Mortal Engines: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|''It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.''|Opening sentence of ''Mortal Engines''. {{spoiler|[[Book Ends|Closing sentence of the entire series]].}}}}
The Mortal Engines Quartet is an award-winning, critically acclaimed series of novels by the English author Philip Reeve, marketed (somewhat ridiculously) as ''The Hungry City Chronicles'' in America.<ref>possibly because of the [[Stanislaw Lem]] anthlogy that was released as ''Mortal Engines'' in the US</ref> Four books were written in chronological order: ''Mortal Engines'' (2001), ''Predator's Gold'' (2003), ''Infernal Devices'' (2005), and ''A Darkling Plain'' (2006). Prequel books set many centuries before the first book are currently being published. ''Fever Crumb'' (2009), ''A Web of Air'' (2010) and ''Scrivener's Moon'' (2011) are out so far,{{when}} with more to come.
'''''Mortal Engines''''' takes place in a post-post-post-post-post-apocalyptic [[Used Future]]. Nations no longer exist, except in the lands of the Anti-Traction League. Traction Cities - entire cities mounted on caterpillar tracks for mobility - are fiercely independent city-states, using giant jaws to devour one another for resources in a horribly unsustainable city-eat-city environment known as Municipal Darwinism: large cities eat small cities, small cities eat towns, towns eat suburbs, and everyone eats non-moving or "static" settlements. Trade is mostly accomplished by airship, though sometimes cities of roughly equal size (unable to devour each other) will stop to trade. Much of the [[Applied Phlebotinum]] involves Old-Tech, ancient remains of lost civilisations ranging from statues of [[Mickey Mouse]] ("animal-headed gods of lost America") to [[Forgotten Superweapon|Forgotten Superweapons]].
Traction Cities' military and ideological counterpart, the Anti-Traction League, is a vast Eastern coalition of static settlements, who aim to remove the abomination of Traction Cities from the world.
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Something worth mentioning, given the amount of back-and-forth editing in the page history, is that the most prominent Stalker is named Shrike in most editions and Grike in the North American ones. For [[Theme Naming]] reasons made clear in ''Fever Crumb'' - that is, all the Stalkers in his 'batch' were named after birds - 'Shrike' (a small predatory bird) makes considerably more sense than 'Grike' (a feature of limestone pavements).
[[Peter Jackson]] and WETA Digital
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{{tropelist}}
* [[Action Girl]]: Hester Shaw. Later a [[Dark Action Girl]].
** Also, Anna Fang in the first book. With an equally unclear distinction between [[Action Girl]] and [[Dark Action Girl]].
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* [[Beauty Is Never Tarnished]]: Deliberately and avoided by Hester Shaw, who is horribly scarred and disfigured. As in missing an eye, most of her nose, and a good chunk of her mouth.
** However, she's also something of a murderous psychopath in the later books.
* [[Base
** On a much smaller scale, ''A Web Of Air'' features funicular houses, which only move up and down on rails.
* [[Betty and Veronica]]: Although they don't meet until the very end of the book, Katherine Valentine and Hester Shaw can be seen as this. The second book plays the trope straight with Freya Rasmussen and Hester Shaw.
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* [[Downer Ending]], and then some.
* [[Driven to Suicide]]: {{spoiler|Hester stabs herself in the heart rather than live without Tom.}}
* [[Dropped a Bridge
** Also, Shrike. Though it's more {{spoiler|ran a city over him.}}
* [[Early
* [[End of the World Special]]
* [[Enormous Engine]]: How do you think a Traction City gets around?
* [[The Fagin]]: Uncle.
* [[Fantastic Racism]]: Between the Scriven and humans.
* [[Feet of Clay]]: Both of Tom's heroes. Nimrod Pennyroyal is the slightly nicer. {{spoiler|Relatively: he shoots Tom in the heart, eventually causing his death}}, [[
** However, Valentine is the more likeable character, almost a [[Tragic Villain]], while Pennyroyal is as despicable as Gilderoy Lockhart characters tend to be.
