Kenneth Oppel, Skybreaker

Having just finished Airborn, the first novel in Kenneth Oppel's early 2000s airship trilogy, I was keen to jump into its sequel, Skybreaker, and I'm glad I did. 

I have to admit, or at least I want to confess, that I'm struggling at reading books that feel like maybe they don't have impact on All Of The Things that we're all facing these days. This is the story of one rich girl and three plucky up-and-comers, the one from Vancouver being at the trilogy's heart, who are trying to make their way in the world. We're almost entirely in the sky with our characters, where beings live who don't exist on our Earth (flying mammals that never land, airborn electric squid-things, etc), in a world of airships rather than planes. In a word, Skybreaker isn't going to help me think through problems of extinction, white nationalism, LLM-style AI, cruise-ship hantavirus outbreaks (who had THAT on their 2026 bingo card?!?), and Canadian craven Liberal anti-environmental policies.

And yet! Just like Airborn, this was a ripping yarn, and I'm excited to read the next instalment. Here's hoping I can find a copy before I lose my mojo and start taking myself unhelpfully seriously again.

Short précis: after earning notoriety and a measure of independence in Airborn, Matt Cruse is now a struggling student in Paris at the Airship Academy. Through a complicated series of events, he finds himself central to a clandestine expedition (most of its key figures being teenagers) in search of an almost mythical lost airship belonging to a fabulously wealthy inventor whose eccentricity rivals that of our own Earth's Howard Hughes. His party will have to confront pirates and monopoly capitalists, as our heroes attempt to remain true to their own conflicted priorities and principles while in search of gold, cutting-edge technology, and maybe even zoological specimens. HOW CAN THEY POSSIBLY SURVIVE?

That sounds a bit snippy, but it shouldn't. This book was really, really fun.