Airman

by Eoin Colfer

Conor Broekhart loves to fly. What he and his teacher Victor Vigny want most in the world is to create a heavier-than-air flying machine. And when your family is best friends with the local royal family, an achievement of that magnitude is entirely possible.

Everything is going well--Conor loves the princess, his playmate since they were both old enough to play together, and she loves him. Conor and his teacher are on the verge of an enormous breakthrough in flying machine designs and the future is looking bright.

Little does anyone know, a man by the name of Bonvilian, whose family has worked for the royal family of the Saltees for generations, is plotting against the wise and much-beloved King Nicholas. His evil plot is a success, and Conor is thrown into the prison on Little Saltee under the name Conor Finn. A different story was told to everyone so as to manipulate them into doing whatever Bonvilian wanted them to. Conor thought that his family hated him and would kill him on sight, that they believed it was he who had killed the king. The rest of society believed it was Victor Vigny, one of King Nick's oldest and most trusted friends, who had turned traitor and was a spy for the French, who had killed both the king and Conor. Princess Isabella was being groomed to be queen, and Bonvilian thought she'd make a great puppet, even though she had more spirit than to be controlled by an evil manipulator.

Conor spends two years on Little Saltee, forging alliances and learning how to bribe. Conor Broekhart is a thing of the past: all that exists now is Conor Finn.

I totally LOVED this book. Everything in it was balanced so well... the cruel mind of Bonvilian, the intellect of Conor, the humour and lightness in the beginning with the darkness that followed. I recommend this as reading to everyone old enough to understand it because it is such an amazing story.