I haven't read any of the Westerfeld's other books, but I think I picked up Leviathan on a whim when it was going cheap somewhere and was rather charmed by the whole thing and it's worldbuilding and characters. So I decided to get the rest as they came out.

Anyway, to give a really rough spoiler outline so you can see why I am comparing the endings, Nation is a stand-alone Pratchett YA novel, and I highly recommend it.

It's set in a crazy AU version of the world circa 1860s, and a very nasty influenza has basically wiped out the entire royal family of England, meaning the new King is now an obscure noble acting as governor in one of the colonies. His daughter, "Daphne" (Not her real name, but she likes it better than the one she was given) - completely oblivious to the fact she's just become heir to the throne - is sailing to meet him and is one of the main characters.

The other is Mau, a boy from an equivalent-to-Pacific-Islander tribe, who is canoeing back from his manhood rites to his tribe. Big Tsunami comes, wrecks Daphne's ship and destroys Mau's island, meaning that his entire tribe is dead and so is everyone else on the ship, leaving the two stuck on the island alone, and both horribly traumatised.

They learn to cope, etcetera, survivors from other islands eventually join them, there is a lot of character development and learning independence and getting a way from pointless traditions and so on, which is great to read but a bit complex, but I'll cut to the ending with the key comparison.

Eventually, the ship with Daphne's father comes to rescue her, as well as informing her she is now princess. There is some pretty heavy subtext that she and Mau are falling in love, and that she'd rather stay on the island with Mau and the new tribe he has built instead of heading back home to become royalty.

But she chooses to leave Mau, despite her love for, and be the heir (and later Queen). There is a line in the (set in the future) epilogue that gives a reason for it, "I think they both thought more about their people than they thought about themselves."

And one of the reasons she does this is to prevent there being a war over the succession.

I just found it really interesting the counterpoint between the two scenarios, two heirs to the throne torn between perceived duty to their people and love for a commoner, and how their choices end up so differently.

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I think part of it comes down to my expectations, that I'd heard some comments in which Westerfeld said a few things about how it wasn't going to a perfect happy ending, and that somehow got my expectations tilted towards something a little more bittersweet (Yes, the world isn't perfect, but Alex and Deryn get their pretty much happily ever after).

Though it really just begs the question of what people find more satisfying as an ending; the characters getting the good end but the world being still more vague and unpredicatble, or the other way around.

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There was 2 meets on yesterday. One was "Botanicon II" and the other was "Oldschool Manifest Meet". I was considering going to one of them but I have too much university work. Now I'm sad I missed someone cosplaying Euphie! :(

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Huh. I had no idea.

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I usually find out via facebook, no one really uses the Manifest forums much anymore! :O

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I only really show up to the big conventions (Manifest, Supanova et al.) anyway. I'd love to do more of the cosplay thing, but that would require actually sewing.

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