Babel Clash

I have realized that I am endlessly fascinated by characters straddling worlds.  When I think about unicorns, I don’t imagine them in a fantasy world full of dragons and griffins and butteflies.  I imagine them in our cities, living like the deer in Princeton do — coming out at dusk to eat leftovers out of trash cans and marauding through people’s gardens (where there could be, I admit, butterflies).

I love juxtaposition.  I love the surprise of things that don’t quite belong.  That’s why I love what my friend Sarah Rees Brennan calls “magic and milk bottles” fantasy — where the fantastical elements are set against the grime and mundanity of the really real world.  And I am drawn to characters that try to straddle the line between two worlds — to live fully in both rather than choose between them.

From my first book, Tithe, where a girl is caught between her human upbringing, to my last, White Cat, where a boy is caught between his criminal past and his desire for a normal future, that seems to be the one theme that continues to repeat in my work.  The aspect of human (and inhuman) nature that I am most fascinated with.

Which is one reason why Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan is the perfect book for me.

Set in an alternate 1914, the world is divided between Darwinists, who clone animals and manipulate genetics to create amazing living airships and other beasts, and Clankers, who build mechanical marvels (Scott explains things better than I can [and with pictures] right here).  And then there’s Deryn Sharp, a girl passing as a boy in the British Air Service.

Deryn is amazing: clever, courageous and ambitious.   I am endlessly drawn to the trope of girls forced by circumstances to pass as boys.  A girl passing as a boy is crossing between worlds — even caught between them. She is entering into the secret world of men.  And frequently she also must maintain her identity as a woman.  And she does both at the same time.

Austria-Hungary’s Prince Aleksandar is also the exact sort of boy I love too.  Lonely.  Aristocratic.  A little bit sarcastic.  Full of admiration for Deryn.  And caught between two worlds himself — not quite sure where he fits into his family’s lineage, not sure how to mix with commoners, and not sure whether he can continue to hold his ideas about the Darwinists in the face of what he’s learned by traveling with them.

Not to mention that Leviathan is full of steampunk goodness, crunchy ideas, and plenty of adventure.

It’s like Scott wrote the series just for me.  :D

Needless to say, I can’t wait for Goliath.

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