2011 young adult steampunk SF, final volume of a trilogy. The living
airship Leviathan crosses Russia en route to Japan; will Nikola
Tesla's latest terror weapon end the Great War?
This is one of the few books I've read that bring Tesla into the
narrative without making him an unambiguous hero. He has his own
plans, which may be good things or may not, and other characters have
to make their own decisions about how far to support him.
Alas, it's a step back in characterisation for Alek (hidden heir to
the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and Deryn (girl-disguised-as-a-boy
midshipman) as the disguise is penetrated and they start to Admit
their Feelings; while in the second book they seemed to be growing up
a bit, here they're back to complete cluelessness, with a solid
friendship coming close to disintegration. Ah well. At least there's
no moment where Deryn suddenly gets Girlified and turns out to be
Amazingly Beautiful; that would be a betrayal of the characters, and
Westerfeld has more respect for them than to do that. The secondary
cast are more in the background, though, and one feels their stories
are largely left unfinished.
There are no real surprises here; once the pieces are on the board,
it's quite clear how they will be played and what the endgame will be.
That said, the journey from here to there is still an enjoyable
one. The Perspicacious Loris is perhaps a little too obviously there
to point the characters in the right direction when they're being dim,
but it's more enjoyable this time (and would clearly be running the
world by volume four).
The series set up the Clanker/Darwinist conflict in the manner of
Bruce Sterling's Shaper/Mechanist duality, but it's the Darwinists who
come off ahead in sense of wonder: who cares about mere walking
warships when we have giant Russian fighting bears (and two-headed
courier eagles), and as for what the Japanese have come up with…
There's a bit less action than in the previous books, and quite a bit
of flying between the action scenes, but I never felt that the book
dragged; indeed, I finished it in an afternoon.
While there is the possibility of further adventures with these
characters, this book certainly offers a conclusion to the story.
Overall, while one wouldn't mistake this for anything except a
consciously YA story, I found it enjoyable and with plenty to offer
the adult reader.
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