* [[Foregone Conclusion]]: [[La Résistance|The London Underground]] in ''Scrivener's Moon'' aren't going to stop the reconstruction of London as the first Traction City.
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* [[Friendly Enemies]]: Naga and Kriegsmarshal Von Kobold. Naga sends his rival a gift of a bullet-proof vest enscribed with the words 'sorry we missed you' when he learns that the Kriegsmarshal survived an attack from a Green Storm sniper. The Kriegsmarshal, in return, considers Naga more likable than some of his allies in the Traktionstadtgesellshaft.
* [[Future Imperfect]]: Plastic idols of Mickey and Pluto, "animal-headed gods of lost America."
** America, incidently, was first discovered in 1924 by Christopher [[
*** Reeve is just fond of this trope in general - "blog" is adopted as profanity in ''Fever Crumb''.
**** And, of course, in the same book, the "Hari Potter" cult throw away gag.
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* [[Gambit Roulette]]: used a couple of times; it seems just about everything is helping {{spoiler|Anna Fang, resurrected as a cyborg Stalker}} get the control codes to the superweapon.
* [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]]: about triples in quantity in the third book. Particularly when {{spoiler|Wren is trying to get aboard Harrowbarrow to delay it from eating New London,}} and is caught by some of its soldiers: "One of the men searched her for weapons, more thoroughly than Wren felt was really necessary (surely they must know that you couldn't hide anything ''very'' dangerous inside your bra?)."
** Although never explicitly mentioned, its obvious that Tom and Hester had (or almost had, due to an interuption) [[Pre
* [[Good Scars, Evil Scars]]: Played with. Hester has some truly hideous scarring on her face and is... complicated. Her extreme moral ambiguity really stems from her scarring and the event that caused it.
* [[Grey and Gray Morality]]: Both well-played on both sides, and deconstructed in that some people act out of selfish reasons. Though nobody is quite a [[Complete Monster]] (though that's debatable with Hester in A Darkling Plain), surprisingly enough, there are a few [[Jerkass]] characters who are simply in it for themselves.
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* [[I Have No Son|I Have No Mother]]: {{spoiler|Wren pretty much cuts off all ties to Hester at the end of the third book, and never sees her again.}}
* [[Implacable Man]]: All Stalkers, but ''especially'' Shrike, who gets; hit by multiple times an emplacement-weapon grade Tesla cannon, buried for centuries, torn apart, shot (ineffectively), stabbed multiple times by many different people and other Stalkers (likewise, {{spoiler|though Tom manages to put him into a sort of hibernation for fifteen years by ramming a sword into his damaged chest}}), Battle Frisbee-d (makes sense in context) blown up, ''run over by a city'' (literally), dropped out of an airship into a frozen lake, and {{spoiler|and is still alive in the [[Distant Finale]], where he tells the story}}.
* [[Jerk
* [[Karma Houdini]]: somehow played ''and'' averted with Pennyroyal: he never paid for {{spoiler|shooting Tom and stealing the ''Jenny Haniver''}} but at the end of the last book, {{spoiler|his reputation is ruined and he spends a fair amount of time in prison. Though he does get released and married eventually, nobody ever trusted him enough to publish the one truthful book he wrote, not even his wealthy wife}}. Whether you consider this is not enough to compensate for what he did or that he's not that much of a negative character is [[Your Mileage May Vary|YMMV]] territory.
* [[Killed Off for Real]] : Employed liberally; a great number of major and minor characters get the chop, usually quickly and horribly. In the first book alone, {{spoiler|Shrike, Anna Fang, Thaddeus Valentine, Kate Valentine, Bevis Pod, Magnus Crome, and ''pretty much the entire city of London'' die}}. Partly subverted as in the course of the second, third and fourth books, some of these characters turn out to have survived {{spoiler|or have been Stalker-ized}}, but then at the end of the fourth book (before the [[Distant Finale]]) {{spoiler|Pomeroy, Naga, Stalker Fang and, last but not least, Tom and Hester, die}}.
