Mortal Engines Quartet

Mortal Engines Quartet
Original cover designs for the Mortal Engines Quartet
AuthorPhilip Reeve
Cover artist
  • David Frankland
  • David Wyatt
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Genre
PublisherScholastic
Published2001–2006
Media type
  • Print (hardback and paperback)
  • Audiobook
Followed byFever Crumb Series

The Mortal Engines Quartet (Hungry City Chronicles in the United States),[1] also known as the Predator Cities Quartet,[2] is a series of epic young adult science fiction novels by the English novelist and illustrator Philip Reeve. He began the first volume of the series, Mortal Engines, in the 1980s, and it was published in 2001. Reeve then published three further novels, Predator's Gold (2003), Infernal Devices (2005), and A Darkling Plain (2006).[3]

The series is set thousands of years in the future, after the Sixty Minute War has devastated Earth. It tells the stories of young adventurers in the Traction Era, when moving cities roam the wasteland, attacking and devouring each other for resources. The novels have won a number of awards, including the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize in 2002 for Mortal Engines, the 2006 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize,[4][5] and the 2007 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Fiction for A Darkling Plain.[6]

A companion piece entitled The Traction Codex was released in 2011, and was expanded into The Illustrated World of Mortal Engines by Reeve and Jeremy Levett and published in 2018. Additionally, a collection of short stories set before the series called Night Flights was published the same year. A prequel series, Fever Crumb, set 600 years before the events of the Quartet, was published between 2009 and 2011. In March 2020, Reeve said, "too much time has passed since I wrote the other books, it's hard to go back to that world" and that he did not intend to publish further books related to the Mortal Engines universe.[7] However in February 2024, Reeve announced the creation of a new Mortal Engines standalone prequel novel, entitled Thunder City, would be released later in the year.[8]

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  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference latimes was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Philip Reeve (17 March 2020). "Philip Reeve's tweet in response to @SevrinY" (Tweet). Philip Reeve. Retrieved 24 March 2020.
  8. ^ Philip Reeve (16 February 2024). "Philip Reeve's announcement tweet" (Tweet). Philip Reeve. Retrieved 16 February 2024.