Bookworm Speaks!Predator’s Gold by Phillip ReeveBook 2 in the Predator Cities Series****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 refersThe “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!” ****thecultureworm.blogspot.com
Predator's Gold picks up two years where Mortal Engines left off, with Tom And Hester having "sort of inherited" Anna Fang's airship the Jenny Haniver, making a living for themselves as cargo traders. The novel opens in the flying city of Airhaven, as Tom and Hester take on the famed adventurer Professor Nimrod Pennyroyal as a passenger - before being chased into the Arctic by agents of the Green Storm, a splinter group of the Anti-Traction League attempting to recover the Jenny Haniver. They escape their pursuers but are left damaged, wounded and limping, eventually finding safe haven in the small Traction City of Anchorage. Decimated by plague and desperate to survive, Anchorage has set a course for America, the Dead Continent. The city's young margravine Freya is delighted to find Pennyroyal aboard her city, as he had previously boasted about discovering fresh tracts of green land in nuclear-devastated North America in one of his best-selling books. Pennyroyal (a character who owes much to J.K. Rowling's Gilderoy Lockhart) uneasily accepts a position as the city's chief navigator, and with the Jenny undergoing extensive repairs, Tom and Hester find themselves swept up in a new adventure.Predator's Gold takes the action of Mortal Engines to the polar icefields, and Reeve continues the creative flair he showed in his first novel; the pages abound with mercenaries and pirate lairs and horrible scientific experiments and a secret city of thieves and betrayals and deceptions and daring rescues and frantic battles. As I have said before, these books are the very definition of swashbuckling; and yet so much more than that, because of their literary merit and excellent characterisation and, most of all, Reeve's sterling ability to paint a visual picture with words. It really is the best of both worlds.Predator's Gold is slightly less epic than Mortal Engines, with less at stake and not as much globe-trotting, but the character's story arcs - and the development of the overall series plot - are much deeper. A love triangle develops with Freya, and Hester's jealous actions greatly alter the results of their lives. Reading this series for the second time (and knowing that the next book jumps a good seventeen years or so into the future) it's impressive to note just how much of what happens later is a direct consequence of earlier actions. This sounds like a self-evident observation - that is, of course, how real life works - but it's a refreshing change from so much YA fiction and hack fantasy, where the story is told through a series of coincidences and random happenings and deus ex machina. Tom and Hester's lives are irrevocably altered by only a handful of things - some of them big, some of them small, some of them their fault, some of them beyond their control. As one example, Hester and Tom's "inheritance" of the Jenny Haniver in Mortal Engines - an act which seemed to exist merely to service the climax of that novel - has significant repercussions in Predator's Gold.The character development is also excellent. Tom mostly remains a cardboard cut-out, the everyman swept up in wild adventures, but Hester is a fine creation, an ugly gargoyle serving as the linchpin of the series. In Mortal Engines she was merely a genre-subverting ugly heroine, rugged and capable and driven by a single-minded urge. Predator's Gold develops her, believably and consistently, into a ruthless character capable of terrible violence. This begins with the chapter ominously titled "The Knife Drawer" and continues down darker paths in the next two books.Tom touched her mouth. "I know it feels awful, those men you had to kill. I still feel guilty about killing Shrike, and Pewsey and Gench. But you had to do it. You had no choice.""Yes," she said, and smiled at how un-alike they were, because when she thought of the deaths of [spoilers], she felt no guilt at all, just a sort of satisfaction, and a glad amazement that she had got away with it.Here Hester kills to protect those she loves - in the future she will not have that justification. Pennyroyal also has a darker side, revealing himself in a shocking scene to be capable of worse things than simply lies and selfishness, delivered while nonetheless being cheerful and polite.There is, in fact, quite a lot of violence in Predator's Gold, including a child being beaten and strung up to die, cold-blooded murder and limbs being cut off. I have no problem with kids reading this, in context, though it does seem rather incongruous with the fact that the one hint at sex in the book is so subtle you might miss it entirely.Re-reading the series, I'm having my recollections confirmed: these are excellent YA adventure novels, the best of their kind, and while there are clear differences between them, I find it hard to say which one I prefer. I do recall A Darkling Plain, the final book, having some flaws - but it was three times the length of the others, and to my teenage mind that compensated for it. We'll see when we get there. Next up is Infernal Devices.
