The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt, (which is 582 pages, by the way, but I am not renaming it Project 8345. Too intimidating.) is a fairly good book. I picked it up based on the cover, as I am wont to do, which is a light yellowy-beige with a black air balloon and red writing. It looked....sweet. The description on the back was not quite as pristine and adorable, but c'mon friends! Balloons!
Except, yeah. It's kinda gritty in places and as an adult (more or less) I objected not to the amount of grittiness, but that the majority is being perpetrated towards these KIDS. There were murders, manipulation and general disaster. Time was when I might have been able to read it and think, yeah, adventure! Somehow, this book just made me think (over and over) "This is wrong. Somebody should be protecting these teens. Why is no one doing anything?" Particularly at the parts where a character, decades older, said something along the lines of 'only you can fix this.' That's not empowering the next generation, that's...just not okay.
This is not to say that I hated the book. No sir. I loved the worldbuilding and I was fascinated by the twists and turns. The dialogue was incredibly well-done, and rarely served as a 'let me tell you about the world' device. Unlike the novel I finished just before this, Anathem by Neal Stephenson, whose use of dialogue was probably 80% designed for 'Mah research. Let me show you it.' The Court of the Air was, mercifully, much better at letting people talk without giving them a library to talk from.
So, The Court of the Air had readability and creativity going for it. Age appropriate action? No.
I'll let you know how the sequel (2 of a planned 7) goes.
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