“Mortal Engines” by Philip Reeve is book one of the Mortal Engines series and is a young adult science fiction novel with a dash of steampunk thrown in for good measure.
- Title: Mortal Engines
- Author: Philip Reeve
- Series: Mortal Engines Quartet #1
- Publication Date: November 16, 2001
- Length: 326 pages (paperback), 8 hours & 57 minutes (audiobook)
- Goodreads Rating: 3.76 stars
- Book Bingo Category: A Book Made into a Movie or TV Show
- Finished On: April 2, 2024
- My Rating: 3 Stars
Synopsis
“It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.”
The great traction city London has been skulking in the hills to avoid the bigger, faster, hungrier cities loose in the Great Hunting Ground. But now, the sinister plans of Lord Mayor Mangus Crome can finally unfold.
Thaddeus Valentine, London’s Head Historian and adored famous archaeologist, and his lovely daughter, Katherine, are down in The Gut when the young assassin with the black scarf strikes toward his heart, saved by the quick intervention of Tom, a lowly third-class apprentice. Racing after the fleeing girl, Tom suddenly glimpses her hideous face: scarred from forehead to jaw, nose a smashed stump, a single eye glaring back at him. “Look at what your Valentine did to me!” she screams. “Ask him! Ask him what he did to Hester Shaw!” And with that she jumps down the waste chute to her death. Minutes later Tom finds himself tumbling down the same chute and stranded in the Out-Country, a sea of mud scored by the huge caterpillar tracks of cities like the one now steaming off over the horizon.
In a stunning literary debut, Philip Reeve has created a painful dangerous unforgettable adventure story of surprises, set in a dark and utterly original world fueled by Municipal Darwinism — and betrayal.
(Synopsis Pulled from Goodreads & the Publisher)
My Thoughts
This book was selected because my partner and I had recently watched the movie, Mortal Engines, and I was intrigued by the premise of the story. Going in, I figured that the movie and the book would more or less mirror each other, but I was pleasantly surprised when they did not. The book provided a much harsher view on life and reality, while the movie glossed over the cruelty and harshness of the world. In my opinion, I like it when harshness is presented, because the world is not a perfectly perfect place, but instead has brightly wonderful moments of beauty.
I need to start off by mentioning that “Mortal Engines” is a young adult book, with young adult characters, written at a young adult level. Outside of these things, this book is filled with very dark and harsh moments – written in a way that felt right.
Set in a post-apocalyptic world, after Earth has been ravaged by the “Sixty Minute War” which caused global conflict and geographical changes. To escape the earthquakes, volcanoes, and other natural disasters, a world was invented where cities and towns were placed on wheels, able to travel across the continents eating smaller communities for resources. Unfortunately, with this new way of life, scientific progress has halted and most of the technological and scientific knowledge of the world has been lost.
This is where we enter the story.
The story begins with the Traction City of London chasing down a smaller mining town, and we are introduced to Tom, a young Apprentice Historian sent down to the gut of London, where captured cities are stripped of resources. In the gut, Tom meets his idol, Thaddeus Valentine (who of course with a name like Valentine in Young Adult literature will be our villain), who is a Historian who has been corrupted by power and wealth and now works primarily for the Engineers who have formed a bit of a dictatorship/oligarchy over the City of London.
While in the gut, Tom stops Valentine from assassination, and chases the would-be assassin through the guts of the city and down to a chute (where the city disposes of its waste). Enter in Hester Shaw, a young woman with a disfigured face caused by Valentine. Hester escapes the city via the chute, and when Tom tells Valentine about what Hester said to him, Valentine pushes Tom out of the city and into the wasteland.
So far to this point, the book and the movie mirror are pretty much following the same course. You meet the main characters, including Valentine’s daughter Katherine, and you watch as Tom meets Hester and together, they land in the wasteland, watching London drive off in the distance. **Cue sad but intense music here. **
Here is where the movie started to veer off a bit from the book (and by veer off I mean that the movie combined a few moments, shortened some sequences, and took out a few major plot points along the way). But we’ll get to those points in a little bit.
We follow Tom and Hester as they make their way across the wasteland, get caught up by slave traders, and escape with an airship pilot (Anna Fang). We really get to know Katherine in the City of London and learn about London’s mayor who is a very corrupt man who wants and needs power – and in the books is the driving force of all the action. We also meet Shrike, a cyborg stalker who once was a man but is now machine without emotion – who is hunting for Hester on behalf of London.
Where the book and the movie really diverge, is when Shrike comes into play, and Hester and Tom work to escape him. Shrike is not killed at the airship city (as he was in the movie), but instead continues to hunt the two teenagers across the wasteland as they work furiously to stay alive, being rescued once again by Anna Fang, who is part of the Anti-Traction League (a group of static cities who are fighting to keep the traction cities – like London – away).
Also deviating from the movie (again, I watched the movie first, so that is how my mind is thinking), we follow Katherine much more closely, and it is she who discovers what the Mayor of London and her father are up to. She is the one who discovered MEDUSA (the atomic-like laser weapon), and she is the one to realize that London isn’t the ideal that she wanted to think it was.
These parts – Tom and Hester’s lengthened journey in the wasteland and Katherine’s role in trying to save herself – were what I absolutely loved about the book. The characters were fleshed out in a way that made them dynamic and you wanted to cheer them on as they moved throughout the story. Tom and Hester’s journey was both physical and emotional/mental. They were wonderful characters that you watched grow within themselves and realize what the world was. Katherine’s ability to be her own hero was lovely to watch. She was tenacious and needed to know what her father was up to, and in the end, she was able to see what her father truly was – the kind of person he was.
Now, the end of the book – I did not see it coming, but I really liked it when it landed. I loved that everyone didn’t get a happy ending. Yes, I was very sad about it, but it also made the story more impactful. There were character arcs that needed to be finished, and we certainly got those arcs. Though, I will note that there was an aggressive number of dead bodies in the last chapter or two, but the dead bodies worked – so yay!?
Overall, I will always love a good book that the world builds in a way that brings you into the story. I was happy that I didn’t know everything that was coming – since I watched the movie first – but the story followed enough for me to know that I would enjoy the story throughout.
Final Judgements
I enjoyed this book and the story that unfolded throughout its pages. I thought that the world was interestingly developed, that the characters were wonderfully fleshed out, and it was much better (and way different) than the movie.
3 Stars (a solid young adult read)
The Preppy Librarian 