The Court of the Air [Paperback]

Trust your whims. I picked this up on a whim and was mightily pleased.

Set on a near earth in a steam-driven, difference engine-run victorian-ish empire, Court of the Air follows the trials, tribulations and finally exultations of two orphans, Molly and Oliver. They experience great heroism and great evil,see the exploits of man, crab-man, mole-man and steam-man, travel from one end of the empire to the other and finally realise their true potential.

Okay, so far, so familiar, and perhaps that is part of it's appeal. The wheel has not been reinvented, but the finish is nice and there's something very chunky about it. For a steampunk fantasy, this has it all, shatring a kinship with the work of Mieville and Reeve but not being as dark as former or teen orientated as the latter. There is brutality; there is levity; there is some pretty amusing wit and oodles of retro tech and high magic.

The pace is cracking for a book this size and though some of the characters transitions feel a little too abrupt there is some good development going on here and the last battle is a doozy, even if the ending is taken out of the hands of mortals - but the clue was in the name of the machine, wasn't it?

Yes, it does borrow heavily from Wells, Verne, Tolkien and Burroughs, but it's good fun and lovingly crafted. China Mieville may have beaten him to the punch, but it is a rare occurence that sees me refusing to do anything else (eat, sleep, other functions) until I have completed a book. Good fun, what what?

Wow! There is so much to love about this book. It's fast paced, action packed, crammed full with great ideas and big personalities and has a real emotional roller coaster of a story.

All of that is waiting to be discovered and enjoyed the only problem is you are thrown headlong into the alien world (a kind of steam driven sc-fi Victorian world) without guide, map, briefing or translator. The first 200 pages were like hacking through a near impenitrable forest with a pen knife!. As nothing is explained to the reader you have to figure everything out yourself which is initially exhausting.

However once you have got your bearings and sussed out the terminology you emerge from the forest onto a truly awe inspiring landscape, magician's, robots, spies, an airborne navy, revolutionaries, superheroes, full pitched battles, underground cities, floating cities... I could go on, safe to say there is plenty happening! and all at a breathless, break neck hurtling pace. A real page turner.

Do not be fooled by the jolly Phileas Fogg cover either, this is a grim and dark adult/teen story, not a children story. I won't even try to give you a plot synopsis but the action revolves around two teenage orphans who are sucked into a battle for the very earth itself. However there is a huge cast list of support charactors and it was here I found the most endearing personalities.

I really feel a glossory would have helped and I am amazed it hasn't got one and this omission along with for me a slightly disappointing final show down with the chief baddy is all that stopped it getting a full 5 stars and I will be buying the next in the series fairly shortly! which is supposed to be even better.

Stephen Hunt's "The Court of The Air" has been out for some time now, but until recently I've been put off reading it by negative comments and often mixed reviews. Well, I finally took the plunge and, while I can see how it might not be for everyone, what's certain is that it's definitely for me.

I read this 600-page beast in 3 days flat (Admittedly I don't have much of a life). It's a dizzying joy of a novel, a colourful mish-mash of ideas and influences of such startling vividness that at times it was like a splash of cold water in the face.

Needless to say, I loved this novel.

The background concerns the two rival countries of Jackals and Quatershift, which are ruled by twisted parodies of real political systems - One a cruel kind of constitutional monarchy, the kind that nobody would want to be monarch of, the other an extreme form of Communism which takes the concept of "equality for all" to insane and gruesome lengths. Add to this a touch of the French Revolution and the English civil war, a free state of intelligent steam-powered robots (often the most sympathetic characters), some secret police, a mutating/superpower bestowing fog known as "feymist" (Which may also be the entrance to another reality), Long-dead, subterranean Aztec-style civilizations with ancient insect gods (Who want to come back), bizarre land disturbances known as "floatquakes" which send sections of land bouncing upwards into space(!), Dickensian squalor, a touch of social commentary, and quite a lot else - in fact, so much idea and invention it's impossible to mention it all in one review - all funnelled through a comparatively straightforward plot about two fugitive orphans with a destiny, a grand political conspiracy, and a Crown Prince who doesn't want to have his arms chopped off come Coronation day.

In short, it's bonkers. And utterly, utterly brilliant.

Admittedly the book can be a bit of a challenge, at least initially. No, not much is explained, and the author does require you to do some of the work yourself, but that's fine and a perfectly acceptable way to write. Perhaps readers who expect to be spoonfed, expect novels to be like a form of text television where no thought is required on the part of the audience, will be disappointed, but I didn't mind at all. I had no trouble understanding any of the concepts, the plot or what the overarching themes were. I was never confused and never bored, not for a moment. And I make no claims to genius.

Having said that, a little more physical description could have come in handy on occasion, as I sometimes had trouble visualising objects, people and settings from Hunt's terse one-line sketches.

Also, something I only noticed after reading it is that it's an oddly asexual novel. Not only is there no romance, (Which I was a little disappointed about as I was expecting fireworks when Molly and Oliver finally met) but as far as I can remember very few, if any, of the characters in the book had a wife or a husband or a significant other of any kind. Not a criticism as such, but something I found a little odd in retrospect.

But overall I'm happy to say, after Having finally gotten around to reading this, I'll be buying the other three (so far) in this series and devouring them all in one enormous book-based gulp. I've just discovered my new favourite author.

Don't let the nay-sayers put you off - if you like fantasy fiction and don't mind a read that challenges you, crack this open as soon as you can get your hands on it!