Let me start off by saying I don’t like writing negative reviews particularly. I will always do what I can to write about the good bits rather than the bad ones. This is a review that will, sadly, be a few more bad bits than good ones however.
This book was one I had had an interest in for a while and was definitely on the list at some point. Then I saw a trailer for the movie and though “That looks good. Maybe it’s time to read the book. I downloaded this one onto the Kindle just before Christmas and it’s taken me this long to get through it. Admittedly life has got in the way at times, doesn’t it always, but also this book didn’t excite me as I expected it to. I had hoped for an awesome steampunk adventure – taking me through some witty references to current popular culture that are now a long gone memory in the world of Mortal Engines. I got a couple of those, but not many.
Mortal Engines – Predator Cities to give it its full sub title – tells the story of how, after the Sixty Minute War, the cities of the world now travel around a barren landscape looking for other cities to absorb. They call it eating them whereby the city is sucked up into another and then the parts and people scavenged for whatever they can get. Not all cities take part in this, the Anti Traction League being very much against it, and so it appears that the major cities in Europe, some of Asia and Africa and the North and South poles are dominated by ‘Traction Cities’. The rest of the world stays where it is and hopes to sustain the world’s rapidly decreasing resources to gain back some sort of civilisation. Because much of the world was destroyed in the war – which we don’t really learn anything about at all in the book – Old Tech is therefore valuable. The city of London is broken up into Guilds such as Historians, Navigators and Engineers who keep the city moving and on the hunt for new towns to eat. This concept is known as Municipal Darwinism; a clever title but again something that is named and then moved on from pretty quickly.
Tom Natsworthy is the main focus of this novel; an apprentice in the Guild of Historians. After a town is eaten by London he goes down to see what’s going on as this is quite the occasion. Tom meets Thaddeus Valentine and his daughter, Katherine, and is shown what is going on below decks. However, after Thaddeus survives an attempt on his life by the mysterious Hester Shaw and Tom learns more than he should about how she became so disfigured, Tom is thrown off London and stranded in the Hunting Ground. Tom and Hester form an unlikely duo who both want to get back to London for very different reasons: Hester to get revenge and Tom because he has fallen in love with Katherine.
And therein lies pretty much the whole plot for you there. We follow Tom and Hester as they are taken on by other towns, on airships, by pirates and chased by a bounty hunter. That’s about the long and short of it. I wish I could say that it was more exciting than this – but it isn’t. I felt like I was trudging through this book and struggling to do that. I expected action, I expected excitement, I really wanted to learn about the world that these people lived in and how they ended up that way. But I still don’t feel like I did. I really don’t know what happened in the war and each character’s back story is never fully developed. I don’t know a lot about Tom – where he came from and why he is there. He’s your typical ‘believes-in-the-rules-and-ideals-of-his-land-until-he-meets-someone-who-changes-that-entirely’ main character. You know that he will go against what he believes in right from the very start. And that was too predictable for me. I thought Hester would be a strong female character but she spends most of the novel telling Tom to stay away from her and grunting at anyone else. I just didn’t warm to either of them.
Katherine’s sub story in London itself is one of the most frustrating things I have ever read. Seriously Reeve if you’re going to make something that bleak at least give me some positive payoff. But nope, none of that. Which comes completely out of the blue to the point where you find yourself thinking “Really?” I liked her when I was following her story – she comes out of it a lot better than the main ones in my opinion!
The writing itself gets really annoying towards the end as well. Tenses shift about all over the place, going from past to present back to past. It started to read like notes or a film treatment. It was as if we got Reeve’s notebook towards the end as he didn’t meet his deadline. I found myself flicking back and forth thinking “This isn’t just me is it?” The tenses really started to get on my nerves; I couldn’t find an explanation for it at all.
I’m not in any rush to read the next one I’ll be honest. And I’m really disappointed. We’ve had Fever Crumb, a prequel set Reeve has written to the Mortal Engines, and the book itself is something rather beautiful. I think it may stay as something I admire and not pick up as this one has really put me off. I would suggest something more like Cogheart by Peter Bunzl or A Place Called Perfect by Helena Duggan if you want some mystery in strange places. Good stories and a good chase and characters you care about.
Sorry Mr Reeve. I may give the film a whirl but even that has lost its appeal sadly.