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* [[Precursors]]: The Ancients, i.e. us.
* [[Riding the Bomb]]: More like "piloting the bomb". The fanatical Green Storm employ Tumblers, piloted heavy ordnance dropped from airships.
* [[Running Gag]]: In the first book, characters tend to mispronounce Tom's family name, including Anna Fang when they first meet. His encounter with {{spoiler|Stalker Fang}} in the second book [[Shout
* [[Scavenger World]]
* [[Shipper
* [[Schizo
** ''Hot air balloons'' are reinvented in Fever Crumb. Though they only get one use.
** In ''Web Of Air'' The City Of London adopts a policy of {{spoiler|killing off anyone researching flight and later an ongoing policy of creating religious prohibitions against it, because it represented a clear danger to the new traction city.}}
** The Green Storm takes this [[Up to Eleven]]. Expect to see massive air-destroyers with tech modern humans won't develop today, dropping kamikaze Tumblers and firing more guns than a fleet of AC-130s, providing backup to cavalry armed with machine guns and Killer Zombie Robots while they're being strafed with armed Wright Flyers, which are in turn coming under attack from undead birds and fighter airships. Yes, seriously. Like an F-16 in airship form.
* [[Shout
** The city of Brighton has an aircraft guidance system consisting of a large wheel with lights on it. It's called the "Pharos Wheel", as in Ferris Wheel and Tower of Pharos.
** Two mechanics in the mercenary fighter squadron "Flying Ferrets" are named Algy and Ginger. These are two major characters in the British book series ''Biggles'', which was about fighter pilots.
** Again, the steam-ram ship ''Supercollider''. "Collider" is a specific type of particle accelerator.
** The god Poskitt is named for Reeve's real-life friend Kjartan Poskitt. Mortal Engines has many [[Shout
** Many cities are [[Shout
*** London is based on the real London, complete with St Pauls and a vertical transport parodying the Underground.
*** Brighton is likewise full of references to Reeve's hometown.
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* [[Single Woman Seeks Good Man]]: Already there in the first book but especially apparent in the following ones, where Hester is head over heels for the [[Nice Guy|nice]] [[Non-Action Guy]] Tom Natsworthy.
* [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism]]. Way, ''way'' over towards the "cynicism" end. The very, very few optimistic characters (Tom, Wren, possibly Oenone Zero) are shown again and again to be completely out of their depth, while the pessimists, nihilists, slave-dealers, compulsive liars, juvenile delinquents, mechanical horrors and violently depraved psychopaths are in their element. And somehow, it WORKS.
* [[Social Darwinist]]: As in ''Municipal'' Darwinist. Survival of the fittest city.
* [[Stalker
* [[Street Urchin]]: The Lost Boys are half [[Oliver Twist]], a quarter [[Jack the Ripper]] and a quarter [[wikipedia:Stingray
* [[Taking You
* [[Talking Is a Free Action]]: Tom manages to say "A Nuevo-Mayan Battle Frisbee!" while seeing one in flight. [[Said Bookism|"Gasps" it, too.]]
▲* [[Ted Baxter]]: Nimrod Pennyroyal.
* [[Temporary Love Interest]]: Kate Valentine, who {{spoiler|gets vaporised}} and Freya Rasmussen for Tom. Also, Wolf Kobold for Wren.
* [[That Man Is Dead]]: "I am not {{spoiler|Anna Fang}}. We are wasting time. I wish to destroy cities."
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* [[Wretched Hive]]: {{spoiler|Brighton after the Lost Boys take over}} is described as this.
* [[Yandere]]: Hester in the second book onwards.
* [[Zeppelins
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Science Fiction Literature]]
[[Category:Mortal Engines]]
[[Category:Literature of the 2000s]]
[[Category:Literature of the 2010s]]
[[Category:Literature]]
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