The different strands of the story came together really well here: from the ghost town of Anchorage to the bruteish town of Arkangel; from Caul and the Lost Boys to Uncle and Anna Fang; from Sathya appearing again and the Stalker Fang...

I enjoyed reading this more than the 1st book, probably because I cared more about the individual characters by this book - mainly Hester, Tom, and Anna.

Another enjoyable book in the series. It still takes me a while to get used to Philips writing style. The head hopping is something I've never read before in a book, but it's still a fantastic world and set of characters he has created.

16. A book with a colour in the title - Predator's Gold - Philip Reeve
Predator's gold is the continuation of the story of Hester and Tom from Mortal Engines. Now two years later they have been living and working on the Jenny Haniver airship. They pick up the infamous Pennyroyal on their stop on Arkangle. They are spotted and pursued by the Green Storm making an emergency landing on Anchorage - they make friends and a life of sorts with what is left of that town.

Hester:
Hester is just so intensely childish, unreasonably jealous and has such poor communication skills. Her relationship with Tom is odd. They have apparently been together two years; living, working and travelling together all that time. Yet she has zero trust in him and zero ability to communicate with him but at the same time total controlling dependence on having him in her life. She gets literally suicidal at the thought of losing him "wouldn't it be better to be dead than alone again?"
When she sees Tom kiss Freya I get she's pissed, it's a perfectly justified reaction - even though she was spying on them - his actions are not her fault. Her reaction though is to run away sell the location of the vessel to a slave ship runner and try and rescue him so she can be the hero? Not exactly logical - but it made a pretty great story.
Hester in the first book was a miserable girl bent on revenge for her past - but once that resolves itself in the first book I thought her character would progress - well - positively? She definitely progresses, but it's more of a regression; she's crazy jealous and she viciously murders Masgard in cold blood whom she had previously sold out to. I mean her character is very compelling but hardly likeable.

Tom:
Tom for all his general niceness is sometimes kind of shallow - while I appreciate the realistic attempt at portraying a teenager it make him less likeable - even if more three-dimentional. - "For the first time he felt annoyed by her. If only she were prettier and more sociable!"

Pennyroyal
Pennyroyal is annoying as all hell. Like straight up so irritating. I understand that the premise to where they are going / what they are doing on Anchorage is because of him - however I'm glad he spends more of the book drunk and out of the way.

All the character things aside the book is excellent, like really excellent. The characters are realistic and interesting. They have real, if extreme reactions to their circumstances. It's an exciting adventure story set in a fascinating world. Would highly recommend.

On kulunut noin kaksi vuotta edellisistä tapahtumista. Tai siis siitä, mihin Kävelevät koneet jäivät. Hester ja Tom matkustavat edelleen ilmalaiva Jenny Haniverilla ja siitä tämän kirjan tarina alkaa.

Pidin tästä kirjasta jopa enemmän kuin sen edeltäjästä. Ehkä syynä oli se, että tiedostamatta vertasin Käveleviä koneita siitä tehtyyn elokuvaan ja siksi ei pystynyt nauttimaan matkasta niin hyvin kuin Kadotetun mantereen kanssa.

Tarina vei mennessään. Henkilöhahmot oli ihmihimillisiä heikkouksineen ja vahvuuksineen, ja se teki heistä kiinnostavia. Myös ympäristöt ja tapahtumat pitivät otteessaan. Koskaan ei tiennyt, kuinka käy.

Suosittelen tätä kirjaa kaikille, joita fantasia, scifi, hyvä tarina, kiinnostavat hahmot ja seikkailu kiinnostavat

2.75 stars
This was pretty disappointing.
To start with half of the book was just setting up this ridiculous plotline so that the second half could go where the author wanted it to go. It was just so strange and annoying. Tom was so bland and selfish, always thinking how ugly Hester is even though she is the one he is supposed to love. And Hester goes off in a huff to show that she is 'not only ugly on the outside but also on the inside'.
And that ending... what?
I mean, I do love the world, and the lost boys were interesting enough but *sigh* the author really made some bad decisions.
(The art on the covers is just to die for though!)

A nice continuation of a fascinating concept, well executed.

Two aspects of Reeve's writing continually impress me.

One, he manages to capture the feverish dedication to ideology people have, be it for thievery, traction, or anti-traction. People raised in a specific environment under a particular ideology are absolutely dedicated to it, oblivious to flaws, and all but impervious to critical thought--which is just what you'd expect in a world of isolated populations.

Two, he always has a word for everything. A genuine, fitting word for this imaginary thing he's created. Not a made up word, but a word we would use. Our technical terms fitted to imaginary items.

Reeve occasionally changes point of view without a chapter or a line break, which normally causes titanic Editorial Deities to gaze over the tops of their spectacles in disapproval, but I managed to work through it without much difficulty.

Reeve certainly adds plenty of twists to his tales and builds his story out in ways he could expand further in (and does, apparently). While he pulls these turns off expertly, they became predictable. I could not predict what would happen, I only had a feeling for when it would occur. Something akin to being able to pick out the familiar notes leading into the chorus of a song. There was an undertone of formula to it, as though a pattern for certain types of events had been determined to drive a story forward.

I don't know exactly what's going to happen, but as Finch says in the Wachowski's V for Vendetta, "It's just a feeling."

In all, another solid work. Not a work I'll revisit, but part of a series and an expanded history I will gladly explore to its horizons.

Talk about the second book being difficult. No sign of that here. Excellent read. Tense. Unpredictable. Brutal. Huge scale. Couldn't put it down. Had to though in order to start reading the next. Recommended.