• Author: Phillip Reeve
• Series: Mortal Engines Quartet #2
• No. of pages: 352
• Dates read: 23.05.20 – 29.05.20
• Star Rating: 3
• Challenge: Sequels Challenge

Plot: When Tom and Hester’s scrapyard aircraft is pursued by rocket-firing gunships, they seek sanctuary in the speeding ice city of Anchorage. But it is no safe refuge. Devastated by plague and haunted by ghosts, Anchorage is heading for the Dead Continent…

This book was full of hits and misses for me.

With the hits, you have a great world. I love the world that this book is set in and I think the world-building and the description of the traction cities and various other places was done really well. Truly something I haven’t seen before.

The plot was good, while not as appealing to me as the first book, it was still entertaining and I enjoyed the ending a lot.

We also got to see a lot of women in positions of power which was good as well.

But I after all of that I just couldn’t connect to the story! I was at one point contemplating DNFing it.

I think this mainly came down to the fact that I struggled to connect with most of the characters.

I enjoyed Professor Pennyroyal who gave me Gilderoy Lockhart vibes and I liked Hester as I find her backstory and personality to be really interesting but every other character I either didn’t like or had no strong feelings for.

Tom to me is just quite a boring character. I just found him to be a bland nice guy. I was not sold on his romance with Hester, I by that Hester likes him but not the other way around.

I wasn’t a fan yet again of the writing when it comes to Hester’s face with her scar etc. I just feel like in the last book that it went too far in making the statement that she is ugly. I also didn’t like how the writer includes characters thinking Tom is a saint for dating someone as ugly as Hester. We could have left that in the first book. I think it’s important for Hester’s character but I would have preferred it being mentioned when we are focusing on her and how she feels rather than having every character who meets her mention how ugly and scary she looks. It was already established in book 1.

I wasn’t a fan on the girl on girl hate between Freya (who was a very irritating character) and Hester. Especially, over a boy! That was disappointing to read, ok it gets better but they only really started getting on once Freya found a new guy to have a crush on. I would have loved to have seen their rivalry occur because of something other than a boy.

Because this was a pretty lacklustre book for me, I don’t think I will continue and finish this series. Especially, since the next book doesn’t really focus on these characters as much.

The next book I will be talking about is Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge!