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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
Slightly mixed bag, but the ending makes up for everything, 31 Oct 2002
The best things about Mortal Engines were the first couple of chapters, and the final third (or so) of the book.Here's the opening sentence: "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." If that doesn't get your imagination going, I don't know what will :-) The book is set in a far-future age of traction cities that roll around a barren landscape, with the strong preying on the weak (capturing their inhabitants and recycling their parts). Gradually, prey is running out... There's also an area of static cities, which make up the Anti-Traction League, which is in constant rivalry with the traction cities. The feel is quasi-Victorian: technology has slipped back a long way since our own time, and there's a sense of polished brass and steam-gauges about everything. They use airships and crackly radio-beacons, and fight with swords as well as guns and rockets. Pieces of old technology like computers and robotics are revered and coveted. The atmosphere reminded me (in some ways) of Lyra's world in Philip Pulman's His Dark Materials trilogy. You can probably tell that I was impressed, overall, but there are two reasons this isn't getting 5 stars from me: 1. I didn't feel engaged with the characters until very late in the book. The viewpoint jumps from person to person too much. For example, if the hero (Tom) is talking to someone who's upset, we're treated to a direct description of that person's emotions and reasons, rather than seeing it through Tom's eyes. That kept distancing me from the main characters, though obviously not everyone is affected by that sort of thing in the same way. 2. Towards the end, Reeve tries to build tension by switching the story to present-tense a few times (it's mostly told in the past tense). The thing is, there was plenty of tension building up anyway - it was really exciting! - and the tense changes kept distracting me and making me think "why did he do that?". Then again, as someone with a deep interest in fiction, perhaps I'm more analytical than the intended audience for this. On the positive side, there was a nicely developed romance thread, excellent minor characters - including an anti-hero called Valentine and an aviatrix called Miss Fang - and (with a startlingly high body-count that includes a few characters you might expect to survive) Philip Reeve avoided the sugary ending that I expected while leaving the way open for a sequel. All in all, this is worthy of consdideration by anyone who enjoys slightly dark childrens' adventure fiction - like Philip Pulman's His Dark Materials or Sally Lockhart books, and I can't say fairer than that.
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