Who doesn't love dystopic visions of the future? Not I. Especially not one that involves giant cities on wheels -- that EAT each other. The concept of Municipal Darwinism never gets old, baby.

It's taken me forever to get around to the Hungry City Chronicles, of which this is the second. Tom and Hester, our heroes from the first book (read: the only characters left alive after the first book -- sheesh, Mortal Enginges has a bigger body count than Hamlet) are in trouble again. This time they've l More...

Freya awoke early and lay for a while in the dark, feeling her city shiver and sway beneath her as its powerful engines sent it skimming across the ice. Sleepily, she waited for her servants to come and help her out of bed. It took her a few moments to remember that they were all dead.

Predator's Gold is the sequel to The Mortal Engines. It continues the story of Tom and Hester; it's been two years since the destruction of London and the pair's close call. Never wanting to lead a dull life--well, More...

Mortal Engines left me so eager for more that I scoured all three bookshops in the town we were staying in for a copy of the sequel, Predator's Gold, even though I suspected I was setting myself up for disappointment. Sequels aren't usually as good, perhaps particularly in genre fiction, in part because the critical balance between novelty and familiarity is inevitably different when revisiting established characters and situations.

Of course there are exceptions that prove the rule, and happily, More...

Yet another brilliant installment in the "Hungry City Chronicles"! I love this series! I gushed about it at length in my review of "Mortal Engines", so I won't do so again here. :)

Tom and Hester are back, and now after two and a half years as air traders trouble finds them. The Green Storm are a radical branch of the anti-tractionist league and are hell-bent on retrieving the Jenny Hanniver. They believe Tom and Hester are London agents who tricked their beloved Anna Fang and murdered her. While More...

In this sequel to Mortal Engines, Reeve follows Tom and Hester two years later, when their airship adventuring is disrupted by a crisis with the traction city Anchorage. While cities, stalkers, and charlatains all gear up for various wars, Tom and Hester have to make their own choices about loyalty and trust.

If you read the first book in the Hungry City Chronicles, you know all about Tom and Hester and also figured out that Reeve likes to pepper his wild adventure stories with a nod to grim real More...

The peaceful city of Anchorage is boldly plowing out into the ice fields. Inside, the young Ice Queen is determined to reach the home of their Ancestor's; America, the Dead Continent. But is it dead? Brave explorer Pennyroyal not only believes that there is life in America still, but also claims to have been to America and seen it in its lush splendor. TOm, who has been travelling the birdways with Hester for two years now, is amazed at this discovery. However dark forces are beggining to brew.. More...

Tom and Hester are landing on a town, two and a half years after the destruction of London. Anchorage is a town devastated by plague, skimming through Greenland and heading to the Dead Continent (America), helmed by a 16-year-old who is coming to terms with Anchorage's demise. Joined by the mysterious Professor Pennyroyal, a strange explorer claiming to have gone to America, Tom and Hester find that even on ice plains, danger is coming at them from every angle.

So, I had high hopes for this book. More...

The second book in Reeve's young adult "municipal Darwinism" series breezed by at a much brisker pace for me than the first, though it didn't quite reach the satisfying, frenetic ending that Mortal Engines did. That said, Predator's Gold still manages to be good fun throughout, and it never drags.

The good - Reeve takes to the ice and the water with ease, and I actually found the chilly environs more dramatic and bracing than the more breathtaking climes of Shan Ghuo. The introduction of the Lost More...

I was quite impressed with Reeve's first entry in the Hungry City Chronicles, and was really disappointed in this follow-up. It seems that pretty much most of the action is motivated by angsty teenage love. Again, the only really likeable character is Hester. Tom has, if it's even possible, become even more unsure of himself and more selfish. The two, aboard the now-deceased Anna Fang's airship, land (well, crash is more like it) on the city Anchorage after a mysterious encounter with powerful f More...

This book is the sequel to Mortal Engines and should be read that way. There a many references to things that happen in book one that would be lost on a newcomer.

