Leviathan (2009)
Leviathan is a 2009 science fiction. book written by Scott Westerfeld.
Europe stands on the edge of war, split between two ways of building power. The Clankers run on steam and steel, piloting armored walking machines. The Darwinists engineer living beasts, whole ecosystems bred into weapons. Alek is a fugitive prince on the run after his parents' assassination, with a war machine and a handful of loyal men. Deryn is a girl passing as a boy to serve in the British Air Service aboard the living airship Leviathan. War throws them together across that divide. Scott Westerfeld's alternate 1914 runs on invention, momentum and Keith Thompson's detailed illustrations.
Quick answers
What is Leviathan about?
Europe stands on the edge of war, split between two ways of building power. The Clankers run on steam and steel, piloting armored walking machines. The Darwinists engineer living beasts, whole ecosystems bred into weapons. Alek is a fugitive prince on the run after his parents' assassination, with a war machine and a handful of loyal men. Deryn is a girl passing as a boy to serve in the British Air Service aboard the living airship Leviathan. War throws them together across that divide. Scott Westerfeld's alternate 1914 runs on invention, momentum and Keith Thompson's detailed illustrations.
When was Leviathan published?
Leviathan was published in 2009.
Who made Leviathan?
Leviathan was written by Scott Westerfeld.
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Leviathan in our writing
- Companion guide: Steampunk
A few thoughts on Leviathan
Fans of the fabricated-versus-mechanical world should try BioShock Infinite, which floats its own alternate history on similar Steampunk bones. Fullmetal Alchemist shares the mix of engineered life, wartime stakes and young leads carrying more than they should. For the airship romance and hand-built wonder, Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle is the natural next step.
Steampunk worlds where invention rivals nature itself
Leviathan runs on a rivalry between machines built from steel and creatures built from spliced DNA, Clanker walkers against Darwinist beasts. Dishonored and BioShock Infinite build whole floating or class-divided cities out of the same steam-and-clockwork logic, Howl's Moving Castle gives its castle a living, walking body that splits the difference, and Fullmetal Alchemist runs its own military conflict on invented science with a cost.
Royal fugitives protected across a world at war
Alek flees assassins with a war machine and a handful of loyal men, a prince with no throne left to return to. House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones send their own claimants running through a continent turning on itself, Avatar: The Last Airbender keeps one survivor a step ahead of an empire, and The Mandalorian and Grogu puts a lone guardian on the road protecting one small charge.
Stories where a World War reshapes the young people caught in it
Alek and Deryn are teenagers pulled into an adult war, forced to grow up fast on opposite sides of a fight they didn't start. Lord of the Flies strands its own boys once war strips away every safety net, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas sets two boys on opposite sides of the same catastrophe, and The Scorch Trials sends its young survivors running through a landscape war already ruined.
Concept albums that stage a whole war between rival forces
Leviathan builds a fully imagined alternate 1914 where two rival technologies wage a whole war, illustrated corner to corner. Living With War stages an entire protest album around one ongoing conflict, Repo! The Genetic Opera builds a corporate biopunk future out of debt and modified bodies, Universal Migrator Part 2 tells a full concept-album war between rival factions, and Black Holes and Revelations soundtracks its own paranoid, embattled future.