Starclimber, by Kenneth Oppel
Reviewed by Jack W.

In this alternate reality space adventure, the world is in the early 1900s and airships, not airplanes, are widely used forms of locomotion. The french are building an enormous tower that they believe will stretch in space and allow an easy docking point for spaceships, but the Babelites, an obscure sect that believes man should not travel into space, are working to stop anyone who wants to reach the heavens. When the main character, Matt Cruse, is asked to join one such expedition to the heavens, he agrees and goes through rigorous training exercises that prepare him for his journey into space. But life on board the Starclimber, as the ship is known, may be far from easy. Kate de Vries, a biologist, who he was going to ask to marry him, has just got engaged to a man Matt considers a creep, and Kate is having a hard time with another naturalist, who refuses to believe that there can be life in the upper atmosphere despite the evidence. And what of the strange moving lights that have been seen in the night sky recently? Could it be asteroids of meteorites? Or is it something far more sinister?

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