I'm not going to lie, I solely got this off of Audible in order to listen to it before I watched the movie. And yes, I realize it's after it has come out on Blu-ray and other devices, but I never got to the theater to see it. So here we are.

Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve is about a post-apocalyptic world where most remaining cities and towns have been converted into mobile cities via engineering. Cities chase other cities to consume them and use their parts to keep their cities going, and so on and so on. Tom Natsworthy, a young apprentice to the historians of London, has always looked up to London's most famous explorer, Thaddeus Valentine. But when Valentine is hunted by a girl named Hester Shaw, Tom does everything he can to save Valentine's life. But Valentine isn't grateful to Tom for getting Hester off of London, and he sends Tom down into the battlegrounds of towns behind her, believing he has solved all his problems. But the fall does not kill Tom as expected, and lands him with Hester, and together they have to find a way back to London, while having some adventures along the way.

I'll be honest. I had a really hard time remembering the names of the characters and who was who throughout the book. And that may be because the names are long and obscure and I was reading it as an audiobook. I also have a habit of doing other things while listening to audiobooks, but I don't usually have a hard time keeping characters straight.

That aside, I did enjoy the story. There was a clear threat, although we weren't quite sure what it was, just knew it by the name "Medusa". We also saw character growth in both Hester and Tom, the two real main characters of the story. *RIP Katherine and Dog [and Anna Fang and Pod] :'( * Hester grew as a character because all she could see was revenge against Valentine for the deaths of her parents, and she ended up seeing more of a reason to live by the end. Tom because he was a naive boy who became more aware that he shouldn't trust people just because it looks like they did wonderful things. The idea of the traction cities and anti-tractionists was cool too, and it would be interesting to see if that comes more into play as the story progresses. I also really enjoyed that Hester wasn't this hidden beauty, that literally everyone who saw her commented on how ugly she was. But that she didn't let it get her down, that was the amazing thing. She did hide her face for most of the story, but then she realized that if Tom could like her enough without her scarf, she could show it off proudly. She was such an angry, bitter character for most of the story that seeing her melt her shields even the slightest bit felt like a big step.

I couldn't give this more than 3 stars because I felt like I couldn't really keep track of who was who and when things were happening, but I did understand most of the overall plot and scheme, and that I did enjoy. Now onto watching the movie!