Bridge of Storms, Philip Reeve (£8.99, Scholastic)
This is a book that leaves you breathless by the end. Every chapter presents a new cliffhanger that soon gets resolved in the next, characters and settings come and go, surprises and scares are round every corner, people turn out to not be quite whaat they seem.
We are back in the world of Mortal Engines, where cities and time do not stand still, and the past is a ruined confusion of wrecked computers and misunderstood artefacts. Our heroine Tamzin Pook and her ‘oddball gang of mercenaries’ – who have just about become a bunch of mates plus one romantic couple after their adventures in Thunder City – are quickly hired at the beginning of this book to escort the city of Museion to meet London, who have promised to look after it’s library and historical collections.
When I interviewed Philip Reeve for IT, he mentioned ‘a motorised city […] looking like Breughel’s painting of the Tower of Babel, but on caterpillar tracks’, an idea which seems to have been revisited for Museion. The city has been hiding in the end of a neglected valley but is being watched over by the Junkyard Dogs, a gang of warriors in kampavans, and also the caterpillar-like city of Crawley (!), both waiting for the chance to overpower Museion and steal their artefacts and secrets.
Nothing, of course goes to plan. There is a spy on board, prisoners are taken, witches are feared, fires are set, airships flown, guns fired, rebellions quashed, new friends made and the titular bridge to be crossed. This, of course, is a rusted relic from the past which spans a dreadful gorge. But needs must… and, of course, the collegiate city escapes in the end although we know from the original Mortal Engines quartet, which is set in the future from these prequels, that not everyone will live happily ever after.
Bridge of Storms is a mix of suspenseful Tintin-like episodes, Enid Blyton pacing and problem solving (that’s not a criticism, I grew up on Enid Blyton books) and cyberpunk science fiction. The book is dotted with dreadful (i.e. brilliant) puns, knowing asides and allusions, and the mix of machinery, adventure, romance and intrigue makes for an enjoyable romp that everyone, not just the targeted YA audience, will enjoy. And I haven’t even mentioned Vespertine the Revenant (a kind of cyberman with a transplanted brain) and her small pet cat.
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Rupert Loydell
Philip Reeve’s website is here.
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