Jules Grant profile

But, sadly, for my first James Patterson novel I felt a bit let down, having heard so much about his ability to weave very intricate plots and well developed characters I found little to substantiate those reviews. The book is aimed at the YA market, which is a field that I read a lot of books from, but this book I felt ‘talked down’ to the reader in several places, it’s set with unusually large text too, which I feel was to make the book appear longer than it really is, which is a notion I felt supported by the gratuitous amount of advertisement pages at the end. The biggest negative for this book for me was that I felt there were little or no conclusions to the various problems that Whit and Wisty encounter, now being a part of a series as a reader you expect that to a certain degree, but in this particular case, I felt that that there were too many points left unanswered which may leave some younger readers feeling frustrated.

This book has a sound appeal to all genders and ages, Westerfield is very engaging writer, his characters are easy to warm to and I really couldn’t wait to see what would happen to them next. The plot moves along at a good pace and is complicated enough for older readers to enjoy, whilst being explained clearly enough for younger readers to follow. You could read this book without having read Leviathan, but I wouldn’t recommend doing that as you’ll be missing out on a great read that introduces you to the main characters and their various secrets and motivations.

I think this book has a solid all round appeal to most readers, with elements of imaginative fantasy, adventure, secret plots, fantastic creature creations, a feisty heroine and courageous hero. For readers wanting to explore the steam punk/ alt history fantasy genres this is a great book to start with, and fans of Garth Nix’s Keys to the Kingdom series should enjoy Leviathan and it’s sequels. I wouldn’t recommend it for readers of the fantasy romance genre as although there are a couple of hints of interest in Alek from Deryn’s point of view, Alek remains firmly unaware that she is female so there is no romantic sub-plot developed in this book.