Mortal Engines
"London is hunting its prey" Cities have been turned into giant vehicles that roam around the world, eating each other for fuel and metal. Mortal Engines is the first in a series of four books set in this imaginative universe, and follows the adventures of Tom Natsworthy and Hester Shaw as they voyage from the heart of London to what remains of rural China. It covers the conflict between the traction cities and the anti-traction league - some of the last people living directly on the ground.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
6mentions
6people
2019–2025years
33% recommend50% neutral17% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- "Mortal Engines" begins...
(One of my favorite Sci-Fi Young Adult series I read growing up)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_Engines
tl;dr = Post apocalypse, cities are giant mobile machines that eat and integrate smaller cities to survive
- Gideon the Ninth - this was a huge surprise to me and lots of fun. I've never read anything else quite like it.
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August - This is usually my go-to book recommendation for "whats your favorite book"
Mortal Engines - The first book of a surprisingly poignant YA series which is not only fun throughout, but has one of the greatest and most thought provoking endings of all time.
Cloud Atlas - A beautifuly written story that somehow manages to intertwine separate narratives across time.
Children of Time - A wonderful story about time, evolution, survival and what it means to be human.
- It was Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve. Was an ok book. (Better than the film)
- It is already - in the my opinion deeply silly book/movie series(?) Mortal Engines. I haven't read or watched them but saw a video ad and thought that it was the stupidest thing I had ever seen. Anyway it is effectively landships except they are massive steampunk mobile cities which grind up and harvest other sessile settlements and smaller mobile ones. I get the extended metaphor involved of colonalism and enrichment by exploitation of the weak and pillaging instead of their own production but even for YA Dystopian it is just too dumb logistically for me to suspend disbelief.
- Sounds like Absolution Gap and/or a less annoying version of the Mortal Engines movie (please tell me the book was better than this).
- Bad movie, not so great book, but aren't Stalker's from Mortal Engines basically the same thing. Dead and brought back to serve.
I will be curious if they can not only resuscitate but also influence what is left? plus would it matter if your a victim of a seizure? would there be anything left that we see as a human personality to bring back? I ask that from experience of losing a middle aged uncle to a seizure, it raises your body temperature sufficiently to kill/wipe the brain. You can coma them to stop the activity but bringing them back up from that is no guarantee anyone is home
