Skybreaker [Hardcover]

Kenneth Oppel (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 9 and up

Former cabin boy Matt Cruse, now a student at the prestigious Airship Academy, is first to identify the Hyperion, the private airship of a reclusive and fabulously wealthy inventor that disappeared forty years ago with its owner. Armed with the Hyperion's coordinates, which only he possesses, Matt, heiress Kate de Vries, and a mysterious young gypsy board the Sagarmatha, an airship fitted with the new skybreaker engines that will allow them to reach the Hyperion, 20,000 feet above the earth's surface. Pursued by others who want the Hyperion and will stop at nothing to get it, and surrounded by dangerous high-altitude life forms, Matt and his companions are soon fighting not only for the Hyperion but for their very lives.

In this thrilling sequel to Airborn, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book, Kenneth Oppel evokes the classic storytelling of Robert Louis Stevenson and Jules Verne, creating a world in which a new discovery can have unimagined consequences -- on earth and miles above it.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In this breathtaking sequel to the Governor General's Award-winning fantasy novel Airborn, 16-year-old Matt Cruse flies higher than he ever dreamed. The former Aurora cabin boy, now a student at the prestigious Paris Airship Academy, is on a two-week training tour with a run-down cargo airship when his captain sights a legendary ghost ship. Matt recklessly heads skyward in pursuit--only to risk sacrificing his entire crew to altitude sickness. The Hyperion, lost in a storm in the dawn of the aviation age and buoyed high above the clouds for 40 years, is rumoured to hold great wealth, and Matt is suddenly the only person on earth who knows her coordinates.

Soon, he and his upper-class sweetheart, Kate de Vries, are embarked on a dangerous aerial treasure hunt, along with Hal, the conceited pilot of a sleek, new altitude-friendly airship, and a mysterious gypsy girl named Nadira, who claims to have the key to the Hyperion's booby-trapped treasure troves. Drawing on the myths of Icarus and Prometheus, as well as classic sea adventures like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Poseidon Adventure, Skybreaker combines an action-packed thriller with a sensitive exploration of the limits of human ambition. Matt's jealousy of the self-made Hal (who he suspects has designs on Kate) and his own furtive attraction to Nadira heighten the emotional tension and raw suspense of the visceral scenes aboard the Hyperion, an ice-entombed version of the Titanic. With pirates, sky monsters, and disturbed spirits, not to mention enough bizarre flying machines to fill an aviation museum (even a bat-copter for Silverwing fans), Skybreaker confirms Kenneth Oppel's reputation as Canada's leading fantasy author for children and young adults. --Lisa Alward

From School Library Journal

Grade 6-10–Oppel does it again! This action-packed sequel to Airborn (HarperCollins, 2004) starts with a bang and doesn't let up until the satisfying ending. Matt Cruse, now a student at the Airship Academy, finds himself training as a navigator aboard a worn out, tumbledown cargo airship piloted by a reckless captain. Flying through a typhoon at dangerously high altitudes, they see a ghost ship that set out 40 years before and was never seen again. The captain risks his life, the crew, and his ship as he tries to reach the Hyperion to claim the fortune in gold that's rumored to be aboard. His attempt fails after the crew is stricken with altitude sickness. Only Matt remembers the coordinates of where Hyperion was last seen. This knowledge plunges him and Kate, now a pilot in training herself, into a breakneck race against a pirate intent on getting to the riches. They find themselves aboard a new type of pressurized ship called Skybreaker piloted by Hal, a wealthy and dashing captain with designs on Kate. What they discover aboard Hyperion is a more fabulous treasure than any of them could have imagined. That is, if they survive to tell anyone about it. This worthy companion to Airborn maintains its roller-coaster thrills in true swashbuckling style.–Sharon Rawlins, Piscataway Public Library, NJ
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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9 and up
  
• Hardcover: 369 pages
• Publisher: Eos; First Edition edition (November 29, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060532270
• ISBN-13: 978-0060532277
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,069,018 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kenneth Oppel is the author of numerous books for young readers. His award-winning Silverwing trilogy has sold over a million copies worldwide, and been adapted as an animated TV series and stage play. Airborn was winner of a Michael L Printz Honor Book Award, and the Canadian Governor General's Award for Children's Literature; its sequel, Skybreaker, was a New York Times bestseller and was named Children's Novel of the Year by the London Times. His most recent book is HALF BROTHER. Born on Vancouver Island, he has lived in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, England, Ireland, and now lives in Toronto with his wife and children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book for all ages., September 12, 2005

By 

Randall Richmond (Santa Rosa, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Skybreaker (Hardcover)

This is one of the most perfectly paced novels I have ever read, and I have read hundreds of books in my life. Like many writers, Oppel can make you care about his characters, but that is just one of the levels on which SKYBREAKER succeeds. His ability to twist a cliche sideways and make it ring true is superb. His tactful descriptions of Matt and Kate's feelings for each other are realistic and enjoyable. The adventure aspects abound, yet never seem rushed or over done. All in all a very entertaining book, and one that I hope is just the second in a long running series.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A terrific sequel, December 1, 2005

By 

Camille "at the BookMoot!" (Texas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Skybreaker (Hardcover)

I loved Oppel's Airborn. I describe it as shades of Titanic (in the air) with a touch of Mysterious Island and Pirates of the Carribean thrown in. In this sequel, Oppel takes us back to the world of graceful hydrium ships and into a search for gold.

As a Paris Airship Academy cadet, Matt Cruse is serving on a rust bucket freighter when the crew sights a long-vanished phantom ship, the Hyperion. Like the Flying Dutchmen of shiplore; the Hyperion is more rumor than fact. The ship is at an unreachable altitude but Matt's captain is foolishly determined to capture it. As the crew falls victim to the crushing altitude, Matt is able to save their lives by disobeying a direct order from his captain.

Back in Paris after this episode Matt is wondering if he has a future at the Academy or with the lovely Kate de Vries. Kate wants to prepare an expedition to find the Hyperion though she is more interested in scientific discoveries than the legendary treasure.

Matt alone knows the the ship's last position and others want his knowledge. Should he let the dream of wealth overtake him and join in the hunt for the Hyperion or should he plug away at his studies and forget the whole thing?

Like treasure hunters searching for Spanish galleons at impossible ocean depths, the team will have to break the sky in their quest. A beautiful gypsy girl, a privateer with questionable motives, a prim governess, brilliant Kate and brave but confused Matt make up the party and are in for the flight of their lives.

As Kate suspects, there are other lethal creatures in the sky besides cloud cats. The other presence in the story is the Captain Nemo/Howard Hughes-type eccentric who built the Hyperion so many years ago. Is his spirit ready to part with the secrets of the ghost ship?

Horation Hornblower meets Jules Verne -- this is a cracking read. I hope Oppel will visit this world again. His fascination with bats continues by the way.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another great story from Kenneth Oppel, April 11, 2007

By 

R. Nicholson - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Skybreaker (Mass Market Paperback)

A wonderful fantasy adventure read.

This is a book written with an adolescent audience in mind, however it has the writing quality and story line to keep most adult fantasy/adventure lovers contented.

Personally I liked this book better than "Airborn", (which I felt had some very convienent solutions to solve some of its near impossible situations). This book, (featuring the same main charcters and the same zepellin like airships), seemed to me, to have a better conclusions for the various twists and turns that the heroes encountered.

I found this book hard to put down and would have no hesitancy in recommending it for anyone what wants an interesting, action packed story.
5 Stars!