Mortal Engines

"He cut through the 21st Century Gallery, past the big plastic statues of Pluto and Mickey, animal-headed gods of lost America" (7).

If you read Larklight or Starcross, this is much more advanced than those books.  It's more serious and deals with less random problems.

I won't go into a full-blown grammar rant now, but it isn't "try and book," it's try TO book (73).  Try AND book means that you are both trying and booking, and what is the point of trying if you're already booking?  Reeve apparently doesn't know about this rule, as he does it again with "try and be reasonable" (75).  He also does it in either Larklight or Starcross, I don't remember which.

On second thought, the two examples in Mortal Engines are both in dialogue, which is often rife whith grammatical errors that reflect the quirks of actual speech.  (I'm not just talking about Reeve's dialogue either.  C.S. Lewis ^.^ uses it himself in The Magician's Nephew, dropping hs and adding them just like a . . . um, I really have no idea what accent that is, but the word Cockney comes to mind, so I'll label that accent Cockney until I figure out otherwise).  Reeve may be pardoned.

This book has a great plot, cool premise, woo not-so-shiny technology (hey, it's steampunk, man), and amazing characters.  I'm not a fan of steampunk, so this didn't make the top simply because of my personal preferences, but it is a pretty good book.



Stars:  7.5, for reasons stated in the last paragraph.

Violence:  8.  Hester's entire face is cut up by Valentine (apparently it was an accident or something), Katherine gets stabbed (accidentally again) by her dad, and the traction city of London is blown up.  Pod dies under a roasting hot ship that lands on him.

Romance:  7.  Tom likes Kate at one point, then he likes Hester.  Kate likes Pod and he likes her (they get a kiss scene later in the book, which I didn't even notice was a kiss scene until afterwards, which shows either that I'm incredibly oblivious or that it was a harmless kiss scene.  Maybe both).

Language:  TBA (I forgot and I have to look)

Appropriate for:  11 to teen