Skybreaker
117. Skybreaker by Kenneth Oppel (Juvenile Historical Fantasy) 340 p.
Matt Cruse returns in this sequel to Airborn. Having found the money to enrol in the Air Academy, he’s on his first training cruise when the ship spots the legendary Hyperion, an airship rumoured to be full of treasure and assumed lost by most. Still aloft, she floats at 20,000 feet, much higher than humans can safely go in ordinary airships. Matt and his friend Kate team up with the inventor of a new type of airship, a skybreaker, modified to allow high-altitude travel, and go on a quest to find and salvage the Hyperion.
Skybreaker easily lives up to the promise of Airborn. Far more intelligent and less narrow in scope than the average adventure story, it still delivers an exciting plot and a cast of very engaging and believable characters. Kenneth Oppel is rapidly becoming one of my favourite children’s authors. One of my favourite things about him is the way he makes his characters individuals. All four protagonists see in the Hyperion a way to satisfy their needs, but in different ways. Even Kate, who being fabulously wealthy needs very little she doesn’t already possess, has the opportunity to make discoveries that may earn her the respect of the scientific community, something that as a young woman she is automatically denied.
Books read: 117
Pages read: 34,724
Tags: 2nds Challenge, 50 Book Challenge 2007, Kenneth Oppel, Matt Cruse
I classify this as juvenile fantasy, but Booklist narrows down its genre to “steampunk sky opera”, which I think is hysterical. Whatever genre it belongs to, Airborn is a fantastic children’s book that any adult could easily enjoy. In an alternate Victorian age, where the primary mode of intercontinental transport is the airship, 15-year-old Matt Cruse is a cabin boy aboard one such craft, the Aurora. Given a place on his late father’s ship through the kindness of his captain, he can imagine nothing he would rather do with his life than crew an airship. When the Aurora attempts to help an elderly balloonist in distress, Matt has no idea how important the man’s dying words will be to his life.