121. A Darkling Plain – Philip Reeve

You may remember how much me and my inner nerd child adores this series, and now upset we both were after Infernal Devices. There is just no getting away from it. That was a skid in the wrong direction for me. After the first two novels Mortal Engines and Predators Gold feeling so much like the same novel, so much like two halves to Reeve thoroughly grabbing the story by it’s ankles and turning it upside down. I was disappointed and a little heart broken. I was dreading reading this book after Infernal Devices and I am well versed to the low point in a quartet or trilogy now, I come to expect it. But that book, did not inspire me to finish the series in the slightest.

BUT! I have good news for you all, A Darkling Plain reclaims all the ground that was lost in Infernal Devices. There is resolution and there is an emotional end to the series that is satisfying, there is the sharp twist and turns and the dark unexpected that we know and love from Reeve in the first two novels. The dread of “what if its awful” is quickly soothed away because Reeve has this novel, he commands it rather then it drifting, and instead of turning everything inside out this novel it returns to how the first two feel. I can’t help but wonder if this series should’ve been a trilogy rather then a quartet which is why Infernal Devices was so weak and weird and disappointing in comparison.

Again he is toeing the line between YA fiction and some adult themes and doesn’t condescend to his readers but scoops them up during the adventure.

A Darkling Plain – Philip Reeve

Had these novels been directed at an adult audience they would’ve been incredibly violent and dark war stories. Because realistically his world building screams that. We are in a world that has been ravaged by technology and a 60min war which left the majority of the USA a mush of toxic slag. And with 21st Century civilisation destroyed bar for the relics of ‘Old-Tech’ like CDs and ancient submarines, human beings have pulled themselves back together. In a steampunk world of traction cities, cities that hunt and eat smaller cities for scrap and fuel, it’s a world of Municipal Darwinism rallying against a rebel group, the Green Storm, who would rather live static lives.

Earth is faced with a potentially cataclysmic event, a face off between traction cities and the Green Storm. Both sides trying to out do each other in a conflict that looks to have no resolution any time soon. But there is more! Of course there is another weapon that has been unearthed, left high in the sky by the Ancients – those idiots who almost destroyed civilisation the first time round.

It could be pretentious, it could be toxically masculine, a boyish and poorly a thought out war fantasy parodying literature like Broken Angels. Or the insipid emotional vacuum that is Ready Player One (don’t get me started). But instead Reeve actually weaves a good story, on a background of solid world building, and has an elegance to his storytelling that redeems the minor clunkiness that may arise.

There is a lot going on in this novel, there are a lot of location changes, different groups of characters to follow and a few years ago I wouldn’t have been able to keep up. Because although I am better practised and my dyslexia is less of a fog that keeps me from the meaning of literature, I still found myself disorientated at times.

So. The narrative.

Hester is less angry and violent and villainous and has stopped being the main antagonist of the novel and has become a relatable character again with a complex emotional world and trauma. (We can just forget the rubbish that happened in Infernal Devices can’t we?) Tom is less an ageing decrepit father and is taking agency again! He is sad and a bit bumbling (aren’t we all?) and is still naive but he has the ability to do what needs to be done again!

Wren is back again and I found myself liking her more in this novel, and Theo actually has a personality outside of the teenage romance of Infernal Devices. He goes off and does his own thing and is his own person outside of the infatuation with Wren.

Naga and Oenone Zero have gotten married and are the figureheads of the Green Storm. In an attempt to initial peace Zero finds herself as an ambassador and Theo agrees to be part of her body guard transporting her home. After the convoy is attacked due to a mole, Theo and Zero wind up in the company of Hester and Mr. Shrike.

Meanwhile Wren meets a handsome boy who has his own Suburb. And her and Tom are flying around getting money where they can. Rather then being the ‘will they’, ‘won’t they’, insipid teenage romance, Darkling Plain is a little more organic. They’re thrown together by chance and both find the still smouldering ruin of London and each other.

Somehow London, or New London, has survivors and they’re trying to build a new life in secret for themselves in between getting caught in the cross fire between the traction cities and the Green Storm.

