When I read a sequel to a really good book, and it’s good, but it’s not quite as good as the first one, I feel awkward about saying it. After all, how often is a sequel as good as the first one? If I tell you “it’s not as good as the first one”, I’m not really telling you anything at all. You nod, and you say “isn’t that always the case”, and then we talk about something else.
So Your Humble Blogger is sorry to say that Skybreaker isn’t as good as the first one. It’s still very good and all, but not as good as Airborn. Isn’t that always the case?
The specifics, though, are (in my arrogant opinion) interesting. All the wonderful outrageousness is there, and more; he adds to the sky pirates and zeppelins and the Mad Scientist not only a Ghost Zeppelin but giant electric sky squid (hurray!). As in the previous book, Matt and Kate are smart and curious, and react to their discoveries intelligently. The problem, though, is that in the ending of this book, they luck into a bunch of stuff. Gold bars come out of nowhere. More is made of Matt’s curious imperviousness to thin air.
What’s worse is that the Mad Scientist had invented a perpetual motion machine, which is destroyed by the Evil Oil Company (that’s all right, Best Beloved), after which there’s a search for the blueprints, without which the secret will never be known. Hunh? Kate’s a scientist for crying out loud. I know the Mad Scientist was a genius, but she had a good look at the blueprints and the notes (I can’t remember if they kept the notebook, or if it, too, was destroyed) and surely she should be thinking that she could fund research into what was obviously a fruitful area. Farah Mendlesohn at one point said the difference between fantasy and science-fiction was that in fantasy knowledge was once complete but has been lost and must be recovered (through finding the lost books of knowledge), while in science-fiction knowledge is incomplete and must be discovered (through experimentation and observation). I don’t accept that as genre-defining, but I do think it’s an important distinction to keep in mind, and it reveals a lot about the world of the story. In Airborn, clearly, knowledge was clearly to be expanded; in Skybreaker there is still a lot of that, but there’s in this main plot point, it shifts to the other paradigm. That felt very awkward to me.
Well, so what I’m saying is that it wasn’t as good as the first one. Isn’t that always the way?
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.