Songs I binged while reading this:
To be honest, music didn’t really work for this book for me, so I listened to this song a couple of times and then I just sped through the rest of the book with only random outdoor sounds to keep me company.
Alek is the royal heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, but then his parents are murdered and he is forced to run from his home on one of the old war Clanker machines. This Stormwalker has legs that can walk him and his trusty advisors through almost anything, but they still have to be stealthy in order to avoid the troops and survive.
Deryn Sharp trains to be an Airman with the British Air Service, but in order to do so she must hide that she is a girl. She is determined to serve as a pilot, and is working on the Leviathan which is a biological airship shaped like a whale. This ship functions as an ecosystem, but because it is a living creature it cannot take too much damage.
When the Leviathan crash lands in Switzerland, these two meet each other, and they must work together in order to survive being trapped in the midst of a World War.
This book is a bit of a steampunk retelling of World War 1. The British have creatures to do things for them, for example living inside of a giant whale thing as an airship. The Austro-Hungarians and the Germans have machines that do almost the same thing, such as the Stormwalker.
To be completely honest, I loved this book, but not because of Alek. Alek was n’t a completely bad character, but I just did not find his parts of the story to interest me as much. Deryn’s Mulan-type storyline was what really drew men in. She was such an interesting character, a 15 year old girl who wants to be a soldier. I admired her strength, and the fact that she didn’t do anything stupid to completely reveal her identity from the start like most typical girl characters in her position do. I enjoyed reading about her and her adventures as an airman, and I hope the next book focuses on her more.
I would recommend this story to anyone looking for an adventurous novel loosely based on historic reality. It was a quick read for me, as I finished it in about 2 hours.
Overall Rating: 4.5/5