Fishcake is back and has somehow fixed the Stalker, Anna Fang. But Fang seems to be having an issue with her hardware as there are two personalities breaking through, the first the gentle original Anna and the second the Stalker Fang who is hard and murderous. Stalker Fang takes them to Popjoy to ‘get rid of the error’ – the original Anna personality who has her memories and sadness and cares for Fishcake.

There is talk of a weapon, Odin. Mr. Shrike appears to be unable to kill anymore and blames Zero for tampering with him. Pennyroyal appears and for some reason, ends up again being the best example of how people are both good and bad and somehow redeems himself a little in this novel. Fear is a big motivator in this novel, a battle of wills, and complete chaos where two sides are fighting the wrong person.

But it comes right in the end, but I’m not going to tell you how.

There is something bittersweet in the end and I think Mr. Shrike possesses my most favourite epilogue that I’ve ever read. The tension of the book releases just at the right moment and gives way to relief and that makes this novel that much more satisfying. This book would be a spectacular film if they did it right. Because even in reading, Darkling Plain is a cinematic experience that tugs on the heart strings just right.

As a quartet I highly recommend this series. Just expect some labour with Infernal Devices and pretend that is a trust fall into A Darkling Plain.

99. Infernal Devices – Philip Reeve

What can I say? It’s been a while and I’m a procrastinator. But roll up roll up! Settle down ladies and gentlemen and give me your attention because it is time, finally, for me to get around to Infernal Devices.

It feels like a lifetime ago, but you may recall that I’m quite fond of the first two of the Mortal Engines Quartet. Mortal Engines and Predators Gold are seemingly easy YA fiction, but Reeve constantly defies expectation, weaves an immersive world that is incredibly complex and vivid. And for the most part he treats his novels with a precision that is so laser focused that laser almost cuts your face in half while your reading. True to form Reeve hasn’t changed in Infernal Devices but I have had some internal struggle compressing this novel into a post that is coherent and not inane babble.

Everything you know is shifting in this novel, and it all starts with one of those annoying literary tropes that sometimes happen mid series: “it’s 16 years later…”

Infernal Devices – Philip Reeve

16 years is a bold move right? It throws my hackles up a bit. But after long thinking and arguing with myself about it I think it works, because Reeve is a very clever writer who is doing a lot in this novel to unsettle you. Infernal Devices is aptly named. This is the novel in the quartet that has made me the most uncomfortable so far, that angry, and that frustrated with character development. Because like a lot of Reeves quirks, this novel is the novel that defies your expectation, it defies your hopes and your assumptions, and it isn’t supposed to make you comfortable.

It is doing something that the sugarcoated hollywood of YA fiction rarely does, it is giving you something that mirrors life. It’ll give you currents to ride that you don’t necessarily enjoy. I spent a lot of time reading this book almost overshadowed by my dislike at this shift, and reflecting quite negatively upon it until I realised Reeve is being quite clever. He isn’t giving you an easy third book because this is over half way through the journey of the quartet and you’ve gotten comfortable and there’s a long way to go to make all the narrative threads right and neat. He is giving you the novel that you need right now. He is giving you the novel that will be thrown across the room in frustration. Because life isn’t linear and will always subvert your expectations.

Hester and Tom have settled on their private island, a backwater existence, and raised Wren in the time that has passed. Wren is itching for adventure, bored of her sheltered life and has never met a dishonest person. She is old enough to dote and favour her father, who has turned into a bit of a soft pudding with chest pains from his adventures in Predators Gold. But the cosy happy ending we almost had in book two has been a lull and in that time Hester seems to have changed for the worst. Perhaps it’s boredom and resentment, perhaps it’s feeling trapped, perhaps it is self defeating.

It’s never really clear in the novel where this comes from but Hester and Wren do not communicate well, Wren is embarrassed her mother is not like other mothers. Hester is disfigured, blunt and has a hardness about her that has come from survival and her self preservation that has kept her alive at times. But Hester’s self preservation is dangerous in this novel, she is a Heathcliff anti-hero, and all the ugliness of her character is almost overthrowing her moral compass (grey as it may be). As Reeve has shown us many times through this series, parents are still people and they can have some of the worst flaws of all.

