Captain Tomahawk and the Sky-Lion

Marty S. Dalton's Captain Tomahawk and the Sky-Lion is a swashbuckling desert adventure for 10 year olds about a girl pilot who crash-lands somewhere nobody is ever meant to leave.

What happens

Captain Anna Tomahawk is, by her own account, the greatest pilot there ever was. Her airship, the Sky-Lion, is the best airship ever built. And she's just been shot down over Highsand Desert.

She survives (just, after dangling off a cliff edge by her fingertips) and sets off across the sand to find help.

Highsand is full of talking animals and steam-powered machines. Water runs everything, and a dung beetle king called Adax owns every drop of it. He also has a secret. There's green, growing land beyond the desert, and he'll do anything to stop his people finding out.

So a girl who drops out of the sky with a canteen of river water is very bad news for him.

The first creature Anna meets is Maximilian Howl, a royal scout. He's a coyote (not a wolf, as he has to tell her) who fights imaginary duels when he thinks nobody is watching. She calls him Max. He'd really rather she didn't.

Their double act is the best bit. Anna is bold and chatty and a champion show-off. Max can't decide whether to hand her to the king or keep her safe, and you're never quite sure which way he'll jump.

There are rebels in the dunes too, and a pair of bickering hedgehog engineers called Burp and Belch who drive a giant digging machine called the Worm.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

There's real fighting in this one. A rebel holds a knife to Anna's throat and draws a bead of blood, she shoots him through the toe of his boot, and then there's a proper sword fight. The king talks about burying people alive and burning the jungle to ash.

None of it is dwelt on, but it's more than a cartoon scrap. A reader who's happy with peril in their adventures will love a heroine who can beat grown men in a sword fight and still wants to keep the borrowed cape because it's warm.

What to read next

For another story that opens with an airship being shot out of the sky, try Cogheart. A clockwork fox escapes the wreck with a secret letter for a girl stuck at a finishing school, who'd much rather be reading about air-pirates.