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    The Court of the Air
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    The Court of the Air
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    The Court of the Air
    Ebook636 pages13 hours

    The Court of the Air

    By Stephen Hunt

    3/5

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    About this ebook

    A hugely engaging adventure set in a Victorian-style world – a fantastical version of Dickens – that will appeal to fans of Susanna Clarke and Philip Pullman.

    Two orphans are more than they seem. And one megalomaniac will stop at nothing to find them…

    When Molly Templar witnesses a brutal murder at the brothel she has just been apprenticed to, her first instinct is to return to the poorhouse where she grew up. But there she finds her fellow orphans butchered, and it slowly dawns on her that she was in fact the real target of the attack. For Molly carries a secret deep in her blood, a secret that marks her out for destruction by enemies of the state. Soon Molly will find herself battling a grave threat to civilization which draws on an ancient power thought to have been quelled millennia ago.

    Oliver Brooks has led a sheltered life in the home of his merchant uncle. But when he is framed for his only relative's murder he is forced to flee for his life. He is accompanied by Harry Stave, an agent of the Court of the Air – a shadowy organization independent of the government that acts as the final judiciary of the land, ensuring that order prevails. Chased across the country, Oliver finds himself in the company of thieves, outlaws and spies, and gradually learns more about the secret that has blighted his life, but which may also offer him the power to avert the coming catastrophe.

    Their enemies are ruthless and myriad, but Molly and Oliver are joined by indomitable friends in this endlessly inventive tale full of drama, intrigue and adventure.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateSep 4, 2008
    ISBN9780007279432
    Unavailable
    The Court of the Air
    Author

    Stephen Hunt

    Stephen Hunt is the author of several fantasy titles set in the Victorian-style world of the Kingdom of Jackals and is also the founder of www.SFcrowsnest.com, one of the oldest and most popular fan-run science fiction and fantasy websites, with nearly three quarters of a million readers each month. Born in Canada, the author presently lives in London, as well as spending part of the year with his family in Spain

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    Reviews for The Court of the Air

    3/5

    39 ratings44 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Definitely needs a few explanations of some words which the author has made up....
    • 1/5
      Unfinished. Dire.
    • 3/5
      I loved this book! Great steam punk fantasy with a plethora of fascinating characters. Molly and Oliver are slightly unconvincing towards the end however overall I enjoyed the Jackelian world and its peoples enough to make me want to read another.
    • 1/5
      I tried. I really, really tried. But 251 pages into a 500 page book and I still wasn't enjoying it or finding anything with which I could connect, and I placed it in one of those book-sharing boxes near a coffee shop. I realize Stephen Hunt's forte is in world building and he does a magnificent job. But I like characters who do something in a plot, and after the first 50 pages there ceased to be that aspect of this world.
    • 5/5
      The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt is a steampunk tour de force. Endlessly inventive and as intricately plotted as George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, The Court of the Air is a tale no reader should miss.On the surface, this stand-alone tale is ostensibly about two orphans, Molly and Oliver. Gifted in different ways (one through science, the other through magic) these two are forced on the run. These two story arcs move separately from each other, only crossing paths indirectly for most of the novel, although they the do meet once, near the end of the story. They strange gifts of each must be called upon when they find they are the last, best hope for the salvation of mankind from the forces of evil.Part Fahrenheit 451, Animal Farm, and Victorian era novel, The Court of the Air is both a challenging and entertaining read. The former is most evident early in the book. Hunt wastes no words in trying to explain the history of the setting, nor does he try to give reasons for the technology the reader will encounter. For the reader this may cause some difficulty, since the setting is wildly different from our own, and Hunt throws a lot of creative word usage at the reader right from the beginning. The latter is a result of Hunt’s action. It is almost non-stop, and as the byline on the front of the novel states, the tale truly is “a fantastical tale of high adventure, low life rouges, and orphans on the run.” The reader can’t help but be excited as Molly and Oliver move from scene to scene, finding dangers ever more harrowing. Their ultimate triumph comes all the more sweetly as a result.In essence, there are two story arcs occurring in The Court of the Air. One is a political satire, pitting capitalism against Marxism. The second, and by far the one with the most page time, is the adventures of Molly and Oliver, as they race against time to save their world from a horrible death. And yet, though these two plots may be strange bedfellows, they are interwoven so cleverly, that they seem as one.The Court of Air is a complex and convoluted novel. Hunt’s world building is exquisite, and I’ve never read another novel like it. It is exciting and fast paced, with myriad plot twists and turns, interesting characters, and fantasy world that manages to blend the modern and the fantastical all into one package. The best comparison to make is not to another novel, but rather to a video game. The Final Fantasy games (especially VII, X and X-2) kept coming to mind as I read Hunt’s novel. Like them, The Court of Air is always full of adventure, with a unique and detailed world. I highly recommend this book to all readers. It is already on my best of the year list. I think the only way to top it will be with the next book by Stephen Hunt, set in the same world and with some of the same characters, but still a stand alone novel, called The Kingdom Beyond the Waves.Full Review at Grasping for the Wind
    • 2/5
      Huge battle that I cared nothing for. A stove is not my idea of a hero.
    • 3/5
      I liked much of this book, but there were definitely a few detractions.

