Fans of Philip Reeve are in for a treat with this imaginative ‘prequel’ to the Mortal Engines series. The book follows the adventures of the eponymous heroine, Fever Crumb, first encountered as an abandoned child being brought up by the Order of Engineers, who apply logic, rather than emotion, to their existence. Sent away to work as an apprentice for archaeologist Kit Solent, it becomes apparent that there is a mystery about Fever and the scar on the back of her head that she has carried since she was a baby.

The backdrop for Fever’s adventures is a shattered London, once lorded over by the autocratic Scriveners, with their dappled skins, whom Fever – strangely and dangerously- resembles. The Scriveners, however, were overthrown by the Skinners, who in turn are threatened by the mysterious, nomadic Movement which exists outside the Orbital Moatway, an ‘Ancient feature’ which guards London’s borders. Reeve depicts a tough, tribal world in which only fragments of technology survive . Though set in the future, this is a society harking back to medieval times with its Guilds and Societies; Mad Max meets Monty Python and the Holy Grail.Reeve creates this world with characteristic verve , offering a richly-textured blend of playful humour and violence. London place names, warped with time, are a source of authorial fun, with Hampstead Heath becoming ‘Hampster’s Heath’, Oxford Circus ‘Ox-fart Circus’ and Epping Forest, “Effing Forest”. Sly digs are made at our current cultural mores. “Cheesers’ is a muttered swearword. Fever encounters a religious procession of robed figures wearing pointed hats and chanting ‘the name of some old-world prophet, “Hari, Hari! Hari Potter!”’

Reeve skilfully pulls off the trick of making Fever Crumb work as a piece of fiction in its own right, while laying the foundations for future stories. The book unfolds as a series of inter-linking, overlapping stories, a device which serves to fill in the history. Fever’s personal story cleverly intertwines with the larger picture; one strand in a complex embroidery. The moment when the theory of ‘municipal Darwinism’ is first mentioned carries a definite frisson for Mortal Engines readers. Particularly moving is the story of how Shrike, the implacable Stalker, comes into being. Bewildered but valiant, Fever makes an appealing heroine, horrified by the violence she encounters and seeking to reconcile the rational rules with which she was brought up by the Engineers with the realities of her feelings. By turns funny, sad and horrifying and always inventive, this is a great, gripping rollercoaster ride of a book.

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