Mortal Engines

The movie of this is coming out, so I felt like it was my duty to read it. We have a tradition with my sister when every December we just have to go to the cinema to watch some fun, fantasy-type movie, so I have to research the contenders. This was one of them and honestly, I am not sure we will be watching it. Not because it was horrible and the movie will be horrible as well, it just has this peculiar feeling when I have no idea what the meaning is.

Cities are unlike you and I know here. They all move, some like gigantic tanks, some float, some fly, it just happens after some sort of a huge catastrophe. Every place living a sedentary life is considered barbaric and just wrong. But how can such places get supplies? New things, mechanical parts, everything like that. Well, they hunt each other down, break the prey to pieces and use it all up.
Tom works in (on?) London as some lowly museum apprentice. Orphan, like so many YA protagonists, idolising the biggest adventurer an scavenger, Thaddeus Valentine, who is basically like super mega Indiana Jones.
Up until he meets the man, but a mysterious girl with a horribly scarred face attacks him and as Valentine protects himself by throwing the girl, Hester, off London he also does the same to Tom for some reason. So our hero will learn many things about the man he used to adore for his exploits.

I like the concepts here. They are weird enough, surprising and out there. With YA now it is kind of hard to find anything that's in any way out there and I freaking hate that. I don't want one more mega super teen girl saving the world while claiming to be soooo average as hot guys fight for her attention and everyone just thinks she shits gold.
The problem I have with it lies elsewhere.

It is so bloody miserable. I have no idea what the point is when everything is just bleak, grey, sad, dramatic, miserable, painful and fucking horrid for everyone. Nothing good ever happens. Nothing fun or cool or funny does. It's just this negativity everywhere and it makes all of the things feel endlessly angsty.
When I say this I don't mean to talk about the author or prose or anything. But this book just felt ugly. Like it was interesting I guess, but it was really an exercise in pure misery. I don't really like that. Not saying books need to be super sunshine happy land, but I'm not the type to read whole novels to somehow spectate and bask in the suffering of the characters. Pity for them doesn't make me feel entertained or good or virtuous, it just makes me freaking sad. After a point it feels embarrassing, like I am looking at it all like some sort of a sick spectacle.
Maybe it all sounds dramatic; this book is dark, but not darker than ASOIAF. You could find many, many darker books than this. Or more like books with darker elements. My issue wasn't the darkness of the worst moments; It was that other than those negative feelings it offered nothing. ASOIAF has many wonderful moments, jokes, people discovering things and doing amazing, heroic things. Here... nah.

I'm not sure if I want to read more of this. Not because it was a bad book, but because it only brings depressing thoughts and feelings, nothing else. That's something I don't necessarily need in my life. Reading to me is a fun hobby, something to love. This didn't give me feelings of wonder, more like dread.

Have a nice day and let me engineer myself some more fun moments!