Synopsis 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.