      1.) Steam-punk to the face: magic, machines, outlaws, "Carlist" Marxists, faiery/"fey" powers, other dimensions, Chtuluian old gods, orphans **huge inhale**, pirates, mutants, and ice age, underground cities... It does all sort of hang together, but it is like a fire-hose of tropes to the face.

      2.) Characters do seem thin. Partially this is because of #1: one of the main characters is an orphan girl... who seems a lot like a generic, spunky orphan heroine. And partially this is because there isn't a lot of time left, even in nearly 600 pages, to flesh out all 20-ish main and important supporting characters.

      On the plus side, the world was interesting, perhaps too much so, even: parallel worlds/higher levels/etc.; deep history; outlines of a much larger and politically stable, if not necessarily peaceful, world; and plenty of loose ends to lead to further books (a number of which I see have already been written.)

      And, in disagreement with what some have written here, I though the book moved along quite quickly.
    • 4/5
      I thought this was a great book. I liked all the action and the drama. I think the author took a couple of interesting ideas and wove them together pretty well.

      There were a few places where I thought it could have been better. At points there were just too many characters doing different things, and the different plots didn't always flow together that well.

      That said, I still had a great time while reading it and will definitely read it again.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this book, but somewhere in the middle I put it down and felt no interest in picking it back up again. I think there was a lack of coherence and/or urgency to the plot. It skipped between two main characters' stories. Presumably, the two protagonists meet up eventually, but for whatever reason I lost interest before that happened.
    • 3/5
      Such interesting ideas but, in my opinion, poorly executed. My biggest complaints are (1) the voices of the VERY DIFFERENT characters didn't vary enough one from another (i.e., the robot king had the same voice as the 12-year-old boy with fey powers who had the same voice as the 17-year-old girl on the run from everyone....) and (2) the "action scenes" had the same tone as anything else, including the (extensive) expository portions.
    • 1/5
      The blurb and storyline gleaned from descriptions and reviews seems intriguing, but the pacing, writing-style and Mary-Sue orphan characters really made me feel it was perhaps not worth it. A possible return if I completely run out of anything else to read.
    • 5/5
      I was thinking about giving this book 4 stars but really I said, "Man this book is awesome" way too many times to not give it 5 stars. It's really about action and ideas and a fully realized world. The action is almost constant and it's fun. The characters are badasses (not right away but at some point). People also die so it doesn't feel like a Disney fantasy where everything works out perfect. It's brutal and gritty and political. All I have to say is voodoo practicing steam men and insane insect gods feeding off the still warm hearts of 1000's of humans, airships dropping dirtgas on protesting socialists and a king with no arms. I think you get.I actually read the 2nd book in this series first The Kingdom Beyond the Waves but it didn't make much of a difference. It's not the same characters just the same world. I actually like this one more.
    • 4/5
      I wouldn't really call this steampunk, but I enjoyed it a lot.
    • 2/5
      I REALLY wanted to love this book. Written by the creator of the comprehensive sf website SFcrowsnest.com, it had so much going for it: steampunk, heros, battles for kingdoms… Alas, it failed me.
      Without going into the plot line and revealing spoilers, I never ended up caring about any of the characters. At 600 pages, it was about 200 pages too long, most of it battle scenes. Don’t get me wrong, the scenes were well-written, but there were just too many of them. On with the plot, I say!! Unfortunately, this first book of a series did not entice me to venture further into the second book.
    • 3/5
      A note to anyone looking to pick up this book for the first time - make sure when you're reading, you devote your whole attention to it. Don't pick it up for five minutes at a time, and don't be distracted. Or else you will never quite pick up the drift of this odd story.While it has an interesting premise, the complex land of Jackals, its inhabitants and its surrounds were poorly presented, details given rapidly and at random opportunities, leaving the reader to infer the background of the story as well as they can. The two young heros around which this story revolves meet only once in the entire book, more than 300 pages in. I found it strange that the two characters crucial to the plot have very little knowledge of each other. I also found it difficult to believe that the two worldly, well spoken and clued in orphans were only around 11 or 12 years old.Also - I got very sick of reading the words 'the disreputable Stave'. There are other adjectives, Hunt.2.5 stars. 
    • 3/5
      Stephen Hunt's first Jackelian novel is a big, overstuffed steampunk classic -- a Jules Verne/Charles Dickens/H.P. Lovecraft mashup -- filled with political intrigue, steam powered devices and strange magic. It's a little confusing at first, but hang in there. You don't have to understand the machines or memorize who all the political players are. That will become clear enough over the course of the book.

