Airman by Eoin Colfer

4.5 Stars -- I liked it quite a bit!

This is one of those pleasant surprises. I had forgotten to put any books on hold at the library for a while, and I was out of reading material, so I was relegated to perusing the shelves for books that looked interesting. I don't usually have great luck doing that. The great majority of books are mediocre or, even worse, down-right bad. I don't remember what other titles I picked up that day, but I was quite pleased by Airman by Eoin Colfer.

If you're not familiar with his name, Eoin Colfer wrote the Artemis Fowl series. My husband really likes the series, and I think we own nearly all of them, even though it's written for YA, possibly even juveniles.

But this post isn't about Artemis Fowl.

Airman is a steampunk novel about Conor Broekhart, and it is very reminiscent of The Count of Monte Cristo (I have read the book itself, which was okay, but I thought the movie was fantastic and remember watching it time and time again when I was in college).

In Airman, Conor, a young genius born to fly, is accused of murdering the king and is unfairly imprisoned. Using the knowledge gained from his French tutor before his imprisonment and advice taken from a blind musician who shares his cell, Conor has to escape and prove his innocence before the villain kills the princess too.

The story takes place on a pair of ficticious islands off the coast of Ireland in the late 1800s (obviously... it's steampunk afterall!). Conor is a strong character, and his transformation from innocent quick-witted boy to hardened prison leader, while quick, is understandable and not unbelievable. His escape plan is very steampunk-worthy.

The climax of the story, Conor's reunion with his family and the evil Marshall Bonvilain, is fast-paced and full of twists and turns, though of course everything turns out fine in the end.

Overall, I think this book is of much higher quality than the Artemis Fowl books (though those are entertaining in their own right), and I approve of Colfer's new endeavor. But then again, I'm partial to steampunk :)

So if you want a quick, riotous read and feel like a little Monte Cristo without all the dragging found in the original book, Airman is quite a suitable replacement.