Philip Reeve – Mortal Engines

4. Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve (2001)
Hungry Cities Chronicles, Book 1

Length: 296 pages

Genre: Mid-grade steampunk-y post-apocalyptic sci-fi adventure

Started: 06 January 2011
Finished: 08 January 2011

Where did it come from? Bookmooch.
Why do I have it? Darla’s fault.
How long has it been on my TBR pile? Since 07 August 2010.

Londoners: see all
the sights of Europe without
ever leaving home!

Summary: It’s been eons since the Ancients destroyed themselves in the Sixty Minutes’ War, and centuries since the first invention of mobile cities. Now London roams the landscape, looking for smaller cities to capture and consume in accordance with the principles of Municipal Darwinism. Tom Natsworthy is an ordinary Third Class Apprentice Historian, but he dreams of adventure. So when he saves the life of his hero, the explorer Thaddeus Valentine, from an assassin, he’s more than a little surprised to find himself rewarded by being ejected from the city into the barren wastes of the Outland. Now he’s forced to work with the would-be assassin, Hester Shaw, in order to survive, and he has to come to grips with the fact that life in London is not as rosy as he’s always believed it to be. Inside the city, a similar realization is being reached by Katherine, Valentine’s daughter, as she discovers a secret her father’s been keeping, a secret that could change the fate of London – and the world – forever… unless Tom, Hester, and Katherine can stop it.

Review: Most steampunk that I’ve read thus far has been alternate history, so it was really neat to see a steampunk take on post-apocalyptic dystopia. The worldbuilding is absolutely the best part of Mortal Engines – it’s original, imaginative, and full of clever details and subtle in-jokes. It was also surprisingly dark; the very idea of the Sixty Minutes’ War wiping out civilization as we know it is horrifying in its plausibility, and Reeve does not shy away from real costs of heroics, nor does he stint on the body count just because it’s a kids’ book.

My main problem with this book was that it skewed a little bit young for my tastes. Tom is fifteen, but the writing level is substantially younger, geared more towards the 11-12 year old set. The story moves quickly from adventure to adventure, with lots of big exciting action set pieces, but not a whole lot of character development. (The exception was Katherine; her disillusionment with her father felt a lot more real and meaningful than Tom’s disillusionment with his hero.) The prose style – in addition to having the mid-grade novel’s pitfall of every character’s internal monologue being overly punctuated with exclamation points – was also a little weird. Specifically, the sections from the good guys’ p.o.v. was in standard past tense, but the bad guys’ p.o.v.s were in present tense, which in addition to being a bizarre stylistic choice, gave the distracting impression that the alternating sections weren’t happening at the same time.

I initially got interested in this book because of the idea of “Municipal Darwinism”. Social Darwinism (i.e. the society that can kill the other societies is the best) is scientifically flawed and a misapplication of Darwin’s ideas, and it sets my teeth on edge whenever it gets used as a justification (e.g. for colonialism and empire-building). That said, I liked the idea of turning cities into independent actors, and actually letting them go through natural selection. As it turns out, Reeve isn’t a big fan of social Darwinism either, but he goes after it on moral grounds, rather than scientific ones, which is what I was hoping to see. Nevertheless, this was a quick read, with an interesting world and plenty of action. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: A little young for me, but folks who enjoy more mid-grade fantasy/sci-fi than I do should have no problems with it. Mortal Engines would make an interesting counterpoint to all of the “one person vs. the establishment” dystopias (a la The Hunger Games) that have come out recently, especially since the establishment is an actual moving city. Recommended for dystopia and action-adventure fans in the 11-15ish age bracket of both sexes.

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First Line: 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.

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