Airborne
Kenneth Oppel
HarperCollins, $16.99, 355 pages, ISBN: 0060531800
reviewed by Barry Hunter

While this is listed as a "young adult" novel, this is a very well written and enjoyable book for adults as well. It is filled with action, adventure, and features a well planned world filled with colorful characters.

In this coming of age novel, Matt Cruse is a cabin boy on the Aurora, a huge airship that is the main mode of transportation in this alternate version of Earth. He is instrumental in saving a dying balloonist who is convinced that he has seen flying creatures unknown to man.

On a later voyage the balloonist’s granddaughter, Kate, has set out to prove that the creatures are real and enlists Matt’s aid in doing so much to the chagrin of her chaperone. Add in an attack by pirates, a shipwreck, and an uncharted island which Oppel puts together as the ingredients for a thrilling novel. The term, potboiler, seems to fit.

One may think of the balloons and airships used by Jules Verne from MASTER OF THE WORLD or ROBUR THE CONQUEROR, but Oppel has expanded upon them and made them his own in this new world that calls for more adventures.