      The two key characters are Molly Templar, the plucky workhouse girl who finds herself on the run from a dapper gentleman assassin, and Oliver Brooks, the privileged but constrained nephew of a wealthy merchant. Oliver is suspected of being 'feybreed' and therefore monitored and forbidden from pursuing a normal life.

      After their respective lives are turned upside down, Molly and Oliver go on the lam. Molly is aided by the steammen -- a race of mechanical beings for whom she has a special affinity. Oliver joins up with the dubious ex-con, Harry Stave.

      Meanwhile, the political landscape of Jackals is shifting behind the scenes with betrayals and new alliances. Something very dark is coming and Molly and Oliver are the only ones who can stop it.

      The first in a series of novels set in the rich and colorful Kingdom of Jackals featuring airships, magic, fabulous machines and Lovecraftian horror.
    • 4/5
      I read somewhere that this series is like a George R. R. Martin take on steampunk, and I found that to be pretty apt. I'm a fast reader, and this book took me two weeks to get through. I enjoyed it, but it's incredibly convoluted and complex and more than once I struggled to remember who was who amidst the rival nations, political factions, and perspectives. This is pretty much hardcore steampunk. The technology is integral to the world. There's an entire race of mechanical men, and I found them to be one of the most delightful aspects of the book; they have their own distinct religion, way of speaking, and are just cool beyond description. This doesn't take place on Earth, but in a setting heavily inspired by Victorian England, and the voice has that appropriate feel (though I can see how some people would find it dense and frustrating). Magic is as important as the technology. Fey magic, wild as it is, causes terrible mutations. The marriage of magic and machine creates a wide open world as far as technology and plot surprises.The book follows more viewpoints than Molly and Oliver, though they are certainly the two most important characters. If anything, my complaint is that they feel too powerful at times, especially Oliver.In true steampunk form, the mood here is dark. As in, dark and flooding basement filled with man-eating spiders. It's luscious and intense, and the action is near constant. The ending is very long, and as a reader, somewhat exhausting because of the prolonged tension. I think that's one of the reasons it took me so long to finish. I could only read for short stints and then I had to rest.
    • 4/5
      This book has its flaws. It's a crazy mass of characters and governments and shadow governments and shadow gods - there are so many forces at work throughout these 600 pages that I wished I had an eBook reader with a search function so I could go back and remind myself how it all fit together. But it was a hell of a ride, and I found myself reluctant to finish it because I wasn't quite ready to be done with it.Unlike with other sprawling, epic stories, I didn't find myself emotionally attached to any of the characters (I didn't find myself even blinking at any of the deaths), but I did find them pretty interesting. The steammen are a great take on robots, and I enjoyed following both Molly and Oliver on their journeys, even if their eventual evolutions seemed sort of shaky.
    • 3/5
      I've been meaning to pick up The Court of the Air for a long time. Can't remember how Stephen Hunt got on my radar, but he's been sort of hanging around there for a while, so I grabbed this from the library on one of my recent trips there. I'm not entirely sure I want to read the sequel: The Court of the Air has some astonishing ideas, and some really great bits, and even some characters I found interesting, but it got tangled up in itself. The writing is competent enough but the planning leaves something to be desired: it's like looking at the wrong side of a bit of cross-stitching -- you can see what it's meant to look like, but it's a bit of a mess.

