Recommended children's booklists sorted by age or topic

Home > Books > Mortal Engines

Mortal Engines

Book Synopsis

The first book in the award-winning Mortal Engines quartet. In a dangerous future, huge motorized cities hunt, attack and fight each other for survival.

As London pursues a small town, young apprentice Tom is flung out into the wastelands, where a terrifying cyborg begins to hunt him down.

Mortal Engines launched Philip Reeve’s brilliantly-imagined creation, the world of the Traction Era, where mobile cities fight for survival in a post-apocalyptic future.

Mortal Engines won the coveted Gold Smarties Award.

Now a feature film of the same name, starring Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan and Hugo Weaving. Produced by Lord of the Rings director, Peter Jackson.#

Our Review Panel says...

Set in a distant, dystopian future, the predatory traction city of London is a terrible place, with the richest living in luxury on the top tiers and the poorest living in squalor far down below. But there is another, more hopeful city in Reeve’s book. Batmunkh Gompa is beautiful, carved from rock with tiers of terraces and balconies, sparkling lakes, lush gardens, and brightly coloured taxi balloons. With its slogan ‘we shall make the world green again’, this is the utopian dream – and definitely the one I’d prefer to live in.