Leviathans: Armored Skies

by William H. Keith Jr., Harry Turtledove, S.M. Stirling

IT IS THE DAWN OF A NEW AGE…

At the beginning of the 20th century, the world was forever changed by the discovery of electroid, a strange liquid that allowed for lighter-than-air travel. Militaries around the world rushed to develop new vessels based on this amazing invention, resulting in a class of flying ships unlike anything ever seen before…the leviathan.

Now, the skies are filled with massive armored warships that soar through the air, armed with devastating cannons that can lay waste to an enemy vessel in moments. The nations of the world have entered into a dangerous new arms race, and all it will take is the right spark to set off a war that will ensnare the nations on and around the European continent…and may engulf the world…

Featuring stories

William H. Keith, Jr.

Michael J. Ciaravella

Steven Mohan, Jr.

Bryn Bills

Blaine Lee Pardoe

S.M. Stirling

Harry Turtledove

Tyler Whitney

 

318 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 27, 2021

About the author

Bill Keith was raised in the mountains of western Pennsylvania, and served in the Navy as a corpsman for many years. In addition to writing fiction and non-fiction works, he is an award-winning illustrator/artist.

He has also published under the psuedonyms:
Ian Douglas (SF series: Heritage, Legacy, Inheritance, Star Carrier, Andromedan Dark)
H. Jay Riker (SEALS:The Warrior Breed series)
Keith Douglass (Carrier and Seal Team 7 series)
Bill Keith
Keith William Andrews (Freedom's Rangers series)
Robert Cain (Cybernarc series)

Reviews

[Myles]

Not a bad collection of short stories in the universe of a tabletop miniatures game based in an alternative history, that has shades of steam and diesel punk. Like most collections of this nature some of the stories were good, some were meh, nothing was truly outstanding.
One thing that I found annoying was the amount of editing errors and misses. It felt like every 5-7 pages I found a glaring mistake, most of them being incorrect words in a sentence. They were the kind of mistakes you see if someone is writing with an "autocomplete" feature on, but they aren't paying attention to what word is being filled in, so occasionally it is wildly incorrect because the software guessed wrong.
There were also a handful of continuity errors that any halfway decent editor should have caught. The big one that I remember is one of the stories having a lead in set in February, like:
"Hiroshima, Japan
February 1st, 1906"
and not two paragraphs down, on the same page, the main character is being described as being chilled from the winds of March.

Overall I'd rate this one "Borrow from the Library" if the idea of an alternate history where early 20th century naval ships can be airborne sounds interesting to you.

[Horhe]

This was a good anthology series for a new fictional universe. The naval-isms will appeal to military buffs, but I found the setting a bit dull (aside from the obvious flying ships). I think the Crimson Skies setting of FASA did this sort of alternate history much better. Then again, this is early days for the IP.

[Steve Leitch]

I’m not usually a big fan of game-based stories, but these are very well-written and entertaining, with an intriguing premise.

[Richard Goodis]

Great short stories, very riveting.

Each of the Captains was very memorable, and the fighting of the leviathans was page turning, couldn't put the book down.