Airman by Eoin Colfer

In Airman, Eoin Colfer, author of Artemis Fowl and the Supernaturalist, weaves the story of Connor Broekhart, the son of a famed sharpshooter during the 19^th century who lives on the fictional Saltee Islands.  Connor spends his early youth with the island’s princess while learning about science, weaponry, and, most important of all, aviation, from a Frenchman named Victor.  However, a power-hungry marshall named Bonvillain murders Victor and the king, leaving only Connor as a witness. The marshall quickly imprisons Connor in the mines of Little Saltee, where prisoners are sent to mine for diamonds in a prison hewn from stone. Trapped with hundreds of convicts on a barren rock, Connor is forced to use all of his skills to survive, in the process losing his will to return to his old life on the larger island. He longs only for aviation, and diamonds he has stolen from the island will help fund his research.  After escaping the island aboard a balloon, Connor is forced to return to Saltee to save his family and friends from Bonvillain’s attempts to seize the throne once more.

Quite frankly, I expected this novel to be below my reading level and rather childish. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the book, while easily read by anyone reading this blog, has an interesting plot and somewhat believable characters. Though Colfer writes for a range from children to early teens, Airman features decent dialogue, fantastic descriptions, tidy, skillful writing, and a plot that both follows a tried-and-true formula with twists and proves itself as clever. The backstory of the island itself is satisfying, telling of a medieval knight whose king awarded him with several craggy islands of no worth as a cruel joke. Ironically, the islands were rilled with diamonds. Comparisons to other literature are bound to spring up. Readers familiar with the Count of Monte Cristo by Alejandre Dumas will recognize elements as similar, such as the imprisonment of the innocent and attempts to escape. Connor is temporarily fitted with a mask for the “insane” inmates of the island, which loosely resembles Dumas’ other work, The Man in the Iron Mask. The book functions well as a period piece, a tale of false imprisonment, and also as a bildungsroman. Though the novel is over four hundred pages long, the reading goes lightning fast. The novel’s swiftness can be credited to a mixture of an engrossing story, flavorful writing, and type with a decent spacing. The time period was used quite well, as the book takes place shortly before the flight of the Wright brothers.  The competition for first flight arouses many parallels to the race for space that the world experienced in the nineteen fifties. I especially enjoyed the novel for its vivid description of flying, but the clever and adventurous plot and tight writing made this book worth my time.  I would heartily recommend this book for fans of Colfer, readers who enjoy aviation, or people who like adventure or can appreciate the time period.