Sailing toward dawn, and I was perched atop the crow's nest,
being the ship's eyes. We were two nights out of Sydney, and
there'd been no weather to speak of so far. 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. Like riding
a cloud. . . .
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. 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. One night he meets a dying balloonist who
speaks of beautiful creatures drifting through 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.
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.
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