I found this book to go more in depth than Mortal Engines. Reeve delves deeper into the motivations behind the characters. I was sort of shocked at Hester’s ruthlessness in this book. She has always been pretty rough and tumble but always held back from doing truly questionable things. Here she kills without qualms and is incredibly se More...

It's good. I really liked that this one was very different from the first book, showing progression and/or regression of the characters while still existing in the same world. The plot also tied back into threads from the first novel and set up the larger conflict looming for the next couple of books. 3.5 stars.

These novels are fairly dark, with a couple people escaping death at the end, but darker motivations and violence are common. Tom and Hester also are living together in their airship whic More...

It's a credit to Reeve's storytelling ability that I wanted to keep reading Predator's Gold even though I spent almost the entire time annoyed with the characters. I thought Freya was a spoiled, self-absorbed, entitled brat who needed a good ass-kicking, I wanted to stab Pennyroyal in his lying, smirking face, Sathya could have used a few good slaps to the side of the head, and Tom and Hester were just frustrating. Seriously, don't those two idiots ever sit down and talk things over like sane pe More...

In the sequel to Mortal Engines, we find two years have passed and Tom and Hester are in love and traveling aboard their airship, the Jenny Haniver, which they had 'inherited' at the end of the previous novel.
Their simple life is interrupted when the Green Storm, a group that fights for static cities, discovers them and wants the airship of their comrade back. They crash on Anchorage, where Tom and the Magravaine Freya crush on each other, much to Hester's dismay. Due to the scar that runs acro More...

This book was an amazing sequel to Mortal Engines, with an excellent plot, decent pacing and that wonderful shift between perspectives that I've sorely missed.

I loved the development in the main character's and their relationships. Tom and Hester are a wonderful pairing, and this book only reinforced what I thought. Sure, the character development favoured Hester more than Tom, but I felt that it was necessary, as the plot did become rather complicated towards the middle, and fleshing out too ma More...

I often wish there was a 3 1/2 star rating. I feel like there is a really big gap between liking and really liking something . . . and this book falls squarely into that gap. First of all, I LOVED Mortal Engines (the first book in this quartet; this being the second). It was a breathtakingly clever and new take on a futuristic dystopia. This book had many of the good qualities of the first one, and it did retain the two most central characters -- whilst adding new characters and expanding on the More...

I started reading this series with the first book, "Mortal Engines". The peril of Tom and Hester's adventures grow, as their relationship deepens. Perhaps my favorite part of this book is the evolution of each character, especially Hester. Reeves does a brilliant job of creating characters with depth and shades of morality. He writes so well of the challenges and decisions we all might make and the consequences we, or others, might suffer. The first book was far more of an adventure and did a g More...

Direct sequel to Mortal Engines. Two years after the destruction of London, Tom and Hester are still together, still flying Anna Fang's airship. In need of cash, they take on the drippingly unscrupulous Pennyroyal. One thing leads to another, and they end up stranded on the moving city of Anchorage, bound for a green America that only Pennyroyal has seen.

Much of the plot is driven by Hester's (as it turns out, reasonable) jealousies and suspicion that she'll lose Tom sooner or later. Freya, the More...

A very good follow up to Mortal Engines. It as a little bit of the Empire Strikes Back syndrome in that you know there is more of the story to come, but it adds to the themes and characters it developed in the first book. The direction that Reeve is Hester Shaw in is fascinating, ramping up her dark side considerably. Freya's development to an actual leader of her people is a great one to see. There are also great touches from other Steampunk works; parts were very reminiscent of The City of Los More...

It seemed at the end of Mortal Engines that it was the end. Yet in spectacular fashion Philip Reeve reignites his world of city-eating cities and reanimated corpses to truly begin what concludes as a uniquely brilliant series.

