Review for Airborn

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

Publisher: Eos (An imprint of HarperCollins® Publishers)

Summery:

[Back Cover]

Matt Cruse has the life he has always dreamed of as a cabin boy on the Aurora, a luxury passenger airship that sails hundreds of feet above the ocean.

Then one night he meets a dying balloonist who speaks of beautiful creatures drifting through the skies who are completely real and utterly mysterious.

Introduction:

Airborn is my first taste of steampunk. I don’t know if it can be called true steampunk, but since it uses airships and not so realistic, yet old-fashioned, flying machines, that’s what I think I can classify it being. After reading a very positive review of this book, I bought it, and fully expected to have it read within a few days. It certainly started out interesting enough; just read my comments on it on Goodreads. The first portion of the book was full of excitement and beautifully written. I seriously wanted to climb aboard an airship and fly across the Pacificus with Matt, the main character. Once I hit the middle portion of the book however, things started to get very dull and the writing became monotonous. Once the final stretch came around, the book finally started to pick up pace and it felt like important stuff was finally happening. I finally began to enjoy the characters and their situation.

Characters:

The main character, Matt Cruse, is not what I’d call a likable character. He first started out that way. When he was up in the crow’s nest and spotted the sinking balloon and the old man, and then he became relatable when the job he was hoping to get was given to Bruce Lunardi, the son of the man who owns the Lunardi line of airships, of which The Aurora is a part. One could understand how he felt overlooked and unfairly treated. Bruce was a likable guy though, he wasn’t a snob, nor did he rub his job in Matt’s face. He was actually my favorite character in the book, not Matt, the main character I was supposed to sympathize with. Matt became annoying and whiny. He would continuously talk about his ship, The Aurora, and how much he loved her, how much he loved flying, how wonderful his amazing sense of direction was. I wanted to shout at him, “I get it! You can move on now.” Then, after the shipwreck, he wouldn’t quit whining about how terrible he felt on land, it was suffocating him, closing him off, he wasn’t flying, it was so terrible! Again, I wanted to yell at him, “You survived the crash, everyone is all right, shouldn’t you focus more on keeping it that way instead of how miserable solid, unmoving Earth is?” I didn’t like Matt at all. I almost wished The Aurora would turn out to be landlocked forever. That might be mean to wish on the main character, but he really annoyed me that much about it.

Then there was Kate, our other main character. She was intent on discovering the mysterious creatures her grandfather found just before he died. He was mocked for it, so she wants to prove her grandfather was right. A noble thing to do for her grandfather, so that’s why she boards the airship in the first place. After they’re marooned on the very island where her grandfather discovered the flying creatures, she enlists Matt to help her uncover evidence of them, and that’s when she got annoying. She didn’t seem to understand that Matt had duties he couldn’t just abandon, especially since the ship needed repairs. She got him in trouble a number of times, but never seemed to understand why. She thought everyone was being a pain and unfair. A number of times I wanted to tell Matt to just leave her alone. Finding the flying creatures wasn’t as important as getting everyone off the island safely.

Both of the main characters seemed to have one-track minds about their respective interests. But when the villain finally showed up, the characters started becoming less annoying, because then, they were forced into situations that caused them to act in the ship’s and the crew’s best interests. Finally, they both stopped thinking only of their precious obsessions and did something.

My Thoughts:

This book did start out exciting and attention holding, but that was only the first one-fourth of it. The next two-fourths were boring, filled with ship talk and description of every little detail of the airship and its workings. Some parts almost felt like a manual. Then there were pages of Matt groaning about him and his ship being on land, and how it was so terrible. I felt like I read the same things over and over again when the focus was on Matt.

When the final fourth of the book came around, things picked up again and I really enjoyed it. It once again became exciting, suspenseful, and the characters were once again put in interesting situations. If you can get through that tedious middle portion of the book without giving up, this book is a great read. I’d recommend it, but warn whoever I’m lending it to about the slow and almost pointless middle. Even if the main characters were annoying, the supporting cast was great and the situation was thrilling.

And speaking of pointless, the flying creatures were such an odd addition to this book about airships and pirates, I felt they were out of place. Sure, they were the reason Kate showed up in the first place, but I’d much rather read the book without them there. I was nearing the end, and the flying mystery creatures had yet to do anything productive to the story. In fact, they were practically pointless even in the end. I think the author included these creatures because of his previous books in The Silverwing Trilogy. They’re about bats, and apparently, this author has a great interest in flying things. They felt like a forced element in what would have—in my opinion—made a much better pirate/castaway type story. Especially since the pirate captain was very interesting and a complex character. He wasn’t the stereotypical bad guy pirate, which is why the last fraction of the book was so awesome. I won’t deny that the creatures in this book were interesting, but they just seemed to be in the wrong book.

The writing was good, if wordy and littered with unnecessary descriptions, and half the book was just plain awesome. Just watch out for that middle chunk. People who really enjoy reading a very involved book will probably enjoy this.

Warnings:

There was some language, but not that much. It was typical of what is found in other YA books. There are fight scenes going on, but nothing excessively violent. It had some blood and some death.

My Age Rating: 13 and up (Because it’s a more tedious read than a lot of other YA fiction.)

~Cya!