So when a group of Lost Boys from Grimsby wash up on the shore of the grounded Anchorage looking for the Tin Book (that Freya still has in her library), it looks to be the end of the lull and the start of an adventure. How this plays out isn’t how anyone expects. Wren infatuated with the romance of adventure, steals the book and is unwittingly kidnapped (dun dun dun).

Tom and Hester set out to rescue Wren in an old Limpet. Wren isn’t a particularly interesting character to me, she is much like Tom, naive and in over her head with events that are beyond her. The first half of the book seems a slow start that is a little lost, and we revisit the sunken Grimsby which seems only to re-establish time shift of 16 years later. This is one of the reasons why I’m not a big fan of that sharp shift in time, we have to spend time exactly re-hashing HOW things have changed, when sometimes it just feels like dead weight and we are resisting actually jumping into the story. But Wren eventually lands on Brighton, is sold into slavery on the pleasure resort and runs into another old character we love to hate.

Again Pennyroyal has found himself a position of wealth and power and of course luxury. Wren becomes a slave in that household and there she meets Theo (who isn’t particularly interesting). The supposedly main antagonist on Brighton is the slave trader Nabisco Shkin who is probably the weakest antagonist so far. I would argue that Hester pushes more of the conflict in this novel. Much of Wren’s story arc seems to settle into gossip and trying to figure out a way to escape but keep out of trouble. I found Wren a little lacklustre after she gets to Brighton, but that is when the rest of the narrative suddenly picks up.

Tom and Hester arrive on Brighton as the book begins to hit it’s stride in the second half and begin searching for Wren. They spend a while familiarising themselves with Brighton and discover Wren has been sold in to Slavery but not where exactly she is.

When the Green Storm arrive searching for the Jenny Haniver, which of course they do, with the once again resurrected and rebuilt Shrike from the first two novels, they bomb the sweet hell out of Brighton. There are Airships, fighter planes and cyborg troops and the most spectacular violence as one of the biggest climax in the series so far. I particularly love the story arc of the Green Storm in this novel while they’ve been a bit remote in the first two novels, in this one Reeve gives us a bit more but that is all I’m going to say about that. While the Green Storm lay siege, Hester is running around cutting down slave traders left right and centre and putting some good old fashioned Hester branded justice into the world.

As always Reeve has given plenty of space to the morally grey areas of characterisation and is not interested in a paint-by-numbers, sugarcoated hollywood adventure story. This is a novel that sees a big shift in the quartet and I’m sure that is a shift that many readers wouldn’t be on board with. There is a lot to dry swallow in this novel, but it is still impressively written and engaging despite some things I do not necessarily enjoy wholly.

Personally I think these books are quite ‘real’, for lack of a better term, in their execution, and characterisation, and in how they defying typical narrative expectations, and story arcs. Infernal Devices may not be my favourite in the series but the it has immense value as a brick in Young Adult fiction wall and again, I’ve said it a hundred times, the Mortal Engine Quartet is something wonderful to apply yourself to. It’s a confusing and morally grey world out there, and I’m really looking forward to reading the last one, A Darkling Plain and finishing it off.

94. Predators Gold

As you might’ve gathered through your long tireless dedication to this blog through my long absences and the sometimes sporadic and eccentric choices I make in reading, you will have noticed (I’m sure) that I’m a big fan of an adventure. It’s fine if you haven’t. I’m not expecting your complete and undivided attention. But I do thoroughly love an adventure story and so shortly finishing Mortal Engines I jumped into Predator’s Gold head first.

You may remember I felt Mortal Engines had sophisticated and unexpected characters, there is some wonderful naivety in that novel and character growth. And every chapter keeps you hooked! As the second in the Hungry City Chronicles (or Mortal Engines Quartet) Predator’s Gold isn’t lacking. It pushes the boat out a little further with the steampunk world we’re dropped in.

