Phillip Reeve was born in Brighton in 1966. After school he went to art college, then returned to Brighton to work in a small, independent bookshop. Some years later he became an illustrator – providing cartoons for various books. He has been writing since he was five, but Mortal Engines was his first published book. He lives with his wife and son on Dartmoor.

Fever Crumb is a girl who works as an assistant for some nutty professors. She has no family that she knows and was found in an empty street by the professors when she was a baby. She was found at a time of trouble for the city of London. The streets of London were run by the Scriven, a group of weird breads who looked like humans. They normally had very spotty features and looked different to humans. They were a huge gang. At the time they found Fever London was being run by the Scriven. The people, though, had finally got the courage to stand up to the Scriven and fought them off. They had killed all of them, or so they hoped. Fever, though, had a weird feature: she had different eyes. And when she left the professors' house for the first time to work for another man, she was held up in the busy trading streets by an old woman who started shouting things to her calling her all sorts of names.

Fever has powers and doesn’t know it. People are afraid because there are groups from other parts of England in the north ready to attack London. Fever could be the key  to help save London: she just doesn't know it. The book, though, takes a long time to get into the good bits and you really have to force yourself into reading it because it is very dull.

Although Reeve has created a great fantasy world of what Britain could be like, the story isn’t really that great. I would not recommend this book because it is very dull and for people who are not such fantasy/different-world fans I seriously wouldn’t recommend it.