Airships! Sky pirates! Strange creatures! Quite a bit going on here. Add in class issues and an adventurous young lady with scientific aspirations and it more than fills 500 pages.There's basically two storylines going on here. There's swashbuckling action against a group of sky pirates, and a quest to prove the existence of a strange creature, something like a gigantic bat. Our POV character is Matt Cruse, a poor young man born to fly on airships, but held back because he's essentially enlisted, and can't afford to go to the airship version of West Point. His partner in swashbuckling and scientific discovery both is Kate de Vries, who is wealthy, determined, and not exactly good at planning out the consequences of her actions. Later, they team up with Bruce Lunardi, the new member of the crew who got his position because daddy owns the airship.The plot moves along at a good pace. A 500 page book without padding! A story that is given all the pages it needs! It's a marvelous thing. And the pirate captain makes quite an interesting villain. He doesn't show up much in person, but he makes an impact when he does. The strange creatures are also fascinating when they show up.I mentioned class issues playing a part in the story. Matt wants to advance in rank on the airship, but he can't afford officer training. He should be able to work his way up through the ranks, but not if somebody else buys his position out from under him. Obviously, Matt is quite resentful of Bruce Lunardi, and he certainly has a right to it. After all, Bruce doesn't even really want to serve on airships, but he has to give it a shot if he wants to keep his access to daddy's money. Otherwise he might have to earn his own way in the world, and wouldn't that be horrible? Oddly, Matt, who as a teenager is not only earning his own way through the world, but helping to support his mother and sisters, is somewhat sympathetic. I am not. Kate is also a very difficult character to like. She's incredibly reckless and thoughtless, and not just with her own safety. Granted, in the end her actions do pay off, but that's just luck. She's also blissfully blind to her own privilege, and that too never gets called out. Her response to Matt mentioning that he hasn't the money to get officer training can be summed up as, "Well, just get a scholarship!" It's cringe-inducing. It made her almost unlikeable to me, and I usually love spunky girls of a scientific bent. Maybe she'll mature in the later books.I will be reading those later books, bricks that they are. I like airships, and I like Matt. I'd like to see what becomes of him.
I liked Matt as the protagonist. He was an intelligent and passionate young man who loved what he did. There is a lot of adventure in this book, especially at the end where it got especially exciting. Loved the creature that Kate's grandfather discovered and the mysterious island the Aurora lands on. Very cool world building. However, I found Kate extremely annoying. In the beginning I thought she was mildly irritating but by the middle she was pushing obnoxious. I appreciate persistence, but she couldn't see anything else but what she wanted and totally took advantage of Matt without ever recognizing what she was asking of him. She was so selfish and pigheaded! By the eighth disk, I can honestly say I hated her. Everything bad that happened in the last fourth of the book was caused by her. Without Matt and his ingenuity, the whole ship would have died. There was no apology from Kate. She got what she wanted in the end, so all is well. Hooray for her (not).I listened to the book in my car--I wonder if I would've had such a violent reaction to her if I had been reading it instead?--and found myself yelling at Kate because she was being so STUPID. I told Matt repeatedly to just leave her behind, Kate deserved whatever she got. I finally picked up the book and read the last few chapters because I could not listen to her any longer but the story was all so exciting I needed to know how Matt would fix Kate's dumbness. So yeah, Kate completely ruined the book for me. I realize I'm missing a very beautiful forest because of a tree, but she was a large tree who's branches kept whacking me in the face. And yes, sometimes I do get overly passionate about characters and so hopefully this review isn't too obnoxious, in and of itself. I am interested in Matt and his later adventures, but since Kate is going to be in the books too (and the romantic lead, I'm assuming), I wont be picking them up. Sorry Matt, but I just can't handle more of Kate. I'm surprised you can.
What do You think about Airborn (2005)?
Although this book isn't usually the subject I would choose, the story and characters hooked me right away.Matt Cruse is completely at home in the sky, a cabin boy aboard the immense airship Aurora. He dreams of one day piloting his own air vessel. But his adventurous sky life is about to take an even crazier turn. The Aurora becomes host to the headstrong, fiery heiress Kate de Vries, a girl on a mission for a strange creature that her grandfather swore existed. A creature that lives above the clouds, that no one else will believe in.Facing flight dangers, unusual passengers, sky pirates, and more, Matt and Kate make a wonderful, humorous, and balanced team as they search for the elusive cloud-cat to prove that Kate's grandfather was right. For anyone who loves flying, adventure, or a just plain great story in a fantastically created setting, you should definitely read this book.
—Victoria
My son picked this book for our next family book group discussion. I was warned that it wasn't really my thing... kind of sci fi, kind of steampunk... but I really enjoyed it. The plot moves along quickly and I can totally see this on the big screen.Our main character, young Matt Cruse, is a cabin boy on the airship Aurora. He excels at his job but continues to wrestle with his father's death a few years earlier. He becomes friends with a wealthy young passenger, Kate de Vries, as they try to rediscover a mysterious animal documented by her scientist grandfather a few years earlier. Then some pirates take over the ship and the swashbuckling begins. It sounds pretty cheesy when I write it like that, but the story is a pageturner. Amidst the action, there are moments of quiet reflection in which the main characters consider how differences in class and gender affect their ability to become who they want to be. Most of all, this book is an exciting variation on the YA theme of extremely competent children taking care of things when adults can't. (Sometimes this theme requires that all adults are sinister or at least bumbling, but not so here... even the pirates have their human moments.) I really enjoyed it and will be getting the next book in the series.
—Janelle
I quite enjoyed this one! It had all the right ingredients for a really interesting adventure story: action, villains, "ships" of one kind or another, believable characters, strange animals and exotic locations....I really liked the world the author created and all the little details made it seem quite real. It did take me a chapter or two to get "into" it, but it was never boring. I also liked how everything tied into everything else....there were no loose ends or unnecessary subplots. Quite an exciting read--I'm looking forward to the next one!
—Qt