What do You think about Predator's Gold (2006)?
Book 1, Mortal Engines, was disappointing; Book 2 is worse. I sense that there is an interesting story happening in Reeve's steampunk world, but it's always just beyond the edges of the story he's actually telling. Somewhere in this world multiple factions plot against each other and a world war is beginning. But Predator's Gold isn't that story. It's the story of three underage minors--the bland hero, Tom; Hester, the ultra-violent girl with half a face; and Freya, the self-centered, fat ice princess--and their petty jealousies and unbelievable naivety. It's as though Reeve has taken all of my least favorite parts of Harry Potter and put them into a story with none of the magic or charm. This book teaches the reader the words polynya (an area of unfrozen sea water surrounded by ice) and limpet (relating to or denoting certain weapons that are attached to their targets by magnetic or adhesive properties and resist removal), as well as including a predictable Stalker re-birth, Fagin, plenty of argon lighting, and even more orphans (is there anyone in this story with two surviving parents? For that matter, is there a single admirable adult in this world?).The end of the book features the most anticlimactic escape-from-certain-death imaginable; a character who isn't going to die even when shot point-blank in the chest; the R-rated violence of a main character running amok; and the ridiculousness of two 17-year-olds living together as though married and now starting a family. My heart is not warmed. There is little to root for, and it doesn't seem that any of the characters are on destined arcs, or that there's anything important for any character to do in the story.Reeve is disappointingly vague in his descriptions, even where it would've been easy enough to do a bit of research and really enhance the scenes he writes. Here's one example: Masgard drew his sword and swished it to and fro, practicing flashy fencing moves as he advanced on her. (292)"Swished it to and fro"? "Flashy fencing moves"? This is how you write when all you know about fencing is movie swordfighting. But I expect an author to demonstrate a little research when thinking about his world. I don't need him to show off fencing jargon, but I'd like to know that I can trust that the author is picturing everything that's happening, not just that people are sort of swooshing swords at each other.The most disappointing aspect of this series so far (and especially this book) is its low value on human life. People are slaughtered in gruesome ways, and most people are little more than nameless cogs in the wheels of Municipal Darwinism. I find little that is kind, good, and compassionate in this series, which is unrealistic, not to mention not much fun to read.
—Neil Coulter
Mortal Engines left me so eager for more that I scoured all three bookshops in the town we were staying in for a copy of the sequel, Predator's Gold, even though I suspected I was setting myself up for disappointment. Sequels aren't usually as good, perhaps particularly in genre fiction, in part because the critical balance between novelty and familiarity is inevitably different when revisiting established characters and situations.Of course there are exceptions that prove the rule, and happily, Predator's Gold is one of them. Surviving characters from the first novel continue to grow and evolve (I'll eschew specific spoilers, but if Reeve is perhaps not as cruel to his protagonists as, say, Joss Whedon, he's assuredly not the sort of novelist from whom all sympathetic characters escape unscathed), and Reeve introduces new characters who also go through significant changes -- there's none of the stagnant quality to character dynamics that sometimes afflicts sequels. Some of Reeve's people make appallingly bad choices in this novel, but that didn't lessen my emotional involvement.Reeve introduces a few nifty wrinkles to his world-building, and more importantly, deepens the moral complexity of the story; what was shaping up to be a a mostly-good versus mostly-evil conflict in the first novel becomes substantially more nuanced, nicely mirroring the good-people-doing-bad-things aspect of the plot. Speaking of the plot, it's satisfyingly twisty and suspenseful. And once again I found Reeve's language, coinages, and nomenclature delightful. I laughed aloud several times.
—Doug
This was touch and go in the first third of the book. It couldn't keep my attention, I was still miffed at the ending of the first book, and I had so many other things I needed to concentrate on that I was reading bits by the day.Also, a lot of the scenes at the winter palace were very similar to the beginning of the Secret Garden, which I was listening to on Audiobook at the same time. Coincidence or "inspiration"? Then I got passed that mark, and it picked up. I was physically unable to read f
—Alexandra