      There is a lot to enjoy about it, but it's bogged down by that confusion. On the one hand, it's the start of a series which could well improve a lot; on the other, I took a break from reading it for a couple of days and struggled to get my feet when I came back to it. That's going to get worse with an ongoing series that's still getting new books.

      Still, I have the second book out of the library too, so I might as well at least try it. Stephen Hunt's work doesn't fill me with the same excitement as Philip Palmer's work does, so it doesn't really help his case that I discovered Philip Palmer at the same time.
    • 3/5
      Thinly-veiled anti-socialist diatribes aside, the thing that really tweaked me was the evident fascination with horrible things. How can I show how really horrible these (socialist) people are? By making everybody "equalized" a la Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" but in a much creepier way, by turning them into machines, or having them cut off body parts. How can I show how awful the ancient society was? They weren't just doing human sacrifice -- they were making an enormous killing machine out of the blood of their beloved family members, AND turning other people into meat plants so they could be cannibal farmers. How can I demonstrate the awfulness of people with anti-monarchical sentiments? By embedding ritual humiliation, amputation, and torture into their treatment of the royal family. It was honestly just sort of disturbing, how the author's inventive capacity were most turned toward inventing horrors. On top of all that, the shallow political analysis (see S. M. Stirling, for example) is hardly even noticeable. The heroic rich adventurers, the monarchs and royalists who aren't as bad as the socialists, the idealist who although not evil is still completely delusional, and so forth. That all just kind of faded into the background of being repeatedly hit over the head with really horrible gross abuses of the imagination. But I did notice how the attempts to make the book trendily gender balanced failed rather miserably. The boy and girl protagonists were figured as the "defense" and the "offense" by some "watcher" species. But the girl's "offensive" capabilities turned out to be being really good at withstanding torture, and then merging with some mechanical god to supernaturally show up at the last minute and do not much. The "defensive" boy turned out to merge with some kind of warrior spirit who sent him wicking around swords and having a sort of grim bloodthirstiness. Channeling Elric of Melniboné, I guess, because there was a kind of soul-sucking quality to the weapons. Anyway I guess that failed because there wasn't a lot of character development. We were supposed to want to like the characters, but they mostly just were cyphers for the plot as well as for the operators in their own world. So the author ended up falling back on gender stereotypes. Anyway, I won't be picking up more of these. If you like a lot of horror mixed in with your steampunk, dystopia, adventuring, and capital-L Libertarian-style politics, give these a shot.
    • 3/5
      I don't know if I'm disappointed or not by this book. Basically it's a steampunk fantasy set in a world that is recognisably a quasi-Victorian England in conflict with a neighbour which is recognisably a cross between Revolutionary France and Marxist USSR. Throw in some quasi-Aztec evil gods, voodoo steammen and fae magick and you get - well, a hell of a mess really. Some people applaud the wealth of ideas crammed into this novel, but for me there were just too many of them, too scantily developed, and in the end they threaten to bury the story entirely. Add to that a relentlessly fast pace and I ended up feeling like I'd fallen into a raging torrent and was just being carried along blindly by it.

      The characters were poorly developed and one never really got to care for them or what happened to them. Although Hunt does occasionally lapse into passages of fluid and poetic prose, the dialogue is often cringeworthy. Yes, It's supposed to sound quaint and archaic, I suppose, but it just sounded creaky and artificial to me.

