Readers discover the multiple layers of meaning of the book's title as they follow the characters' adventures. Oppel creates a believable world, and, as a reader, I was most intrigued with his unique idea of great soaring airships traversing the world. As well as sharing several adventures in the novel, Kate and Matt are also romantically attracted to each other. Kate, who defies the gender expectations of her society, is strong-willed and resolute in her search for the winged creatures.

Matt is a hard-working young man who is dedicated to both his family and the Aurora. The duo must escape from their buccaneer captors and save the other crew and passengers aboard the Aurora.īoth Kate and Matt are determined characters.

As well as locating the mysterious creature they name the cloud cat, Kate and Matt encounter the pirates again. The Aurora manages to land safely on an island, and Kate's search for the winged creatures begins in earnest. A storm front blows the pirates' ship into the Aurora, and the luxury ship's hull is punctured. Ruthless pirates board and pillage the Aurora. Kate is determined to locate the winged species and take a photograph of the mysterious creatures. Matt reads the excerpts about the creatures that Kate's grandfather saw in the sky. Matt learns that Kate is the granddaughter of the man he rescued from the Endurance, and she shares his journal with Matt. Matt meets Miss Kate de Vries and her chaperone, Miss Simpkins, who are on voyage to Sydney. One year later, Matt is bitterly disappointed when he learns that he will not receive a well-deserved promotion as another adolescent, whose father is wealthy, has been assigned to the Aurora. Before the rescued man dies, he speaks of the beautiful creatures he saw in the sky and remarks that 'Kate. Matt makes a daring rescue to save the sole occupant in the gondola of the Endurance. While on watch in the crow's nest one night, Matt sights a hot-air balloon hanging in the night sky. Matt's father was killed three years ago while working on the Aurora, and Matt feels closest to his father while airborne. Fifteen-year-old Matt Cruse, the narrator of the book, is the cabin boy for the Aurora, a 900-foot luxury airship. In an imaginary past, great airships, fueled by hydrium, the lightest gas in the world, traverse the globe. Over the Pacificus, you don't see much traffic, though earlier I'd caught the distant flicker of a steamer ploughing the waves towards the Orient. The lookout's job was to watch for weather changes, and also for other ships, especially anything suspicious.

Here at the Aurora's summit, shielded by a glass observation dome, I had a three-sixty view of the sky around and above the ship. Spyglass to my face, I slowly swept the heavens.

Matt cruse airborn