In this book, the idea of chivalry is still alive, shown by how men kiss women on their hands. Goliath is a good novel also because it shows the other side of steampunk: the old-fashioned world, along with adding to the history so it can relate to the whole idea of Darwinist and Clanker powers. In addition, as the airship Leviathan soars around the world, stopping in places like the Ottoman Empire, Japan, and the United States, the Darwinist/Clanker technologies illustrate the influence of World War I and allow the reader to predict how a nation will be in the war. For example, a hydrogen whale airship (Darwinist) can be destroyed with a zeppelin firing a rocket (Clanker), but the zeppelin can be shredded with strafing hawks wearing metal talons (Darwinist). It’s awesome how two sides of an alternative World War I can use their own types of creations to attack each other, along with the counter weapons developed. The literary world has enough science fiction filled with metal spaceships how about some more technologies like land frigates and entire ecosystems inside an airship? In “Goliath”, Scott Westerfeld continues with his descriptions of the Darwinist (biological) and Clanker (machinery) technologies. Usually, the main thing about the Leviathan trilogy that would intrigue people and lure them to read the first book is creativeness of the technologies. This book continues with the amazing biological and mechanical technologies from the first two books, manages to weave in a plausible history of the world during the early 1900s, and finally concludes the relationship between the characters Alek and Deryn. For “Goliath”, there was so much intriguing parts of a story balanced together.

I think this could be one of the best books out of the three mainly because of the different things it left the reader thinking about. The story follows through the perspective of Deryn, a girl pretending to be a male soldier working in the British Air Service, and Alek, an Austrian prince who lives with the threat of the Germans trying to “dispose” of him. This novel involves a British airship made of a whale, called Leviathan, flying around the world as part of their journey during the alternative World War I. “Goliath”, the third and final volume of the Leviathan trilogy written by Scott Westerfeld, is the best way to end this trilogy.

Goliath by Scott Westerfeld