Scrivener's Moon

Philip Reeve has now reached the seventh ‘Mortal Engines’ book. A great fan of the first quartet, I have missed the other two prequel titles, but reading this one may well send me back to them, for there is no sign of any of Reeve’s inspiration waning; or of any fall off in the thrills, fun and drama of his creation. This title examines the circumstances in which London became a traction city, through the experience not only of Fever Crumb, the daughter of the Engineer who makes it possible, but of Cluny Morvish, a girl whose vision of the city on wheels, planted there at birth by its progenitor Aurich Godshawk, sets in motion a Northern revolt against the capital, the final battle of which forms the climax of the novel. Here Reeve tracks the origins of a world medieval and futuristic, tribal and technocratic, taking us back, via a sealed pyramid entered by Fever and Cluny to the end of a civilisation almost recognisably ours. Here there is a room of immobile Stalkers, chanting their programmed memories of the last days. Once more, Reeve maintains an enviable balance between character and plot, touches on deeper moral and cultural questions, and remains incorrigibly playful: one of his most disturbing creations is the Paper Boy, a remotely controlled paper figure, as deadly as it is unsubstantial.