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Air Monster
Young adult air adventure
132 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1932
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 2, 2023
Green's novel Air Monster was published in 1932 for the "Boys Adventure" genre and is packed with stuff of high interest to youth back in the day: airplanes, dirigibles, radio, fights, spies, saboteurs, a submarine, the rescue of said submarine crew near the North Pole. The chapters can be a little long for today's kids, but my seven year old son enjoyed hearing this story read aloud at bed time.
December 5, 2018
This was kind of a dumb book.
First, what you need to know, this book is set and written before WWII, and is all about how whoever controls the air through dirigibles (blimps) will rule the world in the future. And America is building the biggest dirigible (the titular "Air Monster") and fictional country Rubania (cough cough DEFINITELY NOT GERMANY OR RUSSIA) wants to sabotage it.
So Rubania's dictator (definitely NOT HITLER) sends over a secret agent airman to destroy the blimp in construction.
Seems pretty promising so far... and then we spend like 6 chapters on the boys who are making the blimp and you just could NOT care less. Bland cardboard cutout characters.
Then the secret agent gets there and you think, oh boy, maybe now it'll really start, now that I'm a third of the way into this book. And, true, there are one or two lightly mysterious moments.
And then the secret agent decides that he just loves blimps SO MUCH that, eh, nah, he'll just join up with the Americans instead, and they're all friends so the Americans let him. And then by luck the Not-Hitler dictator was also, off-screen, forced out of power in Rubania, and then none of that is ever mentioned in the story ever again and there are no consequences whatsoever.
Uh...
The most perplexing part was that there were still 100 pages left (in this 245 page book) and I'm thinking, what the hell, that was the story, what could possibly happen next? Is Not-Hitler going to come and try to get revenge on a low level agent or something? (Spoiler: nah)
No, instead the blimp just flies through a storm... then delivers some supplies to some people in a flood... then picks up some people who were stranded at the North Pole after their sub broke down... and then it just sort of ends.
I'm giving it two stars because some of the intriguing parts were interesting and maybe they could've been fashioned into an actual good book. But really, fuck this book, this was a joke.
First, what you need to know, this book is set and written before WWII, and is all about how whoever controls the air through dirigibles (blimps) will rule the world in the future. And America is building the biggest dirigible (the titular "Air Monster") and fictional country Rubania (cough cough DEFINITELY NOT GERMANY OR RUSSIA) wants to sabotage it.
So Rubania's dictator (definitely NOT HITLER) sends over a secret agent airman to destroy the blimp in construction.
Seems pretty promising so far... and then we spend like 6 chapters on the boys who are making the blimp and you just could NOT care less. Bland cardboard cutout characters.
Then the secret agent gets there and you think, oh boy, maybe now it'll really start, now that I'm a third of the way into this book. And, true, there are one or two lightly mysterious moments.
And then the secret agent decides that he just loves blimps SO MUCH that, eh, nah, he'll just join up with the Americans instead, and they're all friends so the Americans let him. And then by luck the Not-Hitler dictator was also, off-screen, forced out of power in Rubania, and then none of that is ever mentioned in the story ever again and there are no consequences whatsoever.
Uh...
The most perplexing part was that there were still 100 pages left (in this 245 page book) and I'm thinking, what the hell, that was the story, what could possibly happen next? Is Not-Hitler going to come and try to get revenge on a low level agent or something? (Spoiler: nah)
No, instead the blimp just flies through a storm... then delivers some supplies to some people in a flood... then picks up some people who were stranded at the North Pole after their sub broke down... and then it just sort of ends.
I'm giving it two stars because some of the intriguing parts were interesting and maybe they could've been fashioned into an actual good book. But really, fuck this book, this was a joke.
February 2, 2014
between the wars, with russia as the new villian. forsees the cold war.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews