Lata's Reviews > Mortal Engines

3.5 stars (I think.) this was a surprisingly dark book. There are some great ideas here; I find the concept and the application of “municipal Darwinism” pretty scary. The numbers of people and resources destroyed just to keep the huge, moving city of London (and other smaller, moving cities and towns) going. And the classification of people into specific professions (Engineers, Historians, etc), which I had previously encountered in “Fever Crumb”, feels even more rigid and restricting. There are Anti-Tractionists choosing to live in stationary settlements and towns, in opposition to the voracious gobbling, moving towns . Then there’s the compromised environment, still not recovered after some unnamed number of centuries after the Sixty Minute War. Now that’s a chilling name.

And I haven’t even gotten to the characters Tom Natsworthy, Hester Shaw and Katherine. I can’t say I ever really liked or cared about Tom, while the girls were much more interesting. Hester with her ruined face, powerful need for revenge, and unloved self; Katherine’s naïveté about London and her father, and her caring and kindness and determination to discover the truth; both girls kept me reading. And I liked Anna Fang, aviatrix and spy, with a great name for her airship, Jenny Haniver.

So, a fascinating set of ideas, some interesting characters, and a gruesome future where people commit terrible acts to keep their cities fueled and fed. Much darker than I expected, but I may continue the series.