I loved this high flying adventure. My only complaint is the way things ended, but mostly it was nonstop action and intrigue, and I had fun being in Vango's world for a while. ( )

Pirates, Russian aristocracy, zepellins, mysterious monks, Nazis, and family secrets. A real adventure, all set in Europe between the world wars. Vango is washed ashore on a small island off the coast of Sicily with Mademoiselle, and grows up in a safe environment as a wild child of the outdoors, eventually discovering a secretive group of monks on a nearby island. With little companionship, except from the mysterious Mademoiselle, Vango decides he wants to join the monks, but the leader forces him to learn something of the real world before escaping it. Vango gets much more than he expected, travelling the world in a zeppelin and getting into a heap of unexplained trouble. I hope the second book allows us to learn more about Vango, who is still much of a mystery after 421 pages.

I recommend reading Sam's review at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1135826013, which is better than mine. ( )

I bought this book for my high school library when it was published, but never got around to reading it. I think I was attracted to the original cover art. If I had read it, I would have been able to recommend it highly, especially to students who like a lot of action, dialog, and less description. It is a beautifully written story, and moves fast from place to place. I wish I had written down the characters as they appeared. There is at least one that whose origins I can't remember.

Vango is a young man of mysterious origins, who washes up, with his nanny, on a small island off the coast of Italy in 1918. There he grows up with Mademoiselle, always having a vague paranoia. You know what they say about paranoia. "Just because you think they're out to get you, it doesn't mean they aren't." Or something like that. "They" are, but who they are and why they are out to get him is a mystery. We follow Vango as he hops around Europe trying to find answers, from an island with a "ghost" monastery of monks who are hiding out, to Paris, to an airship that takes him to Brazil and back to Scotland and other destinations. Along the way he takes on other memorable characters including Zefiro, the founder of the ghost monastery, to Eckener, the German owner of the airship, Ethel, a Scottish heiress whom he meets on the airship, the Cat, a Parisian girl with claustrophobia who sleeps on the roof of her building, and Voloy Viktor, a Russian assassin who works for Stalin. The action takes place just as Hitler has come to power, and shifts from character to character.

Unfortunately, it ends on a cliffhanger, but there is a second book following. I don't think this book got enough publicity. It really is good. ( )

READ THIS! ( )

is a fast paced adventure story of a young man running from the mysterious and dangerous people who seem willing to chase him to any part of the world. Vango’s past is a mystery to him, and as he runs he struggles to put together where he came from and why he is being chased. Travel the world with Vango as the beginnings of WWII brew.