      I wanted to like this book and had high expectations since it came so highly praised to me. And I did appreciate some of the imaginative concepts and rip-roaring action scenes. But ultimately it's over-ambitious. rambling and over-long, the result of a first-time author's tendency to cram in everything including the kitchen sink going unchecked by a firm editorial hand. I might try another of his books later on, just to see if he's learned to rein in the ideas enough to let a story shine through.
    • 4/5
      Oh, this book. Much like Jonathan Strange, Court of the Air is one that I love to bits but I haven’t read it time after time. It’s one of the first steampunk books that I got into, and it’s definitely a good one.

      The world-building’s fantastic. I like that there’s no implication that this is supposed to be our Earth x-number of years or even that it’s an alternate universe, but rather, it’s own Earth with specific races and cultures. There are equivalents with the different countries that you can draw on the references, but even still, Hunt makes this world his own. What’s also important to note is the sheer political detail that gets covered in this, which I think definitely adds to the world-building. While a large amount of the book is action and mystery, there’s a healthy amount of political intrigue that adds to the story. Again, there’s many real world parallels, but for the story’s sake, it does illustrate the larger ideologies at play here (and in future volumes). I also like the fact that none of the politics are painted as “This is the absolute one thing we (and by extension, you, the reader) should follow in governance.” Even the main political infrastructure of Jackals has its darker side. It’s sort of interesting to find a book that deals with the warts and all of political ideology. Also, the population of this Earth fascinates me. It’s not just humans and sorcerers and fae, although they all play a major role in the series. We’ve got a race of crustacean people living in steampunk quasi-London. There’s doglike people who pop up (although they have a bigger role in the second book). My personal favorite, and the one I sell the series on, are the Steammen: sentinent steampunk robots who practice voudoun. There were no words for me to describe that awesome aside from “squee!”

      And while this all comes off as rather gimmicky, Hunt manages to pull off a finely crafted story that supports and fits this world he’s created. There’s so much complexity in this that I’m not surprised that there’s more to the series than just the one book. And I love the history that we get in here, and that there’s so much more to explore to it.

      That all said, there is a LOT going on in this. It’s already bad enough following two narratives that could both support a single book, add in the sheer amount of world-building and backstory and it does feel like you need a list of names to figure out what’s going on. And a lot of the characters don’t appear for more than a few pages to boot. That said though, I think it’s one of the positive aspects of the book, and adds to the world. As for our two main characters, I rather like Molly and Oliver. They start off as kind of boring protagonists—both stuck in boring lives, have super-special abilities, get dragged into adventure, atypical orphans saving the world plot. What I like about them is that they’re very much their own characters. Oliver’s known that he’s got the potential for his special abilities, they’ve just never come to light, and he’s much more focused on trying to stop his powers from manifesting. I also love that there’s this fantastic set-up of him becoming a swashbuckling hero in-universe. (More hood o’the marsh in the next books!) Molly is fantastic—I love that because she reads so many penny dreadfuls, when she learns that someone’s trying to kill, Molly immediately launches into a scenario from one of her books. (And the villain pretty much goes “lol no.”) And while her own special abilities aren’t really alluded to in the beginning, I like that she slowly learns about them and uses them to her advantage. I really want to see more of her as the series goes on. And both Molly and Oliver don’t sit around and let things just happen to them. Oliver definitely isn’t afraid to ask questions that need to be asked, and Molly does her best with trying to piece her past together. They’re presented as these stock characters, but they definitely become more than just stereotypes. Not to mention, while their individual plotlines feel like two random events, everything dovetails neatly together.

      I also love the supporting cast. Not so much Oliver’s quasi-guardian, Harry Stave, if only because his motives feel a little too unclear. Molly’s friends and allies, though, are fantastic. I love the steammen who come to help her out; her friends at the workhouse; Professor Amelia Harsh, who unfortunately disappears after two pages (but is the main character in the sequel!)—again, I loved that we get these fleshed-out characters, even if they don’t play a huge part in the narrative. And Prince Alpheus—you can’t help but feel sorry for the poor kid, especially when it’s mentioned early on that members of the royal family are mutilated and subject to public humiliation for past sins. (And this is for the country we’re supposed to like.) My heartstings, all of them. I like that while the main villains are fairly black and white in their motives, the way they’re presented until the reveal is definitely muddled and present different options.

