Mortal Engines (The Hungry City Chronicles, #1)

by Philip Reeve

In the dark ages before the dawn of the Traction Era, nomad empires had battled one another across the volcano-maze of Europe. It was they who had built the Stalkers, dragging dead warriors off the battlefields and bringing them back to a sort of life by wiring weird old-tech machines into their nervous systems. The empires were long forgotten, but the terrible Resurrected Men were not.

Was this what falling in love was like? Not something big and amazing that you knew about straight away, like in a story, but a slow thing that crept over you in waves until you woke up one day and found that you were head-over-heels with someone quite unexpected,

He gently moves a stray strand that has blown into her mouth, and holds her close, and waits — and the storm-light breaks over them and they are a knot of fire, a rush of blazing gas, and gone: the shadows of their bones scattering into the brilliant sky.

“You aren’t a hero, and I’m not beautiful, and we probably won’t live happily ever after,” she said. “But we’re alive, and together, and we’re going to be all right.”