Book Review: Airman

“Other men look up and down, left and right; but men like us are different. We are visionaries. There is always a use for everything, Victor had told him. Even pain.” 

I have recently thought that maybe I should say why I review books all the time.  A huge reason why is because I like reading book reviews.  I like reading what books people liked so that I can get good ideas on what I should read next.  I also like hearing people's takes on books that I already read.  And if I like a book, I like finding other people who do too.  If you didn't like a book I did, I will still like it, but finding someone who likes it too is kind of an automatic friendship booster.  It gives you something in common and something to talk about.  And then, I like talking about books.  I wish I could have a permanent book club, but one that would read all the genres I like and none of the ones I don't.  I've found, however, that book clubs seem to be for one of the following categories: 1) New York Times bestsellers, but only the Fern-Michaels-Jodi-Picoult-way 2) Married Women.

But, now to the good part.  Since I have a vacation in between my school and my internship, I have been positively devouring books.  In fact, there's a queue of books to be reviewed.  I figured I should intersperse other things inside.   Also, if it is a series, I like to review it as a whole if I can.  Next on the list is one I finished on Saturday:  Airman, by Eoin Colfer.

 

After he hijacked one of my favorite series, Artemis Fowl, and took them from the gorgeous specimens he wrote in the first four into the flat-out bizarre books they were later in the series, I had a hard time forgiving Eoin Colfer.  I decided to give him another chance.  I checked two of his books out of the library: The Wish List (which was good at the time, but so forgettable it isn't even getting a review) and Airman.  With Airman, Eoin Colfer has regained my accolades.

Conor Broekhart (half-Flemish-half-Irish) is the son of Declan Broekhart, the Captian of the Sharpshooters under King Nicholas of the Saltees, a half-fictional nation off the coast of Ireland.  It's half-fictional because the islands exist, but they are not a sovereign nation and are not actually really inhabited.  Conor is also the playmate of Isabella (Nicholas' daughter) and the apprentice of Victor, the French scientist that teaches Conor everything from fencing, to languages, to martial arts.  Conor is a genius scientist and, with Victor, believes that man can, and will fly. He was born in an air balloon and, from there on out, has had flying in his soul.  But in the 1880s and 1890s, that's a little bit of a crazy thought.  When the Marshal of the Saltees, Hugo Bonvilain, attempts to take over the Saltees through murder, intrigue, wrongful imprisonment and everything in between, it's time for Conor to bust out the genius teenage boy and save the nation and his love, Isabella, using his smarts and scheming plus his turn-of-the-century flying machines.  

It was exciting, intriguing and adventurous.  It was also fun to see a royal-intrigue novel set in the 1800s, which doesn't happen a lot.  Eoin Colfer keeps straddling genres, like he always does so you don't know exactly where to put this one.  I also think that he is the king of writing boy-books that don't stoop to characters named Poopypants and Belchwizzle.  My criticisms are few, but they exist.  First, Conor's 150-page pity-party of "I will escape my predicament, but I know my father hates me so I won't go back to that" got a little old at about page 76 of it.  Thankfully, that's not all that was going on in those 150-pages, but it still was a little tiresome.  Second, Eoin Colfer seems to know how to make two types of characters:  The dumb as dirt, and the frighteningly freakish-genius.

In all, great book, but didn't capitalize my mind for the rest of the day like a really good book does.  Let's say 4 out of 5.