It's a bird...it's a plane...it's a whale?

This was a new genre for me: steampunk. It's like science fiction, but it's set in the past. In Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld (yes, the author of the Uglies series), the story takes place during the time of World War I. Prince Alek's own people of the Austro-Hungarian Empire have turned on him, and he's on the run in a Stormwalker - an amazing mechanical contraption made by the Clankers. Deryn has disguised herself as a boy so that she can enter the British Air Service. She ends up on the Leviathan, a wildly imaginative (and living!) airship creation of the Darwinists. War is threatening, and when Alek and Deryn's paths cross, they're in for quite an adventure. Westerfeld does a great job making the inventions and "fabricated beasties" both fascinating and plausible for the time frame of the book, and Keith Thompson's detailed illustrations helped me picture the excitement. About the only thing I didn't like was the book's ending...it needs to be completed with a sequel.