BookBright
ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSIt is the summer of 1914, and Europe has split into two rival kinds of military power. The Clanker nations, Germany and Austria-Hungary, build huge diesel-powered walking war machines. The Darwinist nations, Britain and France, fabricate living airships and battle creatures stitched together from the "life threads" of real animals. In Austria, fifteen-year-old Prince Aleksandar of Hohenberg is shaken awake one night by his fencing master and his master of mechaniks for what he thinks is a secret piloting lesson. He is wrong: his parents have just been murdered, and he is bundled into a hulking Stormwalker and driven into hiding, hunted by people who used to be his family's allies. Meanwhile in London, fifteen-year-old Deryn Sharp cuts her hair, borrows her brother's uniform, and enlists in the British Air Service under the name Dylan Sharp, since the only way a girl can fly one of the great living airships is to pretend to be a boy. As Alek runs for his life across Austria and Deryn claws her way into the crew of a fabricated airbeast, the murder that orphaned Alek is dragging the whole continent toward war.
Free Battle of the Books questions for Leviathan
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about Leviathan. Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book does a prince wake under hay in a barn to crackling Morse code?
✓ Answer
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
Two weeks into the run for Switzerland, Alek has learned to sleep through snoring men and rumbling engines but wakes at the faint wireless chatter. Count Volger is up listening for news, because the army codes keep changing and everyone is preparing for war.
- First half
In what book does a kraken snap a target schooner in half between two tentacles?
✓ Answer
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
After the bats finish with the practice target, the navy tender H.M.S. Gorgon calls up its own beast with colored spotlights. Newkirk grumbles that the ocean navy always gets the final word, and Deryn notes that being killed a second time does not hurt much.
- First half
In what book does a scientist explain how town cats lead to more red clover?
✓ Answer
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
Dr. Barlow walks Deryn through her grandfather's chain of cats eating mice, mice raiding bee nests, and bees pollinating clover. Her real point is that removing one piece wrecks the whole web, whether in nature or in a Europe where two murders have started a war.
- Second half
In what book do six-legged dogs with double snouts sniff every bullet hole in a wreck?
✓ Answer
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
These are hydrogen sniffers, fabricated beasts trained to find leaks in the airbeast's skin. Alek watches them from a ledge above the glacier and decides the whole crash site looks like a corner of hell bubbling up through the snow.
- Second half
In what book does a lookout aloft spot giant footprints leading to a hidden mountain castle?
✓ Answer
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
Deryn goes up on the biggest Huxley to find where Alek came from and traces his shuffly snowshoe tracks eastward. Then she sees the enormous prints of a walking machine, and she knows the boy has been lying to her.
- Near the end
In what book does someone leap from a runaway sledge onto a walking machine's flailing chain ladder?
✓ Answer
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
The freed sledge starts sliding downhill after the machine, and Deryn has to jump for the ladder swinging between its giant legs. Bauer and Hoffman haul her in through the belly hatch and welcome her aboard in German.
