Mortal Engines (2001)

I’m on a personal mission at the moment to read more steampunk fiction, and I had this title recommended to me. I tracked it down in my local library, got settled with a cuppa and began to read. Very quickly I found myself becoming drawn into the book, as the plot picked up pace I turned the pages faster, desperate to find out what was going to happen next.

The plot is a captivating tale. The world as we know it is gone, cities and towns have converted to being movable, fitted with tracks and mechanisms, bigger cities “eat” smaller towns and villages, stripping them of their parts and people and using them to keep the cities going. There are two sets of children; Hester and Tom in the Out-Country and Katherine and Bevis inside London. They both start to unravel the secrets that London is hiding, as they do the action picks up wonderfully.

The book is full of brilliant characters. The four children are excellently written as are the people they meet along the way on their respective adventures. I can’t begin to pick out a favourite character, when the options include rebels and pirates and museum custodians it’s an impossible task.

I really enjoyed the way the book was written. It definitely captured my attention and I can imagine it would work brilliantly as bedtime reading for a parent to share with their child. I can’t imagine many parents would be able to resist the temptation to cheat and carry on reading after their child’s asleep though! ( )

I’m on a personal mission at the moment to read more steampunk fiction, and I had this title recommended to me. I tracked it down in my local library, got settled with a cuppa and began to read. Very quickly I found myself becoming drawn into the book, as the plot picked up pace I turned the pages faster, desperate to find out what was going to happen next.

The plot is a captivating tale. The world as we know it is gone, cities and towns have converted to being movable, fitted with tracks and mechanisms, bigger cities “eat” smaller towns and villages, stripping them of their parts and people and using them to keep the cities going. There are two sets of children; Hester and Tom in the Out-Country and Katherine and Bevis inside London. They both start to unravel the secrets that London is hiding, as they do the action picks up wonderfully.

The book is full of brilliant characters. The four children are excellently written as are the people they meet along the way on their respective adventures. I can’t begin to pick out a favourite character, when the options include rebels and pirates and museum custodians it’s an impossible task.

I really enjoyed the way the book was written. It definitely captured my attention and I can imagine it would work brilliantly as bedtime reading for a parent to share with their child. I can’t imagine many parents would be able to resist the temptation to cheat and carry on reading after their child’s asleep though! ( )

4Q, 4P
The world of Mortal Engines is deeply imagined and very vivid. Reeve clearly gave ample thought to how a world that has stuttered back from the brink of annihilation might redevelop itself. The story has the power to spark some lively debates about the nature of Darwinism and sheer self-preservation as well as the misuse of knowledge to obtain power and dominion over others. Likewise, because of its fantastical steampunk removal from realistic fiction, the novel provides the YA reader an invaluable opportunity to reflect upon her own society and how it is stratified to meet the demands of a specific group of people at the expense of others.

The realities of whole cities moving about on traction wheels and gobbling each other up for fuel and supplies may be a little far-fetched, but the complex nature of such a society is explored satisfactorily. Additionally, the opposing forces of landless, Airsperanto-speaking dirigible aviators and fixed, Anti-traction League cities allows for greater depth in this world than one often encounters in in such dystopic novels. Tom, the main character, is completely human and thoroughly compelling for his honesty and faults as much as for his tenacity and gradual heroism. His scarred and surly companion, Hester, provides a blunt, critical voice that forces Tom (and the reader) to truly consider the nature of accepted society. A colorful cast of additional players drawn from existing and future-imagined cultures around the world makes this an enjoyable read that will appeal to both boys and girls and will likely leave many of them eager to read the sequels! ( )

Mortal Engines, though I was not aware beforehand, is actually a dystopian novel. In fact, there are a couple of disparate dystopian levels to the book. On the one hand, there are the many references to the downfall of America, which, unsurprisingly, sought to take everyone else with it through the use of insanely stupid and dangerous weapons. The way the world worked back then all changed with something called the Sixty Minutes War (how long does war really need to last with some of the weapons people are now capable of making?).

In addition to the apocalyptic nature of that downfall of one set of civilizations, the era of traction cities is not doing so well. Prey is running low and the mayor of London has all sorts of big, bad ideas. The Mayor, Crome, is a Machiavellian figure who has a major personality cult in effect and does absolutely terrible things to any people deemed unimportant to society.

Despite this depressing setting, the book is actually quite funny in a lot of parts. The humor is well done (although I could have done without some of the scatalogical scenes). One really awesome element was reading about the Museum, which, of course, contained items from the life we live today (Very prominent is the skeleton of a blue whale). The book definitely gets more depressing toward the end and (warning!) some characters do not survive.

Recommended! My favorite thing about this book: the last two sentences (although I also appreciate that the ugly girl is not judged solely by her appearance). I think they set the tone and conclude the first novel in the series perfectly. I will not repeat them here, because you should go read the book and find out for yourself! ( )

Recommended by Katya.