Which basically describes my feelings on this entire book. 

T.

3 stars.

Tags for this one: 3-star, fantasy, lame, rated T

(Endnote: This is also a place that occasionally spawns macro-reviews when I discover I have more to say about a book than I thought I did.)