The Hosts of the Air

The Hosts of the Air is the third book in Joseph Alexander Altsheler's World War series, published in 1915. The series is one of the few attempts by a major American boys' adventure writer to deal directly with the First World War while it was still being fought. The Hosts of the Air centers on the early air war over France, a year before the United States entered the conflict, with the action focused on a young American volunteer named John Scott who has joined the French aviation service.

The novel follows John Scott through training, his first patrols, his early combats with German pilots over the Vosges and the trenches of eastern France, and a long sequence in which he is shot down behind enemy lines and has to make his way back through occupied territory. The aviation sections are vivid and reasonably accurate for their date, considering that air combat tactics in 1915 were still being invented week by week. Altsheler clearly read what was available in American magazines and newspapers about the new flying war and he extrapolated from there.

The book has the strong pro Allied tone that runs through the series. Altsheler made no pretense of neutrality, even though the United States was officially neutral when he wrote. The German characters are mostly treated as professional opponents rather than as villains, but the moral weight of the book is clearly with France and against the German invasion of Belgium and northern France. By the standards of American war fiction from 1915, this is direct without being shrill.

The novel runs about three hundred pages and works as a single adventure even for readers who have not read the earlier two volumes in the series. The aviation material in particular has aged better than some of the trench warfare sections, because Altsheler captured the strangeness of the new flying war at the moment when it was happening. For readers who want more, The Hosts of the Air pairs naturally with The Forest of Swords and The Sword of Antietam, two other Altsheler novels with similar tone.