Mortal Engines

Set on Earth some time in the future, Reeve's tale is an electric adventure of life, death and the universe. The city of London is on wheels and in order to survive must roam the globe and devour smaller cities and settlements. Savagery and control are used by the elite to maintain power and wealth. Everyone has their place in society, from the Mayor and the Guild leaders at the top to the foreign slaves at the lower end who are forced to work in and eat human waste. In this London of the future, two pairs of unlikely friends, Hester and Tom and Katherine and Pod, try to change their world and along the way encounter life-threatening adventure, romance and treachery. Each is faced with decisions which will alter their lives and ultimately the future of the planet. Their adventures entangle them with terrifying robots manufactured from dead corpses, swashbuckling spies and air battles ending in carnage. It would have been preferable to tell the entire story in the past tense; some of the sudden switches to the present tense jar a little and draw attention to an otherwise unobtrusive narrator. However, this is a thrilling story for both older children and adults. The issues of how we choose to treat other individuals and communities and how we care for our planet are explicit in the story but do not distract from the tightly plotted narrative. Reeve's physical descriptions are a delight - flesh glistens 'with a slug-like film of mucus' and Tom's fall is like being swallowed by a 'black throat'. His imagery bears more than a passing resemblance to Ted Hughes's, especially when describing the Resurrected Men (close kin to Hughes's own Iron Man). This is a truly thought-provoking and ingenious novel which has the distinction of having well-drawn characters, a story well worth the telling and a stirring conclusion. Reeve may write another adventure set in his newly created future earth but it will be difficult to better this powerful fable. Ages 10+ (Kirkus UK)