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Mortal Engines

Mortal Engines Series, Book 1

#1 in series

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
The epic city-eat-city adventure is now a major motion picture produced by Peter Jackson!

"A breathtaking work of imagination, Hester Shaw is a heroine for the ages. The moment we finished reading this book we knew we wanted to make it into a movie." — Producer Peter Jackson* "Reeve's [Mortal Engines] remains a landmark of visionary imagination." — School Library Journal, starred review​​​Now a major motion picture produced by Peter Jackson!London is hunting again. Emerging from its hiding place in the hills, the great Traction City is chasing a terrified little town across the wastelands. Soon London will feed.In the attack, Tom Natsworthy is flung from the speeding city with a murderous scar-faced girl. They must run for their lives through the wreckage — and face a terrifying new weapon that threatens the future of the world.Beloved storyteller Philip Reeve creates a brilliant new world in the Mortal Engines series, called "phenomenal... violent and romantic, action-packed and contemplative, funny and frightening" by the Sunday Times.
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  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from October 27, 2003
      Like the moving cities it depicts, Reeve's debut novel is a staggering feat of engineering, a brilliant construction that offers new wonders at every turn. In the Europe of the future, the great cities have uprooted themselves from the Earth and donned wheels; roving the Hunting Ground that was once Europe, cities literally devour one another as part of a new social construct called Municipal Darwinism. The mighty city of London, in danger of running out of "prey," looks toward the east, where an enormous wall protects the static cities of the Anti-Traction League—the "heretics" who have chosen the barbaric practice of living on the bare earth. But London's mad Lord Mayor develops a plan to get through the wall: he resurrects a vicious and ancient technology, a post–20th-century update of the nuclear bomb, all the more horrible with time and refinement, and mounts it in the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. Against this wildly original backdrop plays the story of Tom Natsworthy, a young Apprentice Historian who helps mine the museum vaults of the juggernaut London. Tom becomes embroiled with his idol, the elder Historian Valentine, and also with the scarred girl Hester who owes Valentine a debt of vengeance. Reeve's prose is sweeping and cinematic, his ideas bold and effortless; he deftly weaves in social commentary on the perils of both war and consumerism, and presents the calamities that can result from poverty and extreme wealth occupying the same quarters. Ages 12-up.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrator Barnaby Edwards is fully a partner in the world-building of this exciting young adult novel. In the far future after a terrible war, mobile cities brutally consume each other for resources in a system called "Municipal Darwinism." Edwards establishes voices for highborn Londoners, who live in luxury on the city's top tiers, and differentiates them from the workers who toil away in the Gut. He creates diverse accents for the aviators, pirates, Anti-Traction League spies, and other characters who hail from locations around the globe. And he adopts a terrifying hiss for a Stalker, a half-man, half-machine relic of the long-ago war. As a young woman tries to avenge her parents' deaths and London unveils a devastating new weapon, Edwards's narration carries listeners along on the breathless adventure. J.M.D. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 13, 2004
      In a dystopian future landscape, cities have uprooted themselves and donned wheels, consuming each other's resources. "Reeve's prose is sweeping and cinematic," PW
      said in a starred review. "He deftly weaves in social commentary on the perils of both war and consumerism." Ages 12-up.

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  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Lexile® Measure:990
  • Text Difficulty:5-7

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