“One of my childhood favorites was The Princess Bride [by William Goldman]. Read that to see how I was influenced by his pacing and the swashbuckling tone he set there while being quite humorous. That’s one of the finest examples of a high adventure book,” Eoin Colfer says in a recent interview with the magazine Newsweek.
Airman is a fabulous mix of adventure, high daring and romance. There are comic moments, but these are lowkey compared with the emphasis on high adventure. Colfer has already achieved fame and fortune with his Artemis Fowl novels. With Airman he will have achieved new stature and respect for his abilities as an author.
With each turn of the page the quality and pitch of the writing seems to ratchet up an extra notch until, in the last section of the book, it feels to me that Colfer is writing at the the very peak of his abilities, skillfully maintaining tension and excitement while repeating scenes from different points of view.
He has produced a work of literally marvellous escapism, and selected a real-life setting (The Saltees) perfect for his requirement.
Very highly recommended for confident readers aged 9+.
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