A review by jasonfurman
Larklight by Philip Reeve

3.0

I read the Mortal Engines quartet by Philip Reeve with my children and loved it. This book was written before it and was not nearly as good. It is in the silly scifi genre with a tinge of steampunk, like a worse Douglas Adams. Set in an alternative history where Isaac Newton discovered a powerful anti-gravitational engine powered by alchemy, the British Empire has all of its ossified traits but is now spread throughout the solar system. A brother and sister enter into a mortal battle with white spiders based on the planet Saturn and team up with an interplanetary pirate named Jack. You get the idea. Was genuinely witty at times, but the "adventures of" genre has its limits in terms of a genuinely suspenseful plot and the silliness undermines the world building and the characters are all pretty stock. But not terrible or anything and my children liked it.