This book of young adult fiction begins with a mystery: The airship Aurora and young cabin boy Matthew Cruse come across the hot air balloon Endurance, seemingly abandoned to the sky. A closer inspection reveals her fatally wounded captain, Benjamin Malloy, an old man circumnavigating the world. Benjamin has fallen afoul of air pirates, and they are the cause of the damage to the air balloon, but there is a greater mystery to be solved: Benjamin has seen a strange animal that looks like a blend between a bat and a large cat flying in the skies, and believes he has discovered a new species. Although Matt is young, only fourteen, he has spent years in the sky as a cabin boy, and never seen anything like what Benjamin describes, and the old man dies shortly after, his descriptions of the ‘cloud cat’ seen as the final ravings of a dying man.
The story continues a year later with more insight into how the now fifteen year-old Matt is employed on an airship. Matt’s parents immigrated to the United States from Europe on an airfreighter while his mother was pregnant, and Matt was born prematurely while the ship was still in the air. His earliest memories derive from being told the story of having been ‘airborn,’ and this forms a mythology around which he builds his identity. After arrival in America Matt’s father went to work for the Lunardi line, and he eventually become a sailmaker on the Aurora before his death from a fall while working on a repair on one of the ship’s giant gas cells. The captain of the Aurora, knowing that Matt’s family would be beggared by this loss, offers Matt a job on his ship so that he can replace some of the income his father used to make. For Matt, this offer is a Godsend: It offers him the best opportunity he will get to stay connected to the father whose death he cannot come to terms with, as well as the chance to perhaps follow in his father’s footsteps as a sailmaker.
Just as it seems Matt is going to get the much-desired promotion to sailmaker, heiress Katie de Vries boards the Aurora; she is Benjamin Malloy’s teenaged granddaughter and is determined to find out what happened to her beloved grandfather. She discovers that Matt was the crew member responsible for her grandfather’s rescue and one of the last people to speak to him, and she immediately begins to seek him out at every opportunity. These meetings set off complaints from her chaperone, Marjorie Simpkins, revealing a class structure reminiscent of Victorian England, in which it was not acceptable for classes to mingle in a social context. But Kate is undeterred and, as Matt discovers he has been passed over for promotion in favor of Bruce Lunardi, Kate becomes an attractive distraction from his crushing disappointment.
Kate presents Matt with her grandfather’s diary, in which he chronicled his travels and recorded the details of the animal he saw in the skies over a mysterious uncharted island. These entries report that the cloud cats, like Matt, live their lives in the air, and are even born while their mothers are in flight. Initially Matt grapples with believing the entries; how is possible that such a species exists that no other air crew has seen or recorded? As the teens work to solve this mystery, the Aurora is attacked by the same air pirates that are responsible for Benjamin Malloy’s death. The pirates board the ship, murdering one of the crew members, before stealing their wealth and leaving a highly damaged Aurora headed into a major storm. The airship winds up marooned on the island Benjamin discovered but, with no way to fill the sails things begin to look grim. Kate, however, views this as an opportunity to vindicate her grandfather and achieve her dreams, and talks Matt into exploring the island with her under the guise of looking for materials to fix the grounded vessel.
At this point in the book the action picks up as the various story lines begin to collide into each other: The now grounded Matt must finally face that his father is gone and no matter how much time he spends in the air, he simply can’t outrun reality; Kate admits that her trip to document the cloud cats is as much a pilgrimage to honor her grandfather as it is from a desire to prove her intelligence to the world and to make a place for herself in a scientific community that doesn’t accept women; the teens begin to have feelings for each other that neither of them understand or know how to properly deal with given the differences in their social class; and, in the midst of all this they must face the pirates, who have returned to ensure there are no witnesses to reveal the island is their secret home. I don’t want to give too much away, because the details of this story are important and could easily become spoilers, but the plot lines converge neatly and every thread is placed meaningfully.
These blended storylines are perhaps what makes this book such a smart and fun read: There’s a lot of action, but there is a lot of introspection as well. The number of subplots could have undermined the cohesion of the overall story, but they somehow manage to create a complete, varied picture that is enjoyable and highly entertaining. Oppel has created an interesting alternate reality that incorporates actual cities with created ones, and replaces transatlantic ocean liners (Cunard Line?) with the massive airships of the Lunardi line, and the result is an exciting new world. The characters are complicated, and motivated to operate in ways that give them depth that sometimes feels lacking in novels written for young adults. These are flawed characters, but their flaws are human and relatable. For example, Matt believes that if he can just stay in the air then he will remain close to his father’s spirit, and his grief and journey to come to terms with the tragedy and senselessness of his father’s death is both heartbreaking and cathartic. Kate, on the other hand, Kate comes from a wealthy family, but her parents view her as a commodity; their wealth and expectations imprison a young woman with a much different view of her future and though at times her single-minded pursuit of the cloud cat leads to terrible danger, the reader can understand how she cannot accept a failure that would leave her doomed to a life devoid of challenge and intellectual exploration.
This story, and the other two that complete this trilogy, are also considered to be part of the Steampunk Canon. I would have to say that I completely agree with this assessment: There are airships and air pirates, flying machines that function like helicopters but are open to the elements, and enough brass and goggles to keep most enthusiasts of the subgenre happy. What I enjoyed, however, is that these elements are well blended into the reality of the world Oppel has created. I never felt like this book was trying to convince me that it belongs in this category, I just knew it was and couldn’t stop reading because this adventure is so well written. Further, this text addresses many of the themes that are prevalent in Steampunk literature, and it is no accident that explorations of class, gender, and a rejection of societal status quo are present in this story. Young Matt comes to realize that education is a key component for a change in his social status, and Kate learns that, although dreams are worth fighting for, the journey is a little easier when she can connect with others in a meaningful way. As a whole this book was a refreshing read, and I appreciate the seeming effortlessness with which this book accomplishes its thematic goals.
This book is rated ages 10 and up, and I feel this is a fairly accurate rating. There are episodes of violence and two significant murders, as well as other deaths from natural causes, and these require a degree of maturity to understand. There is limited romantic contact between Matt and Kate, and their relationship develops in a way that is age appropriate. Additionally, the vocabulary is simple enough to allow a YA audience to fully engage with this text, but I found that the easy vocabulary didn’t get in the way of my enjoyment because of the plot elements and human interest within the novel. I highly recommend this story for children and adults who love swashbuckling adventure, but particularly for reluctant readers who need high interest material to keep them engaged with the text.
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