Oppel's description of Captain Walken and his crew, the ship itself, the strange and vicious "cloud cat" creature, a tropical island, its forests and pirate village (pirates are named Crumlin, Rathgar: Oppel, a Canadian, spent a year in Dublin) the wilful Kate de Vries whom Matt falls for, the sharp dialogue - all are brilliantly done. 15-year-old Matt Cruse, cabin boy on the Aurora, a luxury hydrium-powered airship, tells a tale that never flags for 400 pages. Kenneth Oppel's AIRBORN is a high adventure in every sense. Oppel really is the successor of Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson, and he is just as good. Oppel is an accomplished author of thrilling stories, but his real skill is in creating characters, bad and good, who are convincing, involving, sometimes funny and always easy to cheer on. This is a story that blends high-skies piracy, risky escapes, unknown tropical islands, strange, graceful but ultimately sinister "sky cats" and the inner workings of life aloft with a subtle swipe at class barriers and primness. In his latest novel, Airborne (HarperCollins, $22.99), Kenneth Oppel, the multi-award winning Canadian author of Sunwing, Silverwing and Firewing, wonderfully imagines a time when airships plied the skies, Earth-bound society was late Victorian, and the world still had undiscovered secrets. But they could be dangerous and vulnerable. Massive, ungainly on the ground, they were agile, swift and captivating when skyward. For a while, in the early 20th century, they seemed to be the way of the future for intercontinental travel. Winner of the 2004 Governor General's Literary Award for Children's Literature!Īirships represent to many the most romantic and elegant means of travel.Winner of the 2004 Red Maple Award (OLA).Winner of the 2005 Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Award.A 2005 Michael L Printz Honor Book (ALA).Far from any hope of rescue, Kate and Matt are flung into adventures beyond all imagining. Then one night, over the middle of the ocean, deadly air pirates board the Aurora. Matt dismisses the story as the ravings of a dying man, but when Kate de Vries arrives on the Aurora a year later, determined to prove the story is true, Matt finds himself caught up in her quest. Before he dies, the balloonist tells him about the fantastic, impossible creatures he has seen flying through the clouds. While crossing the Pacificus, Matt fearlessly rescues the unconscious pilot of a crippled hot air balloon.
Matt Cruse is the 15-year-old cabin boy aboard the Aurora, the 900-foot luxury airship he has called home for the past two years. Spyglass to my eye, I slowly swept the heavens.
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