      This is a fantastic read, and definitely for someone looking for good steampunk novels. I don’t know if I’d necessarily recommend it for those starting out in the genre, but it does bring many new ideas to the subject, along with some fantastic world-building and just incredibly enjoyable storytelling. Despite the overreaching story arcs and build-up, at the heart of Hunt’s world is a grand adventure tale, which has been continuing throughout the series thus far. It’s an excellent read, and comes highly recommended.
    • 3/5
      Started off awfully messy, introducing too many elements too soon, and too often, but the book improved as it went on. Lots of steampunky bits, with plucky heroine, and crazy hero. Interesting enough that I'll read the rest of the series.
    • 3/5
      I really liked the concept of this book, however there was just too much going on to really get to grips with. Although the characters were well developed in a practical sense i don't feel that i really connected with them as a reader, therefore although i was keen to see the good guys prevail i wasn't as drawn in as i feel i should have been.
    • 3/5
      Like being pelted by spare brass cogs in triple-waltz time. Familiar Steampunk tropes abound, the characterization never takes hold, and there's just too damn much going on. Underground lands? Check. Orphans? Check. Sentient robots? Check. Quasi-Victorian social structure? Check. Imaginative gun-weapons? Check.Oh, look, here comes the airship. I thought one would be along sooner or later.I also found the political undercurrents unappealing. Those bad, bad commies! I finished the book, but won't be continuing with the series.
    • 4/5
      Engaging, to say the least and definitely a thrilling story. The one drawback I found was the density of the story - there was so much so fast.
    • 3/5
      Very dense book, so many different ideas which are slightly similar to real words/ideas, which in some ways was a distraction, I'd notice how the author had changed a word instead of being absorbed by the story.Often felt like I had to guess what things were and managed to skim read large amounts without losing sense of the plot. Does feel like the author was trying to cram too much into the one book.
    • 1/5
      I got to page 172 before deciding against finishing this story. The author crams many different ideas into this steampunk-fantasy-mashup of a tale. The two main characters are orphans. Molly Templar gets placed by the orphanage into prostitution, but her very first john turns out to be an assassin. She escapes but we don't know much about who the assassin is, who he works for, or why Molly would be targeted. By page 172 I still don't know.Then there's Oliver. When he was very young he and his parents crashed an aerostat (an airship) and he lived for 4 years within the "feymist." The feymist has been known to alter people only after casual contact yet Oliver seems unaffected. Then his guardian uncle and household are murdered and Oliver is framed. Again we don't know why his uncle was targeted or what the motivations are of the killers. Ugh.There's various fun things thrown into the mix: other races like the craynarbians (crab-like people), autonomous "steammen" (think robots) with their own culture, floating pieces of land (often the result of floatquakes), underground cities, etc. The problem is that all these new things keep on coming and keeping everything straight is a complicated chore. Place names are thrown about but no maps are provided. Various terms are sprinkled in, but their definitions are lacking (no glossary either). And so far Molly and Oliver are fairly one-dimensional. I don't feel like I know them. I should after 172 pages, no?So, dang. I was looking forward to getting into this one but the hypercomplicated, incomprehensible plot along with the cardboard characters and indeterminate world has me scratching my head. There's too much other stuff to read before I continue plodding through this one hoping it'll get better. (Plus, this could be first in a series that may number seven books... and I've already committed to too many other series.) On to other venues.
    • 3/5
      I think that The Court of Air is a very imaginative steampunk adventure tale with an interesting premise, but it seems to suffer from trying to accomplish too much in one novel. Most of the characters are one dimensional so it's hard to really care about them. A little more than halfway through the book, I suddenly realized that I didn't really care about any of them. Hunt has definitely created a spectacular world for his novel, but its complexity makes it seem somewhat hectic and cluttered as opposed to rich and exotic (like the world created by China Mieville in Perdido Street Station). While The Court of Air is by no means a steampunk classic (see William Gibson's The Difference Engine for that) any hard core fan of the steampunk subgenre would certainly appreciate it.
    • 4/5
      Very imaginative. Extremely violent. A crazy combination of every possible SF and fantasy genre that nevertheless somehow works. Starts out slow and then builds to page after page of action.