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Author: Scott Westerfeld
Published: September 20, 2011
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Series: Leviathan #1
562 pages (galley)

I feel sad that the trilogy is over now, but I can tell you, I was not disappointed at all by this final book. I loved Leviathan and Behemoth, and naturally had high expectations for book three. Goliath not only met them, but exceeded them. It’s pretty rare for each installment in a book series to raise the bar higher and higher, but Goliath has done just that. If you love Leviathan and Behemoth, I can almost guarantee you’ll love Goliath as well.

This is the final book, where all sorts of secrets start unraveling and all those events you have been hoping to read about occur (for me, that was Alek and Deryn’s relationship)! In Goliath, the Leviathan airbeast heads toward New York City, all the way in the United States. The crew has rescued a Mr. Tesla in Siberia, an inventor whose gigantic, and dangerous, weapon of mass destruction, Goliath, sits in New York. With the Goliath, Tesla hopes to scare the world into stopping the war.

Loved this book. Truly an epic ending to an epic story! It was fast paced and a thrill to read. Most of my favourite scenes involved Alek and Deryn, especially the eventual revealing of Deryn’s gender (I don’t think this is a spoiler because I think it’s kind of obvious that it would happen in this book).

The revealing didn’t happen the way I thought it would, but actually, I liked the way Westerfeld handled it much better. I think my vision of how it would happen (that is, that Deryn would just outright tell Alek) is kind of predictable and boring anyway. I have been waiting for Alek to find out that Deryn is actually a girl ever since Leviathan, and I’m so, so happy with the way it turned out:  not a perfect happily-ever-after, but the kind of ending that opens Alek and Deryn up to a zillion possibilities in their future. Their relationship just makes me feel so warm and fuzzy inside.

The characters are still as wonderful as ever. I still remember walking away from Leviathan liking the story but not really attached to any of the characters. Well, definitely by the end of Goliath I have become quite fond of the quirky cast! Dr. Barlow has become a favourite (memorable quote from her: “… I make it a policy never to appear surprised.”) and Eddie Malone, though an annoying creature to the characters, is funny and lovable (well, unless he was a real person, then I’d probably think he was annoying too, haha). And of course, I love Deryn and Alek (spoiler: highlight to read: though I am a little saddened by the fact that Alek is no longer a prince at the end of the book. Part of the appeal of Alek is that he was a secret heir … but I still love him!).

It is really amazing how Scott Westerfeld weaved his steampunk ideas into real history. Of course, the entire Leviathan trilogy is fiction, but there is an author’s note at the end of the book that points out the real historical facts that Westerfeld incorporated into Goliath and I was pleasantly surprised by how many factual elements are in the story!

This book, and its predecessors, are great books, truly! If you haven’t started this series yet, I highly recommend it. It’s good timing too, since the third book is out now, so you can read them all together! (PS. Thank you Simon & Schuster Galley Grab for this galley :)

My Rating:

Author: Scott Westerfeld
Published: October 2010
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Series: Leviathan #2
481 pages (hardcover)

Okay, they do end up going on a ’round the world adventure. I retract my statement from my Leviathan post! (Though the dust jacket should have been more specific and meant across the trilogy … it made it sound like it would all happen in one book)! I digress.

This is book two of the Leviathan trilogy. I was excited to see a brand spanking new copy available at the library, since the first book is still very fresh in my head. Book two totally lived up to my expectations and didn’t let me down. It’s just as good, if not better, than the first one! I certainly feel that this one was more exciting, and I think I am a bigger fan of book two than book one (which was also great, of course).

In Behemoth, the great airship Leviathan lands in the Ottoman Empire, where Alek and his men decide to try to escape the ship where they are more or less held as prisoners. Unfortunately, plans never go as smoothly as you think they will, and only Alek and two others manage to get away; the other two willingly give themselves up to buy Alek time to escape. However, Alek isn’t about to abandon his other two comrades so easily.

Docked in the Ottoman Empire on the airship, Deryn/Dylan and Dr. Barlow realize that the empire is slowly being taken over by the Germans. Wanting to persuade the sultan to continue his friendship with Britain, the two attempt to offer the sultan a gift. Again, plans don’t go over too smoothly, and Dr. Barlow desperately offers the Leviathan to the sultan instead!

That’s how the story basically starts out. I was a little saddened that Deryn (whom I’ve become quite fond of, despite saying I was attached to nobody in the last book) and Alek were once again separated, but fear not, they meet again soon enough, when due to circumstances beyond their control, they need to work together along with some anarchists (or revolutionaries, depending on your point of view) of the Empire to overthrow the sultan and push the German out. If you’ve already read the first book, then this plot overview of the second one surely sounds more exciting, no??

I felt there was a lot more action, and more plot in general with this book. The characters seemed to become more ‘solidified’, if that makes sense. Like I mentioned earlier, I’ve taken a liking to Deryn despite previously saying I wasn’t fond of anyone. I’m also getting quite pumped up over Deryn’s crush on Alek. There’s quite a few times when I was so sure she would reveal she’s a girl to Alek (and there I was, gripping the pages intensely, completely into the scene), but she doesn’t, and I’m excited for book three, because surely she will reveal it to him then; it’s a trilogy, after all! I simply can’t wait for that to happen because, you know, I think they’d make a super cute couple. There’s also the whole ‘he’s a prince, I’m a commoner’ thing going on too, which makes their relationship even more complex and interesting.

I think another character may be my favourite as well. A ‘perspicacious loris’ beastie is introduced in this book, and Alek has one as a sort of pet with him in this novel. The beastie is called Bolvir and oh my, hahaha. Even though this novel is gorgeously illustrated so I know what a perspicacious loris should look like, I keep imagining Bolvir as Stitch from Lilo & Stitch. Whenever Bolvir ‘talks’, I just imagine him doing it the exact same way Stitch does!

Also, there’s giant walking robots a la Transformers/Gundams. Do I really have to say any more?!

My Rating: