Review: Mortal Engines (Mortal Engines #1)

Mortal Engines, Book 1 in the Mortal Engines Quartet by Phillip Reeve

Published By: Scholastic
Publication Date: November 16, 2001
Date Read: January 7, 2025
Genre: YA – Dystopia / Sci-fi
Source: Bought
Format: Audiobook
Pages: 336

Add to Goodreads | Add to Storygraph

London is a city on wheels – a future city like you’ve never known before. In the terrible aftermath of the Sixty Minute War, cities which survived the apocalypse became predators, chasing and feeding on smaller towns. Now London is hunting down its prey, getting ready to feed. But as the chase begins, Tom uncovers a secret – a secret full of deadly consequences. Soon he is plunged into a world of unkillable enemies, threatened by a weapon that will tear his life apart…

I’ll be honest, Mortal Engines is never a book that I was tempted to pick up. I got the audio edition of this a couple of years ago as part of Audible’s 2 for 1 Credit sale, and there was nothing else I wanted to go with another purchase. I thought the cover of this one looked interesting, so I decided to get this one. Having said that, I did enjoy this one more than I thought I would. It was a fast paced, action packed dystopia novel and it reminded me how much I genuinely do love dystopia books.

Mortal Engines is definitely a mix of genres. You have a dystopia world, with a hint of steampunk and sci-fi elements and I really did enjoy this. I am a fan of all three of these genres so I was naturally really interested in the concept. I found it really interesting that all of the cities are on wheels and can move about and challenge each other. It’s such a fresh concept that I’ve never come across before so I did really like that.

I also really enjoyed the diverse characters we follow throughout the book. We have multiple main characters, from very different backgrounds and I thought that was a really great element to the book. We saw characters who had been brought up in the very rich cities and then characters who saw the danger of living in the ‘outlands’. I just thought it brought a whole new dynamic to the story being able to see different areas of this fascinating world and different persepectives.

I can’t really pinpoint one specific thing that I didn’t like or that affected my enjoyment of the book, but despite there being lots of elements I really liked, I just didn’t completely love it. I found myself losing interest at parts, and I don’t know if it was the book or the narrator of the audiobook but I did lose focus a few times and had to force myself to continue listening. This book is quite complex in the world building and with it being fast paced, I feel like I just couldn’t really picture what the world was like very well. So while this was a fun read, and I’m definitely glad that I picked it up, it’s not one that I have any interest in continuing the series. I felt like the first book wrapped up pretty well and I don’t really feel any need to pick up the rest. I would definitely recommend this one to anyone who really liked steampunk novels that focus on different types of technologies as this one will definitely be up your street.