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Mortal Engines
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Read Mortal Engines
The Hungry City Chronicles: Book 1

Mortal Engines (2001) (edit title/settings)

by Philip Reeve (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

London is hunting The great Traction City lumbers after a small town, eager to strip its prey of all assets and move on. Resources on the Great Hunting Ground that once was Europe are so limited that mobile cities must consume one another to survive, a practice known as Municipal Darwinism.... read more

Characters edit see section history

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “He cut through the 21st Century Gallery, past the big plastic statues of Pluto and Mickey, animal headed gods of lost America”
  • “Is it...dead?" asked Tom, his voice all quivery with fright."A town just ran over him," said Hester. "I shouldn't think he's very well...”
    Tom and Hester

Setting & Locations edit see section history

The story takes place across several Traction Cities (most notably London). These cities were formerly stationary long ago, but they have since turned into migrating platforms that fight each other for resources and move via caterpillars, wheels or floatation aids. There are still some stationary cities, a number of which are located behind an expansive, fortified wall. Temporally, the story is set far in the future, somewhere past the 43rd century (the wares of which are considered antiques by the London historians). The modern technology with which readers are familiar (i.e. from the 21st century) has been all but destroyed, although there are scattered remnants which the scientists have not been able to fully understand (e.g. the "seedy" – CD).
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Organizations edit see section history

  • Engineers guild: The group of the core engineers in London.
  • Anti-Traction League: A group of static settlers (residing in towns and cities that don't move) who are opposed to moving cities and the principles of Municipal Darwinism.

First Sentence edit see section history

IT WAS A DARK, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried bed of old North Sea.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Part One
1. The Hunting Ground
2. Valentine
3. The Waste Chute
4. The Out-Country
5. The Lord Mayor
6. Speedwell
7. High London
8. The Trading Center
9. The 'Jenny Haniver'
10. The '13th Floor Elevator'
11. Airhaven
12. The Gasbag and Gondola
13. The Resurrected Man
14. The Guildhall
15. The Rustwater Marshes
16. The Turd Tanks
17. The Pirate Suburb
18. Bevis
19. The Sea of Khazak
20. The Black Island
21. In the Engineerium
22. Grike
23. MEDUSA
Part Two
24. An Agent of the League
25. The Historians
26. Batmunkh Gompa
27. Dr. Arkengarth Remembers
28. A Stranger in the Mountains of Heaven
29. Going Home
30. A Hero's Welcome
31. The Eavesdropper
32. Chudleigh Pomeroy Sees It Through
33. Wine and Nibbles and the Dawn of a New Era
34. Idea for a Fireworks Display
35. The Cathedral
36. The Shadow of Bones
37. The Bird Roads

Glossary edit see section history

  • Traction city: A city consisting of at least one mobile platform (some have many layers) that can move around (using numerous methods, including caterpillars, wheels and tyres and inflatable platforms). They usually participate in Municipal Darwinism.
  • Municipal Darwinism: A practice of the Traction cities in which larger cities consume smaller ones (or very rarely, vice versa). A city does this by taking the smaller city into its underbelly (gut) and basically breaking it up into its components (brick, steel, fuel, etc.) Residents of the smaller city may sometimes be enslaved or killed, especially when their former home is consumed by a pirate city.
  • Old tech: Items often involving complex electronic components that modern scientists are unable to decipher or reproduce (the items are from the present time – early 21st century). These relics remain after the Sixty-Minute War essentially decimated the planet.
  • Stalker: Stalker: Also called "Resurrected Men," Stalkers are formed by fitting metal parts and tubes to humans (after a complex process that involves removing various parts and bodily fluids from them) and implanting old-tech brains into their heads. Shrike (Grike in American versions) is the first Stalker encountered in the book.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 1 of 7 in The Hungry City Chronicles. (standard series)

Followed by Predator's Gold.

This book is in Kirkus Reviews: Get Lost in Worlds of Fantasy. (authoritative list)
This is book 710 of 986 in 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up. (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Philip Reeve (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Country: United Kingdom
Publication Date: 2001
ISBN: 140711137X
Page Count: 368

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Young Adults

990 Lexile

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