Airman

Well, decent, but not really endowed with the Colfer class (Artemis Fowl, Wishlist). His classic tongue-in-cheek, witty prose is missing and missed.
It's about a chap called Conor who's born in a hot air balloon and really wants to fly and it looks like he will until there are a lot of problems which get sorted out but anyway. Apparently he's the first guy to ever fly, long before the Wright brothers, but it was a pretty disastrous flight all the same.
Still, worth a read, especially if you're starved of books like I was. And Colfer does sometimes show his brilliance in parts like:
'Catherine stepped forward from the shadows where she had been waiting, and joined the hug.
The guard on duty wondered if he should too, but decided against it.'
It also gets boring in some parts. Statutory warning.