We see, as through a glass darkly, when looking at our past, but a delve into the incomparable Mortal Engines Series by Philip Reeve, places a witty and thought provoking lens over our so-called understanding of human culture.
The one thing I regret, more than not having discovered Mortal Engines sooner, is the fact that I came across it from the film trailer (which to all accounts does not do the series justice one iota). As well as looking visibly incredible, the trailer provided a premise which made me keen to read the books: a future world of Municipal Darwinism – a town-eat-town world, in which, following the catastrophe of the Sixty Minute War, the Earth’s cities have been made mobile and devour each other for resources, fighting it out across The Great Hunting Ground of former Europe (and in the air and sees). Pitted against them is the Anti Traction League, dwellers of the non-navigable zone where mountains and the vast armoured city fortress of Batmunk Gompah protect the green world from the ravages of titanic caterpillar tracks.
This is a high work of the imagination, and something only a person massively well versed in human history, geography and culture could pull off. It is no weak fantasy of tongue-twister names and made up countries, but a colossal re-imaging of Earth several thousand years in the future, where the ancient past – our world – is known only from a few tantalizing scraps of evidence, which the citizens of the traction cities (and Mossie statics) only have the faintest understanding; from the prized Seedies (CDs) which pass as beautiful ornaments, to the sinister scratchings on the Old (food) Tin Book of Anchorage (launch code for a long forgotten satellite weapons platform). It’s a world of strong ideologies, technologies and ideals, which rivals – and in my opinion betters – many of the most well-known Western fantasy worlds of the last 100 years. It’s certainly thought provoking – it is also funny, touching, violent, tragic and deeply, deeply, exhilarating.
It’s also a world in which Bertie Wooster, Richard Hannay or Sherlock Holmes would have fitted right in, for Reeve’s joyously eclectic future is a buccaneer world of steam power, airships, flying goggles and reconstituted ‘old tech,’ in which computers and ‘heavier than air’ flight are just a distant memory. It has a vibe which is somewhere between Biggles and The Thirty Nine Steps, with dialogue to boot (“oh bother”) and is an absolute treat for anyone who loves a dash of the 40’s (dash it). The characters are also strong, memorable and endearing and it’s hard not to fall in love with Anna Fang, Tom, Wren, Hester, Theo and even Pennyroyal and Mister Shrike.
With incredible description, mind blowing settings and touching characterization, it’s an absolute treat to read (is it really a Middle Grade series?) which pushes boundaries and opens dialogues, pitting the ill equipped and idealistic trainee historian Tom Natsworthy and the gloriously grim and tragic Hester Shaw against a merciless world which threatens to destroy what little scraps of goodness and hope they bravely hang on to, but (initially at least) they have each other, and as Hester says, in a line which masterfully sums up the whole thrust of the story: “You aren’t a hero, and I’m not beautiful and we probably won’t live happily ever after … But we’re alive, and together, and we’re going to be alright.”
Mortal engines is a phenomenal interplay between incredible comedy and phenomenally dead-pan narration on the one hand, and a bloody, real-world realism on the other, in which people pee themselves in fear, die before they see victory achieved and make terrible world-altering decisions because of their own past hurts. Throw the Stalkers – the Resurrected Men (and women) – into the equation (reanimated cyborg soldiers of a forgotten age), and what happens is a wonderful dialogue on what it is to be human, to feel, to love ... and an ethical debate of who’s version of life and ideology is right.
Tom Natsworthy initially believes that the battling of motorized cities is the only civilized way to live and abhors the horror and mud of the motionless ground when he first sets foot on bare earth; London uses old tech weapons of unimaginable power to try and rain supreme; the Green Storm splinter of the Anti-Traction League is hell-bent on ‘making the world Green once more’ even if that means total war and dehumanizing its soldiers. Hester loves Tom to the extent she will sell out an entire city to get him back, while Tom simply longs to explore the antiquarian curiosities of the long dead past and Wren (and Hester) long to travel the ‘Bird Roads,’ in their faithful red airship, the Jenny Hanniver.
Man, Mortal Engines is incredible … gritty, funny and deeply romantic. It’s a world I long to get lost in, and hats off to Mr Reeve for writing something which is so intimate and yet so vastly epic it clearly spills far off the printed pages of the stories he has published, with a million more tales to be written of the places, cultures and wars he mentions.
… And did I mention Nuevo-Mayan battle Frisbees?
The Cool passion of it is immense.