How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
That young airman, Dylan, might have frozen to death if he'd lain in the snow all night. But Alek had saved him from frostbite. Maybe this was how you stayed sane in wartime: a handful of noble deeds amid the chaos. (25.9)
Maybe Alek has hit on something here. Even though he's too small to do much to influence the whole course of the war, he can do small amounts of good in order to make a big difference to someone else.
Quote #8
Alek squinted and covered his face. The whole airship glowed from within as it rose up, carried back into the sky by its own heat. The aluminum skeleton inside was melting. The Kondor twisted, then broke in the middle, a huge mushroom of fire bellowing from the split.
And then the two halves were swirling downward again.
They seemed to hit the ground gently, but the snow shrieked and hissed as melted metal and burning hydrogen turned it to steam. White clouds billowed around the two halves of wreckage, and Alek heard awful cries over the roars of flame. (33.42-44)
Deryn's been threatening us with what happens when fire gets too near hydrogen for most of the novel, and now we know. Fortunately it's not the Leviathan going down in flames; it's the Clanker zeppelin attacking it. Even though we know these people are the enemies of our main characters, we can't help but feel sorry for them—which just might be the point.
Quote #9
She stared out the window. "And our crew is smaller than it once was."
Alek nodded. He'd seen the shrouded bodies outside, and the men laboring to bury them in the iron-hard ice beneath the snow. (34.31-32)
Because this exchange between Alek and Dr. Barlow takes place a hundred pages after the Leviathan's first big battle of the war, we have almost forgotten that there were casualties from that battle that needed to be dealt with. This brings us back to the reality of what happens in war.