That Great Leviathan

By now, I’ve realized that I like Tyler Kimball. That Great Leviathan is the third of his works I have read and the guy has chops. He knows how to cook.

Unlike his previous works, the historical-weird essay Whom Gods Would Destroy and the collection written on acid, Starless and Bible-Black, this is a full-fledged novel.

Kingfisher Volganin is a harpy, not in some generic mythological sense, but a bird-woman with functional wings, prehensile talons, and an identity teetering between the human world and something far older. She arrives in Samyy Severnyy, a port city at the far northern edge of a world where dragons are local politicians, alchemists run industries, and sylphs are bored weapons of mass destruction. Twenty-two centuries of slaughter would bore anyone. She travels with a group of postgrad students: Fade, Lund, Mageirissa, known as The Bastards’ Gang. The name fits.

The plot revolves around a political intrigue involving the city’s dragon-mayor, a queen with temporal powers, a gnome from the secret police, a dead arms dealer, and a legendary sylph freshly freed from her arboreal prison. Now that I think about it, this book probably was written on acid too.

There are dragon-killing cannons, automata with mercury hearts, and a Leviathan sleeping beneath the frozen sea. It is all dense, very dense.

Kimball does not hold the reader by the hand. He does not explain what the echeneis, the Boazovazzi, the Pilgrims of the Furnace, the Four Cardinalities, or many other things are, things I cannot remember off the top of my head. When it works, and it often does, the result is total immersion. When it does not, it becomes a terminological swamp that risks losing the reader along the way. Some readers like being treated like adults, some want to be spoon-fed. Everyone knows what kind of reader they are.

Kingfisher is an iconic figure. She wants to be a legendary hero but cannot quite fly straight. She has the courage to face a dragon yet cries when she loses feathers. Her relationship with Fade is the most human element in the book.

There are flaws. Pacing, especially. The first chapters are setup, and while they are rich in texture and worldbuilding, the real plot starts much later. The central political section drags with too many factions, meetings, and names. It is fine to be treated like adults, but here it feels like being asked to form a government without even knowing the candidates’ names. The climax, while spectacular, is so chaotic that it is occasionally confusing.

The prose is classic Kimball, showing he knows where to get the good stuff. Learned, layered, full of naturalistic erudition and oblique references. The kind of prose that makes you feel ignorant in a good way.

It is a book that rewards perseverance and obviously not for everyone. If the word gaslamp makes your eyes light up, there is a world in here that deserves your time.