Thunder City by Philip Reeve
A new MORTAL ENGINES story? What bliss!
The first book set in the dystopian world of Philip Reeve’s mighty Traction Cities since Scrivener’s Moon was published back in 2011, Thunder City (2024) ends up being something of an oddity within the overarching scope of the series. Unlike the three prequels, which delved into the genesis of the Traction Cities, or Night Flights, a collection of short stories that focused on fan-favourite Anna Fang, Thunder City has no real connection to anything that comes before or after it in the fictional chronology it’s a part of.
Basically, it’s what people keep insisting they want from the STAR WARS franchise: an adventure set in the sandbox of this particular world, but with no other connection to the rest of the saga. It’s set after the prequels but before the original quartet, features a brand-new cast of characters, and is only the second book that doesn’t include the Stalker Shrike (and I was genuinely surprised he didn’t turn up).
Perhaps it’s because Reeve conveys so much of his world-building through minor references and observations, leaving the rest up to the reader’s imagination, that I was left a little bemused this new story didn’t take the opportunity to fill in some of the missing pieces. For my money, I would have liked a little more connectivity, but I also appreciate that he avoided the encyclopaedic-level detail that so many other authors pour into their invented worlds. This is a story first and foremost.
Tamzin Pook is a fighter in the Amusement Arcade, a floating entertainment venue in which she and her fellow warriors do battle each night with a variety of Revenants (another name for Stalkers, corpses that are reconstituted with the help of rudimentary mechanisms). Any fight might well be her last, and so she’s emotionally cut herself off from any human contact, especially after the incident with Eve Vespertine…
Meanwhile, in the Traction City of Thorbury, an invading army has seized control of the city and installed a brutal new regime. The tenacious and quick-thinking governess Miss Torphenhow delivers her young charge to safety, and then takes it upon herself to find the deposed mayor’s only son, Max Angmering, in the hopes that he might oust the usurping Gabriel Strega and restore peace to Thorbury.
Naturally, that’s easier said than done. To rescue Max from imprisonment, she must first recruit Tamzin. And to do that, she has to find a way to convince the self-loathing young girl to leave the only home she’s ever known.
There’s plenty of excitement to be had throughout the story: submarines, Revenants, explosions, gunfights, prison breaks, octopi, and finally a forceful takeback of the city. Along the way Tamzin gets caught up in the adventure despite herself, discovering her place among a quintessential found-family of misfits and eccentrics.
A nice detail is that she carries a somewhat mysterious pendant with her over the course of the book, presumably given to her by her biological family, but – unless Reeve is planning a sequel – it never gets explained or resolved. Tamzin simply decides she’s already found a family that loves and accepts her, and the rest doesn’t matter all that much.
Despite this, Reeve tends to veer hard into the more cynical side of human nature, and our band of wayward heroes suffer through so many betrayals and backstabs that it starts to get a bit depressing. Thankfully humanity’s better angels rally in the second half of the book (just as the story needs wrapping up, so that’s convenient) and in a quiet moment, Reeve has one of his characters ponder what could be the hypothesis of this series in its entirety:
And in that way that sometimes happens to people who study history [Miss Torphenhow] suddenly found herself looking at her own era as if from a great distance, and wondering what those Ancients would have made of her. She supposed it might seem very strange to them, this world where cities rolled about and ate up smaller ones. “But no one gets a choice about which age they are born in… we are all castaways, carried along for a while on the river of history. All we can do is enjoy the passing view, and do our best to help our fellow castaways, if we can.
As ever, there are tons of hilarious details, from a character called Skip Recap, to the fact that one of the villains lives in a literal bouncy castle in order to intimidate his guests (who naturally, can never get their footing when they come to visit). There’s a submarine that saves our cast of characters from certain death called the Haile Maryam, and a great pontoon bridge said to have been built by the Zagwan Empire, nicknamed the Zebra Crossing.
It may be a fairly straightforward standalone story, but it felt great to return to the world of Mortal Engines in all its messy, beautiful, dangerous, imaginative glory.
How did I miss this? Thanks for bringing it to my attention!