My Review of Black Leviathan by Bernd Perplies
My summary: Dragon hunters go out on flying ships to fight and kill dragons, which provide most of the food and clothing to the people of the Cloudmere.
Why I picked up this book: I think I saw it featured in one of Tor.com’s newsletters. I read the back cover copy and thought it looked good.
What I knew going in: It’s a retelling of Moby Dick, but set in a fantasy world with dragons. Also, it was written in German and then translated into English by Lucy Van Clee.
My response: The language was very simple, but that may be a result of it being translated from a different language where the rhythm of language is just different. I found myself pulled along following Lian’s story and the world was very beautifully pulled together.
I was a little less than impressed with the ending, which felt like it was a lot of ‘oh, this is happening because of destiny.’ When there wasn’t really much of a focus on destiny before that point. It almost felt like the book was about to be over and he needed to wrap everything up. There were also a lot of questions that simply got left at the end of the book, which would’ve been fine if there was a sequel, but as far as I can tell there isn’t. Right now I’m just looking at it as there’s enough answered for the book to be over, and enough unanswered that you know the characters are going to go out and have more adventures.
Do I recommend this book?: If you’re going to be upset by a less than stellar ending, then avoid it, but if you’re okay with a wonderful ride of a book and wonderful world-building then I do recommend it.
