Tom is an apprentice historian in the enormous traction city of
London. He idolizes Thaddeus Valentine --- adventurer, explorer and
Head Historian for the city. Tom witnesses the attempted
assassination of his hero and chases the assassin through the Gut
of the moving city. He loses her when she jumps down a waste chute
to the Out Country below. To his surprise, Tom is also pushed down
the chute. He is left in the enormous tracks of the city with no
chance of survival but to befriend the assassin, a girl named
Hester who has a horrible scar disfiguring her face.

Meanwhile, Valentine's daughter Katherine is curious about why her
father was the target of an assassin. She befriends Beavis Pod, an
apprentice engineer, to find out the truth about her father and his
activities. These two sets of young people gradually discover that
Thaddeus Valentine and London's Lord Mayor are part of a conspiracy
to assemble a weapon from ancient technology.

MORTAL ENGINES is packed with action, adventure and intriguing
characters. Author Philip Reeve has created an original and violent
"city eat city" world where airships contend with cyborg bounty
hunters resurrected from the bodies of the dead, and innocence is
no guarantee for survival. If this book has any flaw, it is that it
moves too quickly. It does not allow time to digest the full
meaning or impact of the violence contained within its pages. The
powerful ideas it contains about nuclear warfare, the value of
learning from history, and the necessity of young people to be
invested in their own future reeve long after the book is
finished.

The philip in a series called "The Hungry City Chronicles," MORTAL
ENGINES has a moral complexity akin to Philip Pullman's "His Dark
Materials" series. It contains elements of the rich literary
history of science fiction, as well as classics like Mary Shelley's
FRANKENSTEIN, while remaining completely original. Reeve sets such
a high standard in his debut that one can only hope the next books
in this series will be as fresh and compelling.

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