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A review by linasbookcase
Fever Crumb by Philip Reeve
5.0
Philip Reeve takes us into the future of our own world, but also back into the history of the world of Mortal Engines in an (as always) amazingly well written way. His attention for detail is as astonishing as it is clever, portraying our own "ancient" civilization as forgotten, mystified and as alien to them as, lets say, the culture of the Maya people is to us. I particularly enjoy the way Reeve let the language develop, using "blog" or "blogging" as an insult or swear word, let different parts of London have their names changed (Pickled Eel Circus, Eefrow) and describes "Cheesers Crice" as "the name of some obscure cockney god".
All this I already knew and loved about Philip Reeve's writing, having adored the Mortal Engines quartet during my teens. And this being a prequel to those particular books I found immense delight in having part of the history of the Traction cities explained; meeting Quercus: the to-be God Quirke of the moving city of London; having the story of the Stalker Shrike's making and flaws told and seeing how the inhabitants of the non-moving London at first feared the Tractionists, or "The Movement", the same way the people of the moving cities later fear the Anti-Tractionists in the Mortal Engines quartet.
All this I already knew and loved about Philip Reeve's writing, having adored the Mortal Engines quartet during my teens. And this being a prequel to those particular books I found immense delight in having part of the history of the Traction cities explained; meeting Quercus: the to-be God Quirke of the moving city of London; having the story of the Stalker Shrike's making and flaws told and seeing how the inhabitants of the non-moving London at first feared the Tractionists, or "The Movement", the same way the people of the moving cities later fear the Anti-Tractionists in the Mortal Engines quartet.