Scott Westerfeld · 2009 · overland

Scott Westerfeld's 2009 steampunk adventure, first of the Leviathan trilogy, set in an alternate 1914 in which the Central Powers ride diesel walking machines and the British fabricate living airships. On the night his parents are assassinated, Prince Aleksandar flees his family's castle in a Cyklop Stormwalker and treks for weeks across Austria toward the neutral Swiss Alps, while Deryn Sharp, a Scottish girl disguised as a boy, wins a place aboard the Leviathan, a whale-shaped airbeast bound from London for Constantinople with a secret cargo of eggs. When German aeroplanes shoot the airship down onto a glacier beside Alek's mountain refuge, the fugitive Clanker prince and the Darwinist crew forge an uneasy alliance. Illustrated by Keith Thompson, it is a wry, headlong coming-of-age tale that helped define young-adult steampunk.

1. 1
   Konopiste

   On the night the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife are assassinated, their son Prince Aleksandar is spirited out of the family castle in a Cyklop Stormwalker before the plotters can reach him.

2. 2
   The Austrian Alps

   For weeks the walking machine trudges south and west across Austria-Hungary, hiding in the forests and fighting off assassins, making for the neutral Swiss frontier.

3. 3
   The Swiss Alps

   Alek and his men reach a hidden castle high in the mountains; that same night the airbeast Leviathan, flown from London under Dr. Barlow, is shot down onto a nearby glacier, and Clanker prince and Darwinist crew make common cause.

4. 4
   Constantinople

   Repaired with the Stormwalker's engines, the Leviathan lifts off with Alek and Deryn aboard and beats on toward the Ottoman capital, where the first book leaves them still in the air.