Leviathan

Last month Dawn sent me the ARC of Scott Westerfeld's new book Leviathan, with the promise that I'd blog about it on one of the blogs within 30 days. I believe today is exactly 30 days from that offer - I actually thought I'd missed it by a day or two. Whew!

Anyhow...

Leviathan seems to be getting some pretty good hype, what with the book trailer and release of illustrations ahead of the book release date. It's a new direction for Scott Westerfeld, away from the contemporary or futuristic books he's already written. That's something I like about Westerfeld's books and series - the fact that they're all different from each other.

So - how does Leviathan stack up to his other work? I've read So Yesterday, Uglies, and the first Midnighters so can't compare it to everything he's written. But I think it holds up well - I really liked it. I will admit that I'm already a fan of the Steampunk genre, so that might bias my opinion a bit. Just a bit. And I'm becoming more and more fond of alternate history tales as well - which of course could bias me a bit further.

The premise of the story - the leadup to WWI - is accurate to some degree but this of course is where Westerfeld tweaks history and runs with it. The Austrio-German side are the "Clankers" - reliant on metal, engines, and machinery, including walkers with varying numbers of legs and big guns. The British allies are referred to as "Darwinists" and have developed their vehicles and weaponry through the combination of biological creatures. Each force is formidable in its own right.

The main characters are believable and decently fleshed out, and I found them likeable. Alex, the Austrian prince who has been forced to flee after the assassination of his parents, has a few appropriately snotty royal moments but also learns from his mistakes and has compassion. Deryn, the young Scottish girl masquerading as a boy so that she can become a soldier and fly on the airships, is tenacious and spunky.

The tale is full of action from the beginning. There are chases, battles, and plenty of close calls for Alex and Deryn as their paths draw closer and closer together. By the end of it, I was grumbling that now I'm going to have to wait who knows how long for the next book!

Who should you recommend this book to? I think there will be a certain number of Westerfeld fans that will read it just because it's him, though it's possible not all of them will like this departure into the past. Teens who enjoyed Kenneth Oppel's Airborn series or Philip Reeve's Hungry City Chronicles will be certain to enjoy Leviathan. I would not hesitate to recommend it to both boys and girls, but overall I think the book may appeala bit more to boys.

Looks like I only need to wait a year for the next installment... better get going on those Mock Printz books!

i-List Party Game - Reviewed!

Reviewed by: Anne Murphy, & Nolan (age 13)


The idea behind this game is simple. Two to four people plug their mp3 players into the console, and race to find songs on their own playlist that match specifications from the card that is drawn from the deck. The person with the most points (one per win) when all the cards have been used wins.

This game has the potential to be a lot of fun, but unfortunately a few issues with game play knocked it down to a mediocre rating from both me and my 13 year old son.

Setup was fairly easy, although a Phillips head screwdriver is required to insert the batteries (or a bit of innovation, I used a small fingernail file to loosen and tighten the screw). Once the batteries are in, the console immediately springs to life and man’s voice begins giving instructions. We plugged our iPods into the console and began playing.

We didn’t formally follow the rules. Instead we just decided to use the blue questions (there are four different colored questions on each card), and try some races. At first things went well, as we were getting the hang of scrolling through our playlists as quickly as possible (not an easy feat – do you look through artists, albums, songs…?). After a few questions, however, the man’s voice on the console became annoyingly repetitive as he barked directions at us each time we pushed a button on the console. Soon we were telling him to “be quiet, we get the picture” etc.

One has to know their music collection pretty well to find songs to answer the questions, and we did enjoy the challenge of trying to remember things about our music.

Then the technical problems set in. Each time you press the start button for a new question, a timer begins as players race to find their song. In theory, as soon as somebody finds a song and presses play, the console begins playing the song out loud so all players can decide if it really “answers” the question. When they hit play, a green light lights up at their station and the rest of the players can no longer affect the console. After working perfectly fine for several songs, the console began lighting up whenever I began to scroll through my playlist, even if I was in artists or albums – thus effectively blocking my son from winning, even though I hadn’t actually chosen a song yet. He suggested that perhaps it had to do with the fact I was using one of the new Nanos, which has very sensitive scrolling. Maybe, but that doesn’t explain why it had worked all right earlier, and then started working properly again a little later. He has an older Nano, and didn’t have the problems I did. Also, sometimes the console would not work at all when we selected a song and pressed play.

I think people can enjoy playing the game, and we did get a lot of laughs over some of our answers and even the barking command voice. However, I believe interest will wane quickly if the technical problems persist for players. For an overall score, I’d only give it 2 ½ stars out of five.