Tom and Hester have been thrown together. Truly-thrown out of a city on wheels that's left them stranded and starving in the middle of nowhere while it hares off after its prey. Hester is desperate for revenge, and Tom is only desperate to get back on board his beloved London. This is a stunning literary debut from Philip Reeve. A novel that defies easy categorisation, it is a gripping adventure story set in an inspired fantasy world, where moving cities trawl the globe. Peopled with convincing and utterly likeable characters, this story is a magical and unique read.

Accolades

Winner of Smarties Book Prize Gold Award 2002.
Winner of Smarties Book Prize 9-11 Category 2002.
Shortlisted for Whitbread Book of the Year Award Children's Book Category 2002.
Shortlisted for Branford Boase Award 2002. 

Reviews

Set on Earth some time in the future, Reeve's tale is an electric adventure of life, death and the universe. The city of London is on wheels and in order to survive must roam the globe and devour smaller cities and settlements. Savagery and control are used by the elite to maintain power and wealth. Everyone has their place in society, from the Mayor and the Guild leaders at the top to the foreign slaves at the lower end who are forced to work in and eat human waste. In this London of the future, two pairs of unlikely friends, Hester and Tom and Katherine and Pod, try to change their world and along the way encounter life-threatening adventure, romance and treachery. Each is faced with decisions which will alter their lives and ultimately the future of the planet. Their adventures entangle them with terrifying robots manufactured from dead corpses, swashbuckling spies and air battles ending in carnage. It would have been preferable to tell the entire story in the past tense; some of the sudden switches to the present tense jar a little and draw attention to an otherwise unobtrusive narrator. However, this is a thrilling story for both older children and adults. The issues of how we choose to treat other individuals and communities and how we care for our planet are explicit in the story but do not distract from the tightly plotted narrative. Reeve's physical descriptions are a delight - flesh glistens 'with a slug-like film of mucus' and Tom's fall is like being swallowed by a 'black throat'. His imagery bears more than a passing resemblance to Ted Hughes's, especially when describing the Resurrected Men (close kin to Hughes's own Iron Man). This is a truly thought-provoking and ingenious novel which has the distinction of having well-drawn characters, a story well worth the telling and a stirring conclusion. Reeve may write another adventure set in his newly created future earth but it will be difficult to better this powerful fable. Ages 10+ (Kirkus UK)

Reeve thinks big in this British prizewinner, envisioning a distant future in which immense mobile cities roar over continent-sized wastelands, preying on each other. Thanks to ruthless scavenger Thaddeus Valentine, London has acquired an ancient energy weapon powerful enough to overwhelm the well-defended but stationary cities of former Asia. To lowly apprentice Historian Tom Natsworthy, Valentine is a hero; Tom begins to find out differently after meeting Hester Shaw, a savagely mutilated young woman who saw Valentine murder her parents for the device. Ejected from the city as it barrels eastward, Tom and Hester encounter pirates and unexpected allies, battle an ancient cyborg warrior, and get an eye-opening look at their diverse world as they struggle to catch up. Running up the body count to staggering dimensions, the author propels his protagonists to a cataclysmic climax, folding in both instances of casual, inhuman brutality and satiric comments about "urban Darwinism." With the exception of that cyborg, the characters and societies are as uncomplicated here as the moral issues; readers who enjoy violent, titanic clashes between good and evil will be absorbed from beginning to end. First of a projected trilogy. (Fiction. 12-15) (Kirkus Reviews US)