User:Clem cowsie/Sandbox

My sandbox! Yay.

I'll usually be testing major edits and learning how to cite things here. I'll clear it when I feel like it.

Don't play in other peoples' sandboxes. It's rude unless they invite you. Now go get your own sandbox.

= Matt Cruse =

Matt Cruse is the main character and narrator in the Matt Cruse series written by Kenneth Oppel. He is born in the fictional Lionsgate City, which is set in Canada.

Airborn
Matt Cruse is a cabin boy on the Aurora, a large passenger airship that sails above the ocean, ferrying wealthy passengers from city to city. He chooses to become a cabin boy because his father had worked on the same ship until he fell into the water and died when Matt was young. During his third year on the Aurora, when he is fourteen, he meets the balloonist Benjamin Molloy, who is dying from dehydration and malnutrition, who tells him about beautiful creatures in the skies. A few days later, Molloy dies, but a year later, his granddaughter Kate de Vries comes onboard the Aurora to prove that what her grandfather saw was real. When the Aurora is attacked and shipwrecked by pirates, the crew and passengers land on the island that Molloy had seen the creatures flying around, and Matt and Kate find bones of the creature, which they name the cloud cat. Later on, they realize that the pirates who fatally injured Molloy are on the island, and Matt and Kate discover their shelter. The pirates attempt to murder them, but they escape back to the Aurora, rescue the crew, defeat the pirates on the ship, and leave the island.

Skybreaker
The control car of the giant airship is almost entirely encased in ice, the ship’s name barely visible on her tattered skin: Hyperion. Matt Cruse can’t believe his eyes. Can this really be the legendary lost craft, now a frozen coffin to a ghostly crew and a vast treasure? At 20,000 feet, aboard a decrepit training ship, Matt is almost unconscious from the high altitude, but of all the oxygen-starved crew, he alone remembers the Hyperion’s coordinates. Suddenly it seems that everyone is after those coordinates. Kate de Vries, Matt’s rich friend, has her reasons. But what about the strange gypsy girl and the handsome captain who’s going to pilot them back to the Hyperion? In an adventure that will test his courage, his skill and his heart, Matt is about to take off on the ride of his life and experience a new journey.

Matt is now a student at the Airship Academy in Paris and is receiving practical education aboard the airship Flotsam. While onboard, the crew sees the long-lost airship Hyperion, which had been missing for forty years prior to its discovery. Captain Tritus, who is in command of the airship, attempts to go after it, but most of the already-unhealthy crew collapses from altitude sickness, leaving Matt to control the airship. He turns the ship back and returns to Paris five days early, where Kate proposes that they find the Hyperion, having read a newspaper article on it, likely produced from information that a Flotsam crew member had provided. Matt later discovers during a visit to Kate's Paris home that she is already discussing a journey to salvage the Hyperion with Hal Slater, whom Matt views as a competitor for Kate's affections.