This is a difficult novel to describe. Like any good sequel it brings back the elements of the first novel, adds in a few new ones, mixes them together, throws in a few twists and turns and ends on a note that makes you believe the series could very satisfyingly end there. More...

with both of the books i've read of this series so far i've found it hard to get going with them, but once i have they are really worth the effort. the adventures of tom and hester are the sweetest love story- very innocent in some ways but with big, lofty consequences and insecurities. the little quirks of names and allusions to life as it is now adds an intelligence and sparkle to what is essentially a children's book. where other books crossover effortlessly, the language and feel of this boo More...

So this is the second book in the Mortal Engines series by Philip Reeve.
The first one was soo good that I'm hoping that this one will meet my high expectations I have of it.

I've started this and I am loving it so far. I love the characters even if some are annoying. It picks up after the last story ends when Tom and Hester are travelling in the Jenny Havener. It is action packed well written with a good story line.

Ok I have finished this book and loved it from start to end. Wow I love the love t More...

Even though this is the second book in this quartet, it felt like more of a set-up book than the first one. Where the first book was more like a journey/adventure story, this one was like a combination character exploration of Hester (we see her ruthless side juxtaposed with her need to keep a firm hold on her only real love in the world) mixed with the beginnings of another world war without any real battles. We get this view into what's going on with the remainder of the Anti-Tractionists from More...

Slightly less thumpingly exciting than the first one and I found it hard to put my finger on why, until I realized it might just be that I am a product of my time, fickle, novelty-driven and jaded.
This is the second book, so I partly knew what to expect. How shallow.
Trust me, I feel bad.

The thing that marred the reading slightly, too, was that I saw the rift between Tom and Hester coming a mile off and was truly upset about it and their subsequent behaviour.
It took a lot of willpower not to riff More...

Like it's predecessor, Mortal Engines, Predator's Gold is fast-paced, with brilliant imagery and quirky characters; science fiction with a touch of British whimsical fantasy. Instead of the dead countryside of Europe, Tom and Hester take to the north in search of life in the supposed dead continent of North America. The novel almost changes protagonists, making Hester the anti-hero. Anything else that can be said about this sequel has already been said in my review of the first. If I have to re More...

The second book in the Hungry City Chronicles. The storyline continues to follow the characters of Tom and Hester and their travels across the framework of an apocalyptic world where cities have become moving entities on platforms. Character development is super strong, and the action sequences are very well-written. The book takes some tremendous twists and turns, with unexpected returns of some characters from the first book. This was a novel I couldn't put down and spend many late nights fini More...

Mortal Engines, the first book in this series, was a non-stop thrill ride. Given the high body count and the way in which Reeve killed off so many major characters, it was going to be difficult to come up with a sequel. After all, there were so few characters left at the end of Mortal Engines, who could a sequel be about?

That sequel, Preditor's Gold, answers this question by being less about action and more about relationships. It's an very strange turn-around, with the plot hinging on jealousy More...

The series starts well. Hester and Tom have joined togethor to rid London of the tyranneous Mr. Valentine, and succeed with bitter vengeance. As Hester realizes she has destroyed her father, the next chapter begins.
Going deeper, Predators Gold moves into the romance and pain of their lives as they struggle to find a home for themselves. Hunted down by the Green storm however, they find this will be quite impossible.
Never letting go of you untill it reaches its' searing climax, this is one sc More...

Well I didn't see that coming.

The continuation of Tom and Hester's story was much better than I could have expected. They roam the airways as transport for hire carrying cargo and passengers, before encountering a rogue group of Anti-Tractionists, forcing them and their damaged ship to land on the remote traction-city of Anchorage. Little do they know when they land that the young, pretty (and fairly ignorant) margravine (nobility/leader) of Anchorage has them on course for the Dead Continent - More...

dear reader,

I love this book, but not as much as the first one. For instance, Hester is not so despicable and cold person, she has softened for Tom, which makes her less sarcastic and violent. Some characters, like Freya and Pennyroyal got to my nerves. And other new characters, like Caul, warmed my heart.

This is the second book, after the success of Mortal Engines, and Mr. Reeve delivered and met my high expectations for the sequel. After going through the character development in the first boo More...