MORTAL ENGINES, Phillp Reeves.
Home sick today. Sore throat last night turned into fever, tiredness and a ringing in my ears this morning.
Joy.
Downsides: feeling awful, feeling guilty about missing work. Upside: I got some reading done.
There's a few books I've been meaning to review here. Let's start with the one I finished this morning:
Mortal Engines, by Philip Reeve.
Giant cities. On wheels. Chasing down other cities and eating them.
Several thousand years after civilisation was destroyed in the Sixty Minute War, giant mobile cities roam the wastelands of Europe, feeding off smaller mobile cities. The plot follows Tom Natsworthy, a lowly apprentice historian in the mobile city of London. After saving the head of the Guild of Historians from a female assassin, Tom is rewarded by being thrown overboard. He teams up with the assassin to try and make his way back to home. Along the way they encounter airships, evil engineers, more assassins, the pirate suburb of Tunbridge Wheels, political conspiracies, and the requisite teenage romance.
Teenage romance? Yes, it's a Young Adult novel. Which means teenage protagonists, a plot that cracks along, and no sex. But Reeve doesn't pull his punches when it comes to death - Mortal Engines has a body count to rival a young Iain M. Banks.
It also has a very English sense of humour. The city-eat-city principle is called Municipal Darwinism. There's the aforementioned Tunbridge Wheels. There's some business with St. Paul's Cathedral which I can't explain without giving away the plot.
And then there's those hungry cities - a great idea that's so over the top and cheerfully grim that I'm surprised that Warhammer 40K hasn't ripped it off yet.
Joy.
Downsides: feeling awful, feeling guilty about missing work. Upside: I got some reading done.
There's a few books I've been meaning to review here. Let's start with the one I finished this morning:
Mortal Engines, by Philip Reeve.
Giant cities. On wheels. Chasing down other cities and eating them.
Several thousand years after civilisation was destroyed in the Sixty Minute War, giant mobile cities roam the wastelands of Europe, feeding off smaller mobile cities. The plot follows Tom Natsworthy, a lowly apprentice historian in the mobile city of London. After saving the head of the Guild of Historians from a female assassin, Tom is rewarded by being thrown overboard. He teams up with the assassin to try and make his way back to home. Along the way they encounter airships, evil engineers, more assassins, the pirate suburb of Tunbridge Wheels, political conspiracies, and the requisite teenage romance.
Teenage romance? Yes, it's a Young Adult novel. Which means teenage protagonists, a plot that cracks along, and no sex. But Reeve doesn't pull his punches when it comes to death - Mortal Engines has a body count to rival a young Iain M. Banks.
It also has a very English sense of humour. The city-eat-city principle is called Municipal Darwinism. There's the aforementioned Tunbridge Wheels. There's some business with St. Paul's Cathedral which I can't explain without giving away the plot.
And then there's those hungry cities - a great idea that's so over the top and cheerfully grim that I'm surprised that Warhammer 40K hasn't ripped it off yet.