Everyone wants to fly and that's what readers do as they zoom through the skies with Eoin Colfer's new flying hero, Conor Broekhart Airman (Puffin) is a swashbuckling fantasy full of ingenuity characteristic of the creator of the 12-year-old boy genius Artemis Fowl.
Rather than imagining new worlds, Colfer chooses to reinvent the history of Ireland's Saltee Islands, a pair of small islands lying off its southern coast.
In the palace of Great Saltee in the 1890s, evil minds hatch a conspiracy to overthrow the good king.
Conor's life changes forever when he tries to expose the plot but gets branded as a traitor and is thrown into prison in the island of Little Saltee.
In between fighting for his life and mining for underwater diamonds, Conor - rumoured to have been born flying in a hot air balloon at the Paris world fair - embarks on a grand plan to take flight and escape his prison.