Goliath

You guys I'm kind of sad, no, that's not the proper word - distraught. This series is over like really over as in this was the last book and there will be no more in the story and I don't know what to do with myself because it feels like this series and I were running to catch a train and it made it but I didn't and now I'm stuck on the platform watching it move away and I'm never going to see it again. Yes, I am being dramatic but you must have read a series that completely blew your mind and then ended because all series must, you have to remember how you felt when you read the last page and it sunk in that that was the last, last page. This happened to me with other books on a less dramatic scale but there is one other series that has made me feel this way and that would have to be the Harry Potter books.

Now, these two series are nothing a like story wise - Harry Potter was a contemporary fantasy about a boy who finds out he is a wizard and attends a school and discovers he's not only a wizard but famous. Leviathan is a steampunk/alternate history that takes place in the year 1914, and is told from the points of view of Aleksander, Prince of Austria, and Deryn Sharp a girl disguised as a boy in the Royal Air Service. On the other hand, what both books do have in common (at least for me) is that they are both set in fantastically created worlds filled with detail and brilliance, they both have great MCs and equally great minor characters that aren't just there to be props and they are both filled with many daring adventures.

At the end of Behemoth Alek still didn't know that Deryn was a girl and Deryn knowing that Alek would never be with a commoner had made peace with herself and firmly decided that she would never tell Alek her true identity or her feelings for him. Alek, who's family tragedy started the war still firmly believes that he must end it especially after the successful revolution in Istanbul and with all these secrets and goals brewing the Leviathan continues its journey east.

When the synopsis said “around the world tour” it really meant around the world. In Leviathan we got to travel through Austria, Switzerland and Britain, in Behemoth we were in Istanbul and in Goliath we traveled from Serbia to Japan to San Francisco, onwards through Mexico and finally New York City. I loved seeing how each country was familiar but changed because they were melded to fit in Westerfeld's Clanker vs. Darwinist world. Like a reporter with a recording frog perched on his shoulder, and video cameras that look like giant walking weapons from the distance. I also loved the name drops sprinkled throughout the story like Mikimoto - who works with fabricated pearls or Ford who has plans to make transportation walkers.

These weren't the aspects that had me glued to the pages however because a story is nothing without the protagonists and I have to say Alek and Deryn never disappoint. Deryn is finding it a lot harder to keep her secret and the more risk she takes the more danger she is in of being found out. Still who would Deryn be if she wasn't the first person to zip down a line or strap on a glider and although her actions are never done deliberately to put her in the spot light its impossible not to notice someone so brilliant. Alek is finally learning what kind of person he is and who he wants to be, the plan from the very beginning was to hide away and ride the war out but Alek knows he'll never be content with staying still especially when there is a war and every person seems to be doing whatever they can to fight it or fight in it.

While this isn't a romance series (thank goodness) the romance or should I say feelings in the series had been growing more and more steadily which each passing book and I beamed whenever Alek and Deryn were in scenes together. Not because there was mushiness going on but because these two best friends fit so well together. I just loved how easily they trusted each other with their secrets, and how one admired the other for their actions and who they were. There was never any long paragraphs of how hot one person looked or how one person made the other feel, everything was shown to the reader through the actions of the characters and never had to be jammed into my head. Understated love is what keeps me from rolling my eyes and actually feeling a tender moment for what its suppose to be - tender.

Am I happy with the way this series ended? Yes, I was smiling because it was sweet and its the ending the characters deserved and its an ending that fits. Am I sad the series has ended? I think the first paragraph in this review answers that question.