Thunder City by Philip Reeve

Book Review

Chris Morgan

I’m delighted that Philip Reeve has produced another MORTAL ENGINES novel. This one is perhaps even better than the four preceding it. It introduces us to a new set of characters. While it’s multiply plotted, the central teen is Tamzin Pook. She is black and a hugely successful fighter in the Amusement Arcade, a mild name for a gladiatorial contest in which a small group of teens are pitted against Revenants. If you’ve read previous volumes in the series you’ll know that Revenants, also known as Stalkers, are dangerous robots in armoured bodies, controlled (mainly) by the brains of animals, and are equipped to kill. Tamzin has survived 49 such encounters, being not only fit but clever in spotting the weak points of her adversaries, while other team members are often injured or killed. Tamzin is a slave and is forced to do this by the evil Mortmain.

The theme of the novel is not just Tamzin escaping and perhaps remaining free, but the way in which larger or more violent moving cities attack and “devour” smaller ones, using the parts as raw materials and often killing the inhabitants.

Tamzin is helped to escape by the middle-aged history teacher, Miss Lavinia Torpenhow. She needs Tamzin’s skills for a particular reason. As they travel (often by balloon) to several fixed and mobile cities, including Paris, they gather a strange group of people around them.

In every chapter (there are 52, all brief) Reeve achieves action, excitement and surprise. His inventiveness is astonishing, though always plausible. The pace of the narrative never slackens. The tone, throughout, is fairly graphic, with deaths and serious injuries. But I’m glad to say that Reeve writes in an extremely polished style, finding space for poetic descriptions. One that appealed to me especially is “the starlings blew like smoke across the evening sky”. And there is a great deal of cleverness in the names of people and places Reeve has chosen, sometimes revealed, sometimes not.

This is a novel which will delight teens and much older readers (like me). I find it astonishing and very gratifying that Reeve can pursue this series while producing the different but equally enjoyable FEVER CRUMB, RAILHEAD and UTTERLY DARK tales (each of which was a trilogy last time I looked) aimed at the YA readership, as well as books for younger readers.