Leviathan

Austria Hungary

The opening scene of the plot begins with young Alek in his parent’s lavish country home just outside Prague. It is from this home, and from the only life he has known, that Alek and his two mentors, Otto Klopp (his master of mechaniks) and Wildcount Volger (his fencing master), flee in order to find refuge in the neutral territory of Switzerland following the assination of the Archduke of Austria Hungary.

 

 

 

 

 

Inside the Stormwalker

Alek and his mentors spend of the novel in the hull of the stormwalker, evading attacks or launching their own offenses. The young Hapsburg heir becomes more attuned with operating the walker, and we leave him after he leads a maneuver to get his crew over the Alps and to their safe haven in an abandoned castle hidden in the snowcapped peaks.

 

 

 

Basic Training in Britain

The story shifts to young Deryn Smart, a girl who is accepted into the British Air Service under the guise of a young boy with the help and preparation of her older brother. As the daughter of an air-balloon pilot, Deryn wants nothing more than to be up in the air so she devotes herself to studying aeronautics and is taken up into the air in a Huxley to test her “air sense,” as part of her early training. Yet a storm whisks both her and her tentacled transport across London skies.

 

 

 

 

 

Safe Haven in Switzerland

Following a dangerous run through the forest and a close call with the Swiss border soldiers, the crew of the walker find shelter in an unoccupied but fully stocked castle which had been prepared by the Archduke as a precaution of war. Not long after their arrival, an enemy airship—the British Leviathan—crash lands in the valley nearby after suffering an attack by German air forces.

 

 

 

 

Aboard the Leviathan

As Deryn rode the wind channels over the English Channel, she was picked up by the Leviathan, an enormous whale-like military fabrication designed the Allied Forces for air to ground strikes. Once aboard, Deryn becomes part of the crew and continues her training until the airship changes course for Regent’s Park to pick up the renowned Dr. Barlow and her curious cargo. The new directive of the airship and crew is to escort the doctor, her animals, and her cargo to Constantinople as part of a diplomatic strategy to help the Allies gain an advantage in the war against the Central Powers. However, they are overwhelmed by an aerial bombardment by German forces and they crash-land near Aleksander’s icy citadel. It is here that the two protagonists cross paths, and here they join forces through to the close of the novel.

 

 

 

 

 

Lost Ground in Germany

Although Germany is never actually visited in the novel, its growing threat as a world power permeates the setting—much like it did in the actual Great War!  German forces are rumored to be responsible for the assassination of Alek’s father in Sarajevo.  German soldiers attack Alek’s group in both Austria-Hungary with the SMS Beowulf land-dreadnought and on the Swiss border with the enormous SMS Hurkules.  The Leviathan is downed over Switzerland by German planes, and the climax of the novel has Alek’s and Deryn’s forces joining together to stave off an attack by German zeppelins on the glacier outside Alek’s castle.