The world becomes even more threatening, dead-reanimated-robot-heroes reappear and bring all sorts of tensions and feelings to the table, lost boys acting as thieves under an older man (think Oliver Twist) who’s taken over a submarine jump into the story. And of course there are the darkest things known to YA fiction, adults who take advantage of children and are awful people despite appearances.

Predator’s Gold – Philip Reeve

Predator’s Gold picks up two years after Mortal Engines. Hester and Tom have been flying the Jenny Haniver around for a while scratching a living for themselves and surviving day to day. The young aviators are very much an item after the trauma of the first novel and are beginning to feel secure in their new found places in the world.

That is until Nimrod Pennyroyal.

There are few characters that I dislike with an intensity that would lead to a screaming match if I met them and potentially a (badly) thrown punch on my part. But most of them live in YA fiction and Pennyroyal is one of them.

Pennyroyal comes aboard looking for passage along the Bird Roads and Hester and Tom agree to take him on his way. Pennyroyal is a Professor with several sensational books to his name – Tom who values the learn-ed spends a great deal of time asking Pennyroyal about his adventures. While they are minding their business flying they realise they are being pursued by the Green Storm for unknown reasons and go into evasive flying.

Tom, Hester, and Pennyroyal ultimately find themselves taking shelter on the ice city Anchorage and then things just get a little more complicated.

Anchorage is a sparsely populated city who’s young Margravine (Freya) is determined for a last bid at survival by taking her city to the Dead Continent (America). She has read all of Pennyroyal’s books and is convinced he can guide the way so appoints him Chief Navigator. Freya is a naive character and quite silly in her own way. She takes an instant dislike to Hester and fantasies about Tom being the dashing hero she has waited for and attempts to seduce him.

Freya is a pampered princess who has never had to look after herself, but with a diminishing staff she has nobody to dress her and doesn’t know how to wash properly. Her decisions and impulses are informed by a long tradition that is incapable of informing her under the circumstances and she makes some silly decisions. But things come right in the end after a lot of disliking her until she redeems herself.

While this is going on the Lost boys have a little secret of their own in Anchorage. The Limpet they have “bitten” onto the underbelly of the secret has flooded the place with cameras and they have been spying on the inhabitants / stealing anything of value.

The Green Storm have ideas of their own about the Jenny Haniver, having brought Anna Fang back from the dead as a metal-robot-corpse they are convinced that to bring back her memory they need the airship. Before the metal-robot-corpse thing, Anna Fang is one of my literary crushes. She is cool, calm, compassionate, well loved, intelligent, has a compelling backstory and is a fierce aviator and fighter. Never will I get over the death and reanimation of Anna Fang. Reeve purposefully creates her as a character you love to flip that on it’s head in true Reeve style.

And Hester is potentially the biggest fighting force in this novel. She is the angriest, she gets the most done, she makes some of the biggest mistakes, and tries to cover them up. She is convinced she will loose Tom to Anchorage because Freya is so pretty and has a library and museum and Hester is ugly and stupid. Hester makes everyone look like a wet noodle and if Tom didn’t end up on his own little adventure being kidnapped I feel like he’d get a bit lost in this novel and dominated by everything else.

Predator’s Gold is a well balanced sequel, everything is a little more urgent and bigger but it maintains the poise of the first novel. Reeve is measured in the way he writes and economic, no chapter goes to waste and the adventure is that more complete because of it. This is a novel I can come back to time and again (as is Mortal Engines) and I’d recommend you give it a go. Reeve is unflinching in how he treats his reader and he will emotionally torture you a little to keep the narrative solid and compelling. So prepare yourself, this one has an ending that will get under your skin as it unfolds.

91. Mortal Engines

Mortal Engines was the last novel I started in 2017, six months later I’m blogging about it because organisation. Ha. There’s been a lot going on – I won’t bore you with it. So. Novel forty seven of last year is one of my favourite YA novels, I’ve had this quartet sitting on the shelf for a while because of my own stubbornness. When you are lucky enough to find one, two and four in charity shops you want to be lucky enough to find three too. I, however, am not that lucky so gave in after three years of hoping to be that lucky and bought it online (still pretty lucky, three out of four isn’t bad).

