Mortal Engines

Centuries after the Sixty Minute War, cities no longer stand still. They roll across the Earth on enormous wheels and tracks, and the large ones hunt smaller towns and consume them. London is one of these traction cities.

Tom Natsworthy is a young apprentice historian in London. His life there ends when Hester Shaw, a scarred girl driven by revenge, tries to assassinate one of the city's most celebrated men. Tom is pitched out of the city and into the wasteland.

Tom and Hester have only each other to depend on as they cross the Hunting Ground. A Stalker, part machine and part man, tracks them without rest. Along the way they meet pirates, slavers and agents of the Anti-Traction League.

Their path leads toward a secret that London's leaders would go to any length to keep buried. The book mixes steampunk adventure with a post-apocalyptic setting, and it moves as a chase across open ground. It opens the Mortal Engines Quartet, also called the Hungry City Chronicles, first published in 2001.