Predator's Gold

On one hand, Predator's Gold does a solid job of expanding on what was the best part of Mortal Engines: the world building all around mobile cities that eat one another. We get to see a few more cities--both predators and trading cities--along with more details on airships in this world. But the real worldbuilding gold[^heh] is in the parasites that can attach themselves to cities and steal from them. It really makes the cities feel like gigantic living organisms as much as anything, which I'm sure is Reeve's intention.

On the other hand, I very nearly put Predator's Gold down several times during the first half of the book. There's a rather blatant love triangle between Tom, Hester, and Freya (princess of Anchorage--roving city of the show more north nearly destroyed by a plague in the recent past). It really doesn't make much sense given Tom and Hester's relationship at the end of the first book and drags on way too long. Perhaps that's what some people read the book for... but it's really not for me.

Luckily, once you get everyone apart from one another, the book picks up again and I do quite enjoy the second half. Gives me hope for the rest of the series. We shall have to see.

[^heh]: Pun intended. show less

Predator's Gold picks up two years where Mortal Engines left off, with Tom And Hester having "sort of inherited" Anna Fang's airship the Jenny Haniver, making a living for themselves as cargo traders. The novel opens in the flying city of Airhaven, as Tom and Hester take on the famed adventurer Professor Nimrod Pennyroyal as a passenger - before being chased into the Arctic by agents of the Green Storm, a splinter group of the Anti-Traction League attempting to recover the Jenny Haniver. They escape their pursuers but are left damaged, wounded and limping, eventually finding safe haven in the small Traction City of Anchorage. Decimated by plague and desperate to survive, Anchorage has set a course for America, the Dead Continent. The show more city's young margravine Freya is delighted to find Pennyroyal aboard her city, as he had previously boasted about discovering fresh tracts of green land in nuclear-devastated North America in one of his best-selling books. Pennyroyal (a character who owes much to J.K. Rowling's Gilderoy Lockhart) uneasily accepts a position as the city's chief navigator, and with the Jenny undergoing extensive repairs, Tom and Hester find themselves swept up in a new adventure.

Predator's Gold takes the action of Mortal Engines to the polar icefields, and Reeve continues the creative flair he showed in his first novel; the pages abound with mercenaries and pirate lairs and horrible scientific experiments and a secret city of thieves and betrayals and deceptions and daring rescues and frantic battles. As I have said before, these books are the very definition of swashbuckling; and yet so much more than that, because of their literary merit and excellent characterisation and, most of all, Reeve's sterling ability to paint a visual picture with words. It really is the best of both worlds.

Predator's Gold is slightly less epic than Mortal Engines, with less at stake and not as much globe-trotting, but the character's story arcs - and the development of the overall series plot - are much deeper. A love triangle develops with Freya, and Hester's jealous actions greatly alter the results of their lives. Reading this series for the second time (and knowing that the next book jumps a good seventeen years or so into the future) it's impressive to note just how much of what happens later is a direct consequence of earlier actions. This sounds like a self-evident observation - that is, of course, how real life works - but it's a refreshing change from so much YA fiction and hack fantasy, where the story is told through a series of coincidences and random happenings and deus ex machina. Tom and Hester's lives are irrevocably altered by only a handful of things - some of them big, some of them small, some of them their fault, some of them beyond their control. As one example, Hester and Tom's "inheritance" of the Jenny Haniver in Mortal Engines - an act which seemed to exist merely to service the climax of that novel - has significant repercussions in Predator's Gold.

The character development is also excellent. Tom mostly remains a cardboard cut-out, the everyman swept up in wild adventures, but Hester is a fine creation, an ugly gargoyle serving as the linchpin of the series. In Mortal Engines she was merely a genre-subverting ugly heroine, rugged and capable and driven by a single-minded urge. Predator's Gold develops her, believably and consistently, into a ruthless character capable of terrible violence. This begins with the chapter ominously titled "The Knife Drawer" and continues down darker paths in the next two books.

Tom touched her mouth. "I know it feels awful, those men you had to kill. I still feel guilty about killing Shrike, and Pewsey and Gench. But you had to do it. You had no choice."

"Yes," she said, and smiled at how un-alike they were, because when she thought of the deaths of [spoilers], she felt no guilt at all, just a sort of satisfaction, and a glad amazement that she had got away with it.

Here Hester kills to protect those she loves - in the future she will not have that justification. Pennyroyal also has a darker side, revealing himself in a shocking scene to be capable of worse things than simply lies and selfishness, delivered while nonetheless being cheerful and polite.

There is, in fact, quite a lot of violence in Predator's Gold, including a child being beaten and strung up to die, cold-blooded murder and limbs being cut off. I have no problem with kids reading this, in context, though it does seem rather incongruous with the fact that the one hint at sex in the book is so subtle you might miss it entirely.