The Mortal Engines Quartet is sometimes known as the Hungry City Chronicles if that gives you a nice little clue as to what these books are about (if you haven’t seen the trailer of Peter Jackson’s impending film version of the first novel). You got it folks this is a world flung in the not so distant future where cities move around looking for smaller cities to eat.

Mortal Engines – Philip Reeve

There is something about tiered cities on tracks, or flying, or sailing, that really captures my youthful imagination. There is something about air pirates and rebel forces and zombie-robot men and characters flung out of their comfort zones that I really enjoy. There is something fun about this novel, while it can be so terribly dark at times. The narrative follows Tom, a fifteen year old apprentice historian stuck on London dreaming of being an adventurer like his hero, Head Historian and Archaeologist Thaddeus Valentine.

Tom is a little browbeaten as a lowly third-class apprentice Historian and like all good stories gets caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. As London chomps through it’s first catch for a while, Valentine is attacked by an assassin who’s face is hidden by a scarf. Tom deflects the blow and chases the assassin through the Gut of the London, convinced that catching them will win favour with his hero and his hero’s pretty daughter Katherine.

On facing the assassin though Tom realises she is girl around his own age and her face is horrifically disfigured by a scar running from forehead to jaw through an eye, her nose, and mouth. She jumps down a Waste Chute and escapes leaving Tom confused and mulling over her last words: “Look at what Valentine did to me! Ask him, ask him what he did to Hester Shaw!” (Dun DUN DUNNNNNNNN).

But it gets better. Valentine catches up with Tom and kindly asks him a few questions and thanks him for his help. Realising Tom knows the name Hester Shaw and has seen her face, Valentine then does a Jamie Lannister and pushes Tom down the Waste Chute after Hester.

Stranded in the Out-Country and on solid ground for the first time in his life, his world turned upside down, and everything he believes in up for questioning he finds himself stuck with Hester who is helplessly injured. Watching the tracks of London disappear he resolves to get back to London and on the way, finds answers he doesn’t expect to his questions along the way.

Meanwhile Katherine Valentine is having her own adventure learning her father isn’t quite the man she thought he was and discovers that the Engineers of London have gotten their hands on some nasty Old-Tech and plan to use it. Katherine is a bit of an unsung hero in this novel uncovering the nastiness of London. She seems to reveal the dark underbelly of the novel and the evil that lies at home rather than further afield.

But Tom and Hester are the duo that go further out into the world and find the vicious tone of the world that is sometimes surprisingly dark for a YA novel.

There is something quite elegant in how many of our young characters try to hold on to their belief system while it is being dissolved. Whether that be their belief about the world, themselves or other people. Tom for example believes in the Municipal Darwinism gives justification to cities eating cities yet is faced with the Anti-Traction League and how little he really knows about the world he lives in. While Hester gives him a face to face account of how dangerous the world can be and how adults can and will attack children given the circumstances.

Tom and Hester balance out well, as where Tom naively trusts everyone, Hester doesn’t and is angry, sullen, uneducated and stubborn. Later on in the novel her character broadens with her awful past and her connection with the reanimated-dead-human-robot-killing-machine known as the Shrike.

There is a lot going on in this novel, but it’s a really easy read! Every chapter is a cliff hanger or ends on a question that is answered in the next chapter or down the line in the novel. I love how Tom develops as a character and how his whole believe system turned on it’s head. But that is the novel in a nutshell, Mortal Engines challenges your expectations of characters, particularly with how they ought to be. It also challenges the characters to reassess who they can readily trust and how much to trust appearances and reputation over the actions of the individual. It takes the least expected route with most things, bar a little foreshadowing that some would say is clumsy – but it’s a YA novel and on the whole is very good.

As with most novels I write about here, this one I recommend you read. Unless you don’t like highly imaginative fun steampunk dystopian adventures with sky pirates, predator cities, and undead-zombie-robots. Then don’t. It’s not your thing.