Thunder City by Philip Reeves

Thunder City supplements Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines quartet with different characters but similar formula.

Thunder City by Philip Reeve. Scholastic, 2024, 322 pages.

Reading Level: Teen, ages 12-15

Recommended for: ages 13-up

The sea was calm that evening, and the raft town of Margate lay at anchor just off the rugged western coast of the Great Hunting Ground, surrounded by a slowly spreading slick of sewage and chip wrappers.

In the apocryphal past, Margate was a seaside town in Kent. But then came the Sixty-Minute War, an apparent nuclear holocaust that turned Europe into a wasteland and its great cities into predatory machines. But even in Dystopia, folks need their fun. Margate supplies it Vanity-Fair style, its chief attraction being staged conflicts that match creepy organic mashups called Revenants with human contestants. The humans are mostly slaves, trained like gladiators to either disable the Revenants or have their own fragile bodies pierced or torn. Tamzin Pook, a tough and canny female contestant, has proved her mettle through several of these encounters.

Meanwhile, on the mainland, the trading town of Thorbury “had eaten something that disagreed with it.” Traction cities survive by chasing down and devouring the resources (human and otherwise) of smaller towns and villages. But the latest prey Thorbury crams into its maw contains poison in the form of Gabriel Strega, a former resident expelled and now returned with a small army. In no time his forces overwhelm the town and establish Strega as the new mayor—or more like fascist dictator. It happens too quickly for anyone to mount an effective resistance, but when the regime becomes intolerable one intrepid middle-aged lady devises a plan. Miss Torpenhow was tutor to the Mayor’s children, the oldest of whom (Maximillian) is now imprisoned in Paris on Strega’s orders. If Miss Torpenhow can get to Paris, secure Max, and return with a military force of their own, Thorbury might be restored. But first she needs a talented warrior to defeat the Revenant guarding Max, and who better than the famous Revenant-fighter, Tamzin Pook?

Fans of the Mortal Engines series will recognize the formula: a hapless young man paired with a tough, scarred female gathers a motley crew allies and takes on impossible odds with luck and pluck. The four-volume Mortal Engines saga is of course much grander in scope, but while that epic was played out thousands of other stories were happening, and this is one. Reeve’s vivid, literate style is on display as well as the Dickensian variety of characters and immersive world-building. Though not a large factor in the plot, the religious angle is interesting: Europe seems to have lapsed back into its original paganism, while Africa retains some variety of monotheism. The virtues of friendship and courage feature prominently, but be warned that these novels are violent, befitting a culture based on “municipal Darwinism” and survival of the fittest. Though not for every taste, Thunder City provides a wild ride for action-loving readers.

Bottom Line: Nonstop thrills in a wildly-imagined dystopian world.

Also at Redeemed Reader:

• Review: See our review of the original Mortal Engines Quartet.
• Review: Philip Reeve is also the author of the Larklight trilogy, a rollicking steampunk series for middle grades.
• Reflection: Hayley and two teen readers discuss two dystopian novels from a Christian publisher.

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Thunder City is available from Amazon.