It is the summer of 1916 and, as luck would have it, Otto is assigned to the nascent, unreliable, and utterly frightening Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Flying Service. Otto's aerial chauffeur is the self-willed Sergeant-Pilot Toth, with whom he can only communicate in broken Latin—although when all else fails, screaming will suffice! On the ground the rickety Habsburg Empire begins to crumble before the onslaught of World War I, while in the air Otto confronts a series of misadventures and the winds of change.
"Stark realism and finely crafted humor... use of narration, his thorough knowledge, and good technical details make this novel compelling reading." —Library Journal
"Biggins writes with a fine sense of the sea and a truly marvelous wit." —Booklist
"A retro techno-adventure story that falls somewhere between Tom Clancy and Patrick O'Brien... top notch military fiction with a literary flair." —Publishers Weekly