Black Leviathan (Bernd Perplies)

Black Leviathan
Bernd Perplies, translated by Lucy Van Cleef
Tor
Fiction, YA Adventure/Fantasy
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Teenaged Lian has lived his whole life in Skarkagar, on the edge of the misty aerial ocean known as the Cloudmere, watching the jager ships come and go with their cargo holds full of dead dragons and their crews full of adventurous stories. Lian's father was once a top dragon hunter, until the accident that claimed his legs and left him a broken drunkard. The boy always figured the closest he'd get to adventure himself is carving the kyrillian crystals that provide buoyancy to the flying ships and listening to tavern stories of dragon hunts after work... until the night everything went so terribly wrong, leaving his father dead, a bully slain, and the town's most powerful man after his hide. When he needs to get out of town in a hurry, only one jager ship is willing to take on him and his best friend Canzo (who takes the opportunity to go with him and fulfill a childhood dream - not to mention a chance at wealth to win the heart of his lady love): the Carryola, a notorious vessel rumored to be captained by a madman. Ever since an ancient beast of the cloudy deeps killed his true love and wrecked his ship decades ago, Adaron has bent his entire life toward hunting the legendary Gargantuan, the Black Leviathan, last relic of a lost age. With nothing but his father's old dragon spear and his best friend beside him, Lian sets forth into the unknown... and into adventures and dangers from which he may not return.

REVIEW: If the premise reminds you a bit of Moby Dick in the skies, you're not that far off; Adaron bears more than passing resemblance to Ahab, though Lian is far less self-absorbed than Ishmael and the setting is greatly improved for having flying ships and dragons (though I say that as someone who thinks a good dose of dragons can improve most any story). As whaling once fueled entire cities and economies, so dragon hunting keeps this skyward civilization afloat (though the antigravity kyrillian crystals do a fair bit of the lifting there, too), and not just for humans. This is a world with various other humanoid races, with scales or dog heads or wings, each with their own cultures; the winged Taijir'in in particular can be touchy to deal with, ever since the dog-headed Nonduriers introduced flying ship technology to the wingless races, forcing them to share the skies that were once theirs alone (theirs save for the dragons, of course). Hunting dragons is as much about survival as glory, and jager ships have their own culture to deal with their inherently deadly calling. Despite having had a father who was once one of the most renowned dragon hunters out of Skarkagar, Lian finds himself in far over his head when he and Canzo step aboard the Carryola and into the heart of that culture. For all the danger, though, there are also great wonders: floating islands known as lithos, the alien beauty of the Taijir'in cities, the Cloudmere aglow with moonlight under foreign stars. It makes a great setting for adventure, and delivers plenty of that, a melding of old-school nautical yarns and sheer fantasy with very real magic.
That said, there are some weak spots that held down the rating. The cast is exceptionally, conspicuously male-heavy, despite one lady dragon hunter and another later addition, with women tending to lesser, softer roles, which gets a bit old when the presence of that one woman shows that the world itself is apparently not supposed to be as inherently sexist as our own. The plot occasionally slows down and repeats itself as Lian gnaws on growing moral and ethical conflicts over Adaron's hunt. Also, many of the crewmen aboard the Carryola remain just names with little personality attached, making it harder to care about their ultimate fates. The ending felt just a touch forced and rushed, not to mention incomplete; it felt like there were some arcs unfinished, as if a sequel had been planned but inexplicably not pursued (as of this writing, at least).
On the balance, Black Leviathan delivers a truly adventurous tale of magic and danger and skies full of dragons.

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