Skybreaker
In this breathtaking sequel to the Governor General's Award-winning fantasy novelAirborn, 16-year-old Matt Cruse flies higher than he ever dreamed. The formerAuroracabin 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. TheHyperion, 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 theHyperion's booby-trapped treasure troves. Drawing on the myths of Icarus and Prometheus, as well as classic sea adventures like20,000 Leagues Under the SeaandThe Poseidon Adventure,Skybreakercombines 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 theHyperion, an ice-entombed version of theTitanic. With pirates, sky monsters, and disturbed spirits, not to mention enough bizarre flying machines to fill an aviation museum (even a bat-copter forSilverwingfans),Skybreakerconfirms Kenneth Oppel's reputation as Canada's leading fantasy author for children and young adults.--Lisa Alward--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.