Anyone who longs for more adventures in the time period and vein of Robert Louis Stevenson and Jules Verne will love this book. It truly is a throw back to these authors, not only in the time period, but the style of writing and the strong characters taking part in the adventure. Matt Cruse rivals Stevenson’s Jim Hawkins in every way, and the rest of the supporting cast is just as strong. Even the main antagonist carries with him admirable qualities both in refinement and intellect that make him more than the one-dimensional bad guy many books in this genre portray.Overall, it starts out a little slow, building toward the action, but once Oppel brings the reader into it, there’s no turning back. It’s not life-altering literature, but it’s a great read, taking advantage of the unexplored world of airships in a captivating way. Oppel is an author who’s authentic to his fantasy, creating believable worlds with believable characters, even in anthropomorphizing animals, like in his Silverwing Trilogy, a task few take on and even fewer do successfully. As this series advances to explore through the various iterations of the merger between adventure and technology, Matt Cruse’s stories, I’m sure, will continue to captivate readers. I recommend this book to both adults and kids, with its main audience falling within the range of 8-13, geared more toward boys.-Lindsey Miller, www.lindseyslibrary.com ( )

Matt Cruse is workng on the airship Aurora and meets Kate de Vries. Together they have adventures, find new creatures and fall in love. Action, adventure, romance. ( )

Kearsten says: Unusual and strangely historic yet science fiction-ish, Airborn tells of a young cabin boy who wants to be the captain of his own airship someday. When his airship is attacked by pirates and stranded on an uncharted island, he joins up with a young woman who's presence on the airship is suspect - turns out she's on a mission to discover mythical creatures her dead grandfather had written about in a journal he kept while ballooning over the very island they've shipwrecked on.

Both of these characters, Matt and Kate, are strong, smart and resourceful, which makes it very easy to root for them, as they search for proof of the mythic creatures and run into the dastardly pirates.

Very exciting - recommended! ( )

A cabin boy aboard an airship faces off against one of the sky's most feared pirates.

This was a reread for me, and I think I enjoyed this even more the second time around. It's been a while since I read any of Kenneth Oppel's work, and I'd forgotten just how readable he is. His AIRBORN series isn't quite as affecting as the SILVERWING SAGA, but it's still a ton of fun.

AIRBORN reads up right quick, and it's fresh and engaging from the first page to the last. I'm a sucker for a great seafaring tale, and this would fit the bill to a tee if it weren't for the fact that Matt and his friends sail the airways instead of the ocean. It has all the elements of the most entertaining high seas adventures: technical sailing details, a healthy dose of swashbuckling action, dangerous encounters aboard ship, and pirates. What more could you want?

The characters are great, too. Matt is a sympathetic protagonist; it's easy to feel for him as he faces each new threat to his beloved ship. His relationships with the other characters are also nicely developed; his rivalry with Bruce felt real, and his friendship with Baz was also very natural. It's his rapport with Kate, though, that really makes the book. The back-and-forth between them is great; they bounce off each other very well, and Oppel does a great job of showing us how their friendship develops throughout the course of the book. There's enough romance mixed in to satisfy those who crave it, but there's not so much that non-romance fans will be put off. Oppel focuses in on their friendship, above all else.

Oppel's alternate world is a delight to visit. He's made some logical name changes to let us know right off the bat that we're not in the world we all know, and he's thrown in some really interesting technological developments. The largest of these is, of course, the airship. Oppel's airships use a lighter-than-air gas called hydrium in place of the real-world helium, and they've been employed so effectively that no one has ever felt the need to invent the airplane. Airships share the skies with ornithopters, (helicopter-like contraptions based on designs by Leonardo da Vinci), and with mysterious airborne creatures.

AIRBORN is classed as fantasy by the publishers and the author himself, but I'd consider it more of an adventurous science fiction novel. It's basically steampunk lite. Most reviewers class the world as Victorian, (I personally think it has more of an Edwardian feel), and the science shapes just about everything that happens. The airships are, of course, a major factor, and Kate's interest in the natural sciences also drives much of the book's action. It perhaps most closely resembles the romantic, swashbuckling science fiction penned by authors like Edgar Rice Burroughs back in the 1910's, albeit with a more modern approach.

All in all, it was a wonderful read. I highly recommend it to YA readers and to anyone with an interest in adventure novels. I've lent it out and recommended it to readers of all ages, and I've yet to hear of anyone who was disappointed with it.

(This review originally appeared on my blog, Stella Matutina, in a slightly different form). ( )

Publishers Weekly; 4/26/2004, Vol. 251 Issue 17, p66-67, 2p ( )