Cloud Realm: Chronicles of Ingarde 1 — Larry Smith

I have been a lifelong fan of deeply detailed worlds--what Tolkien called "subcreations." Ingarde is a large world with many different cultures. "Cloud Realm" is a story about three young people just coming into adult responsibilities in one such culture that lives aboard the cloud whales, living dirigibles, that ply the skies of Ingarde.

The story introduces Cly, a journeyman mage; Vonya, a trader; Kara, a veterinarian/engineer and Semaj, a young cloud whale beginning to desire a crew. Together they get through the tumultuous initial adaption of Semaj into service, but are then swept up in an ancient prophesy, and a geas, that takes them into places as alien and as dangerous to them as any could imagine to try to save a kidnapped cloud whale from their same clan.