Bookworm Speaks!- Predator's Gold Review

Bookworm Speaks!

Predator’s Gold 

by Phillip Reeve

Book 2 in the Predator Cities Series

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The Story: With the great Traction City of London completely destroyed, Tom Natsworthy and Hester Shaw travel across the world, trading with other airships and adventuring on the exciting and exotic routes of the Bird Roads. When their little scrapyard aircraft, the Jenny Haniver, is pursued by rocket-firing gunships, the ice city of Anchorage offers them sanctuary. But as Tom and Hester soon discover, it is no safe refuge. Devastated by plague in recent years and haunted by ghosts and madness, Anchorage is headed for the Dead Continent of North America. It's a perilous course, one that will take them directly into a firestorm of danger and conflict.

The Review:

In a lot of ways, this book really is the perfect sequel. The first book was set up in a way that if a reader stopped there it would end in satisfying manner. The two characters flying off into the sunset on a triumphant if bittersweet note. This book refers

The “problem” with the first book in the series, at least in comparison with this volume, is that it was too busy setting up the world of Municipal Darwinism and its various factions and histories. In this volume, we have already set up the world and now author and reader are free to play in it all they want. 

They say that the best kind of stories have the best kind of villain. There are plenty of antagonists in this story and they all have their own moralities and goals which come into conflict plenty of times. In other words…the cast setup is pretty much perfect. 

Every antagonist to the main cast of Tom and Hester is the hero of their own story. If one were to really find a mustache twirling ‘villian’, it would most likely be the city of Arkangel and its corrupt, slave-holding, leadership. Few of the character’s can really be described as ‘evil’ and this really helps the book feel mature. Children and Young Adult books tend to fall into very simplistic tropes and while the reader wants the antagonists to fail and the heroes to succeed, one can’t help but feel that they too are just trying to survive and make the best in an already crazy world that seems to be getting even more crazy every day. 

One of the central arcs of the Mortal Engines series is the conflict between the traction cities and the forces of the Anti-Traction League, a faction that opposes the unsustainable practices of Municipal Darwinism. In this book, it all comes to a head and violent splinter group of the Anti-Traction League, known as the Green Storm, comes to power and begins to wage war against the Traction Cities. There is a war about to begin and Tom and Hester are poised too…get as far away as they can from it. 

In the current status of young adult fiction, the young protagonist is very much in the forefront. The world is changing and they will be one, if not the, center of the entire shenanigan. This does not happen in this book. When the Green Storm and the Traction Cities finally ride to war, Tom and Hester’s only goal is to get as far away from it as possible. They are not leaders of the revolution or even a part of it, at least when it all gets moving. This mirrors to the real world in a way that is quite refreshing. The whole nature of war is really a bunch of larger organizations using the common folk as pawns. All that Jane and Joe Average can do is try to survive and that is exactly what Tom and Hester do. They are just two people trying to live to see tomorrow. Any war, both fact and fiction, is filled with people like that. This makes this book extremely relatable on a lot of levels. Even though the world is extremely fantastical to say the least, it feels very grounded, both in the characters and in how this world feels extremely tangible. It closely follows its own rules. So do the people inside. 

That does not mean that the war in this book should simply be overlooked. The set up is extremely intriguing and makes the reader genuinely curious as to how the whole thing will play out. We are rewarded in that regard when reading the following books in the series. As for this book, we are taken on a journey across the Great Hunting Grounds and beyond and see all of the elements lead up to the climax and slowly watch them all come together. Every single chapter is a surprise as we have no idea what new development will occur. Its extremely excited and it makes the book hard to put down. 

This is all well and good until about the first half of the third act, as confusing as that sounds. The climax of the story takes place here and to be completely honest it does get a little confusing. All the plot strings begin to be drawn together but perhaps the author set up a few too many. There is the rise of the Green Storm and its terrible new leader. The climax of the Lost Boys arc, the city of Arkangel pursuing Anchorage. It all comes to a head in the final chapters and sometimes they overlap in ways that muddle the flow of the story. 

Final Verdict: Predator’s Gold is another fantastic edition to one of the most imaginative series in fiction. Filled with memorable characters and wondrous scenery, the Mortal Engines is a series that is sure to be a classic for many years to come.  

Four out of Five Stars

“Buy one now!” 

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