Meggin Reads Airman

It is nearing the end of the nineteenth century, during the age of the English Industrial Revolution, and where the age of flight and invention begins. There is heated competition between countries across the world to invent the best innovated contraptions in order to make their rival countries look like fools and scatterbrains living behind the times. One of these aspiring places is the island of Great Saltee, off the coast of Ireland, whose king encourages advances in science and technology. It is also the place where a young boy gets caught up in conspiratorial turmoil, and must take to the skies to make things right again.

I've read Eoin (pronouced "Owen", for those non-Irish folk) Colfer's spectacularly fantastical series Artemis Fowl, in which a teenage criminal mastermind encounters the fairytale creatures of legend, and when I received this book as a gift, I thought it couldn't be anything short of brilliant. Colfer manages to take realistic, plottable places on a map and turn them into fantasies. Yes, I did Google Map search Great Saltee, and it's there. It exists. But it's nothing like the Great Saltee in Airman.

Some brief history: the Saltee Islands are composed of two islands: Great Saltee and Little Saltee. Great Saltee is where they have their own little monarchy of sorts, with an actual king and queen and sirs and ladies in waiting and such. Great Saltee was given to a knight of England's King Henry II in 1171 as a cruel joke. Said knight, Raymond Trudeau, was a bit overambitious, so King Henry crowned him king of the Saltees, which were barren islands at the time. The Trudeau family reluctantly ruled the Saltees, until they struck gold on Little Saltee. Well, not gold, but diamonds. King Henry didn't know that he just made Trudeau the wealthiest man in Europe. Little Saltee was excavated and mined for its riches, and throughout the generations, the Trudeaus sentenced criminals to the diamond mines to dig up the gems for them as punishment. Most of the diamonds were traded with other countries for money and other necessary supplies for Great Saltee. However, many countries knew of the riches the Saltees contained, and tried to invade countless times, but were always trumped by Great Saltee's impenetrable wall that surrounds the island, and by its highly trained Saltee Sharpshooters. When "Good King Nick", a survivor of the Trudeau line living in America fighting in the Civil War, assumed the throne, life greatly improved on Great Saltee. He abolished taxes, increased trade, and strongly encouraged developments in science and technology. But someone wanted to overthrow King Nicholas. Someone whose family has been patiently waiting for generations to do so...

And so, we come across the miraculous birth of Conor Broekhart. Declan and Catherine Broekhart attended a balloon festival in France with their close pal, Victor Vigny. Catherine was several months away from giving birth to a son, but she pressed that she wanted to ride in a balloon. After a heated assassination attempt in the air, Catherine went into unexpected labour in the balloon, giving birth to Conor. So you see, Conor was "born to fly," as everyone keeps saying. And that was all Conor ever thought about: how he desperately wanted to fly once again. After living on Great Saltee with his family for fourteen years and being close friends with the king's daughter, Princess Isabella, Conor receives training and education from Victor Vigny himself, from fighting to aerodynamics to scheming up flying machines. However, all of this changes when Conor accidentally gets involved with a conspiracy over the Saltee throne. Conor is branded a traitor and is sent to Little Saltee to mine diamonds for the rest of his life. At least, until he thinks of a perfect way to escape the prison, involving a certain heavier-than-air flying machine...

There are times when Colfer's writing prose takes me back to a time of limited technology, dramatic royalty, and women in long, heavy dresses, and yet he can switch to quick-thinking and scientific advancement when the story focuses on Conor. It's as if Conor's mind is accelerated compared to most of the society he finds on the Saltees, and we witness him easily manipulate others because he simply observes everything and knows more. Conor also has this incredibly sharp and sarcastic wit that we see whenever he talks to Victor Vigny and his prison mate, Linus Wynter.

I hardly think there should be an age limit as to who should read this book (although I did spot the Disney logo on the spine), because it appears to have enough material for anyone of all ages to understand. However, it is not a girly book. I mean, there are some romantic-type bits, but not in the sappy, dramatic way that girls usually interpret. Another book or book series that I strongly recommend if you like Airman is the previously mentioned Artemis Fowl series. Really. The guy is like a kid genius.