The Children of the Air, Emilio Salgari

Children of the Air - Bob Sinclair

 Tr. Spa.-Eng. from a review in Shvoong

 Everyone associates the stories of aerial adventures and amazing machines with the novels created by Jules Verne, the famous French author . However, other authors were also attracted by the subject, as Emilio Salgari, the celebrated author of the adventures of the pirate Sandokan. The Children of the Air tells the adventures of two friends, one Russian and the other Cossack, through Chinese and Mongol landscape to the mountains of the Himalayas due to an unusual medium: an airship powered by wings and manned by a mysterious captain and his mechanic.

  












  Rokoff and Fedor come to Beijing looking for closing a juicy deal of silk with a rich Chinese merchant. However, the friends are taken by assassins when, in the morning, people discover that the merchant has been the victim of an attack and he died stabbed to death. The real cause was a secret organization called The Silver Bell, but Rokoff and Fedor have been taken as the murderers and sentenced to die. At the time the sentence is going to be carried out by a mob of enraged Chinese, an extraordinary machine miraculously appears in the sky, mistaken by everybody for a giant bird. It is "The Hawk" ship and its captain, who, thanks to confusion, manages to rescue the two protagonists and bring them safely from their captors.

  Henceforth, Rokoff and Fedor will accompany their mysterious rescuers to different adventures by the country of China, observe surprised from the air The Forbidden City, face dangerous thieves in the Mongolian deserts, float over raging rivers in the steppes of that country and live adventures of hunting which will almost lead them to the limit of survival. Finally, they will fly over the Himalayas confronting powerful storms in the mountains and trying to escape from a group of Buddhist monks who kidnap them to keep them as their "living gods".  
  The Children of the Air has a second part called "King of the Air". However, this first novel has elements enough to get fun and be of interest to readers. It is important to point out that the characters in the novel bear many prejudices about the East World and the Chinese, Mongols, and Tibetans are continuously shown in a negative light: they are wild, killers, barbaric, cruel, and unreliable. The very main characters do not escape from that and are shown, though innocently, as ruthless hunters and definitely anti-ecological. Anyway, remember it is only a novel and enjoy the adventures of The Hawk and its crew of children of the air by the beautiful and gorgeous landscapes of the East.