Product Description

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 ...

The great traction city london is on the move again. It has been lying low, skulking in the hills to avoid the bigger, faster, hungrier cities loose in the Great Hunting Ground. But now, as its great mountain of metal lumbers along in hot pursuit of its quarry, the sinister plans it has harbored for years can finally start to unfold behind itssoaring walls ...

Thaddeus Valentine, London's Head Historian and most famous archaeologist, and his daughter, Katherine, are down in The Gut when the young assassin with the black scarf strikes. Only the quick intervention of Tom, a lowly third-class apprentice, prevents Valentine from being stabbed in the heart. Madly racing after the fleeing girl, Tom suddenly glimpses her hideous face: scarred from forehead to jaw, nose a smashed stump, a single eye glaring back at him. "Look at what your Valentine did to me!" she screams. "Ask him! Ask him what he did to Hester Shaw!" And with that she jumps down the waste chute to her death. Minutes later Tom finds himself tumbling down the same chute and stranded in the Out-Country, a sea of mud scored by the huge caterpillar tracks of cities like the one now steaming off over thehorizon.

In a stunning literary debut, Philip Reeve has created an unforgettable adventure story set in a dark and utterly original world fueled by Municipal Darwinism -- and betrayal.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #200651 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From Booklist
Gr. 7-10. As the story opens, the great Traction City of London is chasing a small town. When one city takes over another, it processes all reusable materials to create power to run the motorized wheels that enable the city to travel over the land. London's mayor has bigger plans than the domination of a small town, plans involving the use of the weapon that laid waste to Earth millennia earlier. Several young people endeavor to stop the carnage--among them, Tom, an apprentice at the London Museum; a young woman who tries to kill the museum's head historian; the historian's daughter, Katherine; and an apprentice in the Guild of Engineers. The pace of the violence-filled story is frenetic, the sense of helplessness is palpable, and not all the young people survive. A page-turner, this adventure in a city-eat-city world will have readers eagerly suspending disbelief to follow the twists and turns of the imaginative plot. Sally Estes
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"Reeve will soon be the go-to man for imagination, excitement, and crowd-pleasing action." (Horn Book magazine )

"Wildly imaginative, full of marvelous details, humor, and grand adventures." (KLIATT )

"Exciting and visually descriptive." (School Library Journal (starred review) )

"Readers who enjoy violent, titanic clashes between good and evil will be absorbed from beginning to end." (Kirkus Reviews )

About the Author

Philip Reeve was born in Brighton, England, and worked in a bookshop for many years before breaking out and becoming the illustrator of several highly successful children’s book series in the United Kingdom. He has also produced and directed several no-budget theater productions, and cowrote a musical, The Ministry of Biscuits. Mortal Engines is his first published book.

Mr. Reeve and his wife and son now live in a hamlet high above the moorland in Devon, England.