Note: I received a digital review copy from the publisher through NetGalley. ( )

Seraphin, his father and friends, have escaped the clutches of the court spy in the now functional aethership. Along with King Ludwig of Bavaria, they are headed into space, but find navigation impossible because of a stolen part. They crash land on the moon, and have a limited timeframe and desperate plan to get back safely to Earth, making repairs to the ship. But, the King has other plans, exploring the moon environs with unabashed interest.

The plot was harder to follow than in the first book. The illustrations are still amazing, but need to be larger (i.e., pages are too crowded for no reason), and further plot depth would help readers.
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This is the second book in the Castle in the Stars series. This is a decent book but I continue to find the watercolor-like illustration and small caption boxes to be a bit hard to follow. I like the story and the characters though.

In this book our intrepid heroes end up in the aether on their airship when the worst happens and they crash on the moon. They quickly find out that they have been betrayed by more members of their party than they originally expected and are unsure of whether or not they will ever be able to make it back to Earth.

I enjoy the adventure theme to this story. I also liked that there was a quick synopsis of what happened in the last volume right at the beginning of this one. At times the illustration can be hard to see and follow (some of the characters look alike and the pictures are really small).

The story in this book is getting very political and I don’t enjoy that as much as the adventure the kids had in the first volume. Still, it was decently done.

Overall I didn’t enjoy this volume as much as the first one. There were too many politics and I feel like the illustration was a bit hard to follow. I am unsure whether or not I will continue this series at this point. My 11 year old son also reads this series and he felt the same way; he said it was okay but not great. ( )

I love this story. The mix of steampunk and space gets me every time. It is helpful if you have read book number one, but it’s not required. An airship is trying to escape to the top of the aether, and then once there, discover the craziness of space. I love this series. ( )