This book was so much fun. It was Charles Dickens meets Star Wars. I really enjoyed it and I can't wait to read the next one in the series. Plus the illustrations were great too. This was my first real venture into the Steampunk Genre which I had been hearing so much about and I have to say I was really pleased and shocked also that it has been around for the last five years, but I do think it takes about that long for something to really catch on and start proliferating the market. It had what you expect in Steampunk--re-imagined history, advanced iron works, Victorian time period, automatons, and I also read that a Steampunk usual is brass goggles, which this had as well only worn by a small evil spider steering a life size automaton.
Arthur and Myrtle Mumby live in the furthest reaches of space in their home called the Larklight. There mother has been missing since they were little and their father is obsessed with the floating animal life of space. There life is turned topsy turvy (which is easy to do when the gravity generators are turned off) when evil, larger than life spiders attack their home and take their father. They escape to the moon where they are rescued by a ban of misfit pirates. Aboard the pirate ship Sophronia they travel through the galaxy attempting to keep a mysterious key away from the spiders and potentially find the whereabouts of their parents.
Full of action, humor, romance, piracy, space travel and British manners, this book has a little of everything for everyone. Sadly, my only problem with it is also what makes it great. The language is highly advanced as its stylized after the novels of the 1800s. I felt like I was reading an updated version of H.G. Wells' The First Men in the Moon and even the author alludes to the role of Dickens in shaping the Copperfield-esque story. I want to give this book to so many of my readers for all different reasons but I'm afraid they will be bogged down by the language and put it aside. Here's hoping that won't happen.
Interest level: Grade 5-8 Intended reading level: Grade 7
Genre: Steampunk/Fantasy, Adventure
Comparable Titles: The Search for WondLa, David Copperfield, The First Men in the Moon
Book Connections: British Colonization history, Newton and the study of Gravity, pirates, space travel, aliens, spiders
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