9: Behemoth (Book 2 in the Leviathon Trilogy), by Scott Westerfeld (2010 hardcover)

Several years ago, I read Westerfeld's Uglies series for teens, set in a  future where everyone is transformed at age 16 from an Ugly to a Pretty through radical plastic surgery, and was hooked.  The man simply knows how to tell a story, drawing the reader into a world intriguingly different, yet hauntingly similar to his/her own.  He has published a second, also excellent, teen series called Midnighters, a few stand-alone teen books, and a good sci-fi trilogy for adults.  In the Leviathon series, Westerfeld tackles another sub-genre: SteamPunk.

Take a future with Victorian-era morals, behaviors, and dress, mix in one fully-mechanized society a'la the Industrial Revolution, and shake it up with another equally mechanized society--but with mechanics based on biology and the creation of new beings, thanks to Darwin's good work--and you have a rich SteamPunk environment.  It's a genre that has been gaining ground among fantasy and sci-fi folk in recent years.  And, while I am less taken with it than some other branches of the genre, Westerfeld's story and gift for making the unreal quite normal make this a pretty good start for someone interested in checking out the trend.

The story alternates between two main characters: a teen girl posing as a boy to serve in the English (Darwinist) airforce and a Austrian (Industrial) prince whose parents were recently assassinated in the Balkans. (Why yes, it does sound familiar!) Against this early-WWII-with-a-twist backdrop, the two improbably meet, become unlikely friends (though she longs for more), and eventually fight as allies.  In this second volume of the series, the action focuses on Istanbul, which has remained neutral in the war thus far.  Featuring helium-powered biological blimps, lizards that serve as verbal messengers, mechanical multi-legged and -armed tanks, sultans, and spices, it's a winning combination for male and female readers alike.