Re-reading the series, I'm having my recollections confirmed: these are excellent YA adventure novels, the best of their kind, and while there are clear differences between them, I find it hard to say which one I prefer. I do recall A Darkling Plain, the final book, having some flaws - but it was three times the length of the others, and to my teenage mind that compensated for it. We'll see when we get there. Next up is Infernal Devices. show less

Following the destruction of London, Tom and Hester travel the Bird Roads in the airship Jenny Haniver and eventually take on a passenger, Professor Nimrod Pennyroyal. Forced to flee from the military faction of the Anti-Tractionist League, the Green Storm, they make an emergency landing on the ice city of Anchorage. Following a betrayal, Anchorage must flee from the jaws of predatory Arkangel, making its way across the Ice Wastes to the Dead Continent.

Set some time after the events in Mortal Engines, the narrative in this, the second volume of the series, continues with Hester and Tom but also adds a few new faces, cities and other engines, and other memorable set pieces to the mix. Compared to the frenetic, break-neck pace of the show more first volume, the first few chapters could feel almost pedestrian, if it weren’t for the fact that almost from the beginning the tension is gradually increased and the reader knows that the plot is building up to a much-anticipated climax. A greater emphasis is placed on character development and the ethical boundaries between good and bad are considerably more blurred, as both Traction Cities and the Anti-Tractionist League engage in morally highly dubious acts.

As the main plot points of the first volume are occasionally referred to in a way that fits neatly into the plot, Predator’s Gold could in theory serve as the entry point to the series, or possibly even a stand-alone book, but I wouldn’t recommend it; the series definitely needs to be seen as a continuous narrative to fully appreciate the inventiveness, epic scope and character progressions. show less

Tom and Hester's adventures continue in book 2 two years later, when the airship they "inherited" from Anna Fang, is spotted and they get caught up in a plot of a radical splinter group of the Anti-Traction League. They end up on a traction city that is heading toward old North America where there are rumours of "living land." Things go horribly wrong, however, when Tom is attracted to the city's leader -- Hester makes a big mistake and then has to try and fix it. I'm very impressed with how well Reeve balances a ripping good yarn with plenty of rough stuff but rough stuff that feels integral enough to the story, not gratuitous, along with lots of character development, humor, and action all of it within a YA context. Reeve stays within show more the "tropes," of the post-apocalyptic but romantic setting (by that I mean many things go unexplained, where they grow the grapes for wine, where they have the sheep for sheepskin coats--those things are necessary texture and part of the fun of the story). The next two volumes have arrived from inter-library loan and I'll be plunging onward! **** show less

After nuclear war devastated the earth, the old ways of living became untenable. Now humans live in roving enclaves, preying on each other for scarce resources and the few remnants of ancient tech left over from the old world. Scrappy urchin Hester and trainee-historian Tom try to make a decent living flying cargo in their stolen airship until their imaginations are excited by an adventurer's tales of finding greenery in North America.

I love the characters in this series: Hester, who is pragmatic and ruthless in a way no other character quite understands; Tom, whose kind instincts and belief in fairness both get him into danger and inspire others; and a new favorite, the margravine Freya. The setting immediately captured my imagination show more in the first book in the Mortal Engine series, and this book develops it further. Predatory moving cities with their suburbs and airships scouting across a blasted landscape for prey! Secret bases drilled into cliffsides! Palaces balanced atop caterpillar treads! I loved the way life feels precarious in this world, as though one wrong decision or mechanical mishap means slavery or death. The stakes feel very high, especially because I loved the main characters so much.

Action packed, but with loads of great character moments in a fascinating steampunk future. The writing has a feel of the Golden Compass series--not typical YA, but not adult, either. Definitely worth checking out if that sounds to your taste! show less

If anything, even faster paced than the first! A galloping plot which manages to fit in a city destroying plague, an underwater city, a gang of thieves, big brother surveillance, the Furthest North, a character far too much like Lockhart, Love!, Betrayal!, self discovery, the excesses people will go to when they don't want to lose a loved one who has died, spider machines, bird machines... OK, in many ways it is nearly a parody of Young Adult fiction, but you can't help love the brave, fierce characters and it is almost impossible to put down as you desperately wonder how they can get out of the situation they have found themselves in...

* * * Beware potential spoilers * * *

This is a well worked-out sequel to Mortal Engines, in which the author manages to cap his own inventiveness with some more fine ideas. If you fancy flying in a top-of-the-range airship over a European wilderness inhabited by predator cities and their suburban prey, then this is one for you. The plot also maintains an engaging level of psychological complexity, drawing the reader into a dark world of misunderstanding, jealousy, divided loyalty, and betrayal. My only reservation was about the increased level of violence: swordfights and explosions are part of the scenery in this kind of adventure, but torturing children is a step beyond where I usually expect to go in a YA novel. I was also a little show more put off at the end by Reeve's (admittedly subtle) introduction of sex: call me old-fashioned, but when I was a lad, teenage characters in books just did not get pregnant! MB 14-viii-2009 show less