Mortal Engines

This is a fun adventure story set in a weird future in which cities such as London are mobile, rolling around the countryside and consuming smaller settlements in what is wonderfully called Municipal Darwinism . So you can read this on the level of crazy YA adventure, or you can read this as a very scathing pun-filled commentary on modern urban capitalism.

Oh, and it's got airship adventures. Airships are always good :-)

Overall, I found the book silly. The concept of traction cities, while interesting, feels not completely thought out. How do cities grow? If they can't grow, where do the extra population go from cities that have been gobbled up? How do airships find a city if it's constantly moving? Where do they get their fuel? The plot and characters felt cookie-cutter, as well.

This is a fun imaginative book. I enjoyed it and grew to love the characters. I haven't seen the movie yet so I'm not sure how it compares.