Matt and Kate, despite their difference in class, become fast friends and work together to find answers, and elusive proof of Kate’s grandfather’s magnificent, winged creatures.

As it turns out, Kate is the granddaughter of the man Matt rescued a year prior, and she is travelling on the Aurora with a very specific mission to discover exactly what her grandfather saw. Then, he meets a girl named Kate de Vries – sassy, intelligent, and adventurous…as well as rich, pretty, and spoiled.

Though his hopes are temporarily dashed, Matt is always happiest in the air, and relishes his time aboard the magnificent ship. One year later, Matt is still hard at work on the Aurora as a cabin boy, having lost out on his opportunity to advance to a junior sailmaker position (to a well-connected, rich young man). This old adventurer asks Matt if he had seen “them” – beautiful, flying creatures in the sky – just before he dies. Two years in service, the luxury airship comes across a marooned balloon in their path – and young Matt helps to bring the balloon’s sole inhabitant on board to safety. And, after his father’s death, Matt finally gets to live out his wish, serving on his father’s old ship, the Aurora, as a cabin boy. The son of a dedicated airman, Matt has always longed to fly like his father. Why did I read this book: I’ve heard nothing but praise for the works of Kenneth Oppel, and when looking for a new YA novel to read for Steampunk Week, Airborn was the clear choice. Stand alone or series: Book 1 in the Matt Cruse trilogy In a swashbuckling adventure reminiscent of Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson, Kenneth Oppel, author of the best-selling Silverwing trilogy, creates an imagined world in which the air is populated by transcontinental voyagers, pirates, and beings never before dreamed of by the humans who sail the skies. It is only after Matt meets the balloonist’s granddaughter that he realizes that the man’s ravings may, in fact, have been true, and that the creatures are completely real and utterly mysterious. One night he meets a dying balloonist who speaks of beautiful creatures drifting through the skies. It is the life Matt’s always wanted convinced he’s lighter than air, he imagines himself as buoyant as the hydrium gas that powers his ship. Matt Cruse is a cabin boy on the Aurora, a huge airship that sails hundreds of feet above the ocean, ferrying wealthy passengers from city to city. I was keeping watch on a dark stack of nimbus clouds off to the northwest, but we were leaving it far behind, and it looked to be smooth going all the way back to Lionsgate City. We were two nights out of Sydney, and there’d been no weather to speak of so far.

Sailing toward dawn, and I was perched atop the crow’s nest, being the ship’s eyes.

Matt cruse airborn