Starclimber
(Sequel to Airborn and Skybreaker)
Kevin Oppel
Harper
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Matt Cruse, born aboard a hydrium airship, has come a long way since his days as a cabin boy aboard the luxury liner Aurora. He has fought pirates, discovered new life forms, and seen a lost legend of the skies. With him on all these adventures has been Kate de Vries, a wealthy socialite girl with the very unladylike qualities of curiosity and independence. Matt has long been in love with her, but despite his heroism and hard work, he cannot overcome his class... and Kate, a headstrong girl and outspoken advocate for women's rights and independence, has gone so far as to declare her own intentions never to marry, lest she sacrifice her dreams of scientific exploration.
Before his final year at the Academy in Paris where Matt has been training to be a sky sailor, he takes a job as captain of an aerocrane helping the French construct "the Eighth Wonder of the World": the Celestial Tower, already two kilometers tall, aiming to pierce the firmament. But, proud as the French are, they haven't a clue that Canada is ready to beat them into space with a top-secret project... a project Kate and Matt, both loyal Canadians, are recruited for. The Starclimber is like no other vessel known on Earth. Not a hydrium airship or a powered ornithopter, it clings to and climbs an electrified cable spooled out from a rocket.
Among the first humans to peek above the atmosphere, Matt and his fellow astralnauts find themselves facing wonders and dangers beyond imagination... and possibly beyond their ability to survive.
REVIEW: The third book in Oppel's untitled series about Matt Cruse and his alternate-history Earth, this story reads like a finale. Like the first two books, it's mostly a larger-than-life adventure tale, with people tending to fit into nicely predetermined roles to enable said adventure. Matt continues to rise to the challenges presented, but not without struggle and the occasional failure; his victories, when he reaches them, feel earned rather than simply granted by virtue of his status as protagonist. I found Kate less annoying here than in the previous installment (Skybreaker), in no small part because she wasn't the one who kept getting them into trouble; trouble finds them without any help on her part whatsoever. The story moves along at a nice pace, and Oppel presents some nice shiny-object ideas with this tale of pioneering steampunk space explorers. A fun, fast read that makes a nice conclusion to the story of Matt and Kate. (I'm hoping Oppel knows how to quit when he's ahead... though, of course, I'll happily read more in this series if he's got a worthy story to go with it.)
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