Airborn

Well, this novel was one of the better Printz award books I've read to date. With exceptions like “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson, many of the Printz award and honor books that I have read are ones that I have just never been able to get into for various reasons. This one on the other hand, had a very enjoyable first half and tended to stumble and never recover the momentum for the rest of the novel.

The first positive I have is that this book tends to create an excellent atmosphere. For the first half of this book, we are exposed to excellent elements that make up the world building, including Matt Cruse himself, and his time aboard the airship, the Aurora. It is fun, exciting and engrossing. I liked the dialogue that Matt had with everyone, even Kate, who they had a noticeable chemistry together. This is helped by the fact that I listened to it on audio, which featured a full cast. This helped to make the book all the more enjoyable.

Sadly, something happens to this book that makes this novel's pacing grind to a screeching halt, and never fully recover.Without going into spoilers, I'll just say that Matt and company wind up on a stranded island and they then have to get off somehow. What happens in this book, around the 50% mark I won't get into, only to say that the dialogue and actions between Matt and Kate become less charming and more annoying, with Kate constantly putting either herself, Matt, or the entire crew of the Aurora in danger for a personal vendetta. After this point, her likability decreases considerably for me, and never really manages to recover. The plot also takes a hit here too, with the momentum that made the first half so good, come to a halt, as Matt and Kate tread through an uninteresting, and unexciting jungle for what feels like hundreds of pages.

Also, there are many different conveniences in this book. Again, explaining them here would constitute going into major spoilers, but suffice to say that there are so many conveniences they began to feel forced by the end, as though the author was trying to cram a refrigerator sized box into a garbage can and pretend that it just naturally fits. He can say that, but it isn't without the force required that I was bound to notice.

Still, I would not let that scare you off. I would say that this reminds me of Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan series, only a little more grounded in reality, but by no means less of an adventure. If you are interested in this, then I suggest you pick this one up. If you can stand to ignore all of these problems that I mentioned, or they would not bother you as much, then this should be fun read for you. I give it a three out of five.