http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/MortalEngines

It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.

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The Mortal Engines Quartet is an award-winning, critically acclaimed series of novels by the English author Philip Reeve. It was initially marketed (somewhat ridiculously) as The Hungry City Chronicles in America. (This possibly happened because of the Stanisław Lem collection that was released as Mortal Engines in the US.) Four books were written in chronological order: Mortal Engines (2001), Predator's Gold (2003), Infernal Devices (2005), and A Darkling Plain (2006). A prequel series has come out set long before the first book, made up of Fever Crumb (2009), A Web of Air (2010) and Scrivener's Moon (2011). The short fiction collection Night Flights (2018) takes place relatively soon before the first book and features the secondary character Anna Fang, while a companion book, The Illustrated World of Mortal Engines, was published in the same year. More will come... eventually.

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Mortal Engines takes place in a post-post-post-post-post-apocalyptic future. Nations no longer exist, except in the lands of the Anti-Traction League. Traction Cities — entire cities mounted on caterpillar tracks for mobility — are fiercely independent city-states, using giant jaws to devour one another for resources in a horribly unsustainable city-eat-city environment known as Municipal Darwinism: large cities eat small cities, small cities eat towns, towns eat suburbs, and everyone eats non-moving or "static" settlements. Trade is mostly accomplished by airship, though sometimes cities of roughly equal size (unable to devour each other) will stop to trade. Much of the Applied Phlebotinum involves Old-Tech, ancient remains of lost civilisations ranging from statues of Mickey Mouse ("animal-headed gods of lost America") to Lost Superweapons.

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Traction Cities' military and ideological counterpart, the Anti-Traction League, is a vast Eastern coalition of static settlements, who aim to remove the abomination of Traction Cities from the world, though some of their methods may be no worse or better than the very Traction Cities they oppose.

Something worth mentioning, given the amount of back-and-forth editing in the page history, is that the most prominent Stalker is named Shrike in most editions and Grike in the North American ones. For Theme Naming reasons made clear in Fever Crumb — that is, all the Stalkers in his "batch" were named after birds — 'Shrike' (a small predatory bird) makes considerably more sense than 'Grike' (a feature of limestone pavements).

Peter Jackson and WETA Digital worked on a film adaptation of the first book, Mortal Engines, which was released in December 2018.

This book series provides examples of:

Base on Wheels: A Web of Air features funicular houses, which only move up and down on rails.

Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Deliberately avoided by Hester Shaw, who is horribly scarred and disfigured. As in missing an eye, most of her nose, and a good chunk of her mouth. Discussed trope: When Pennyroyal writes a book with a character based on Hester, he leaves out Hester's disfigurement, and instead gives the character a cute little scratch on her cheek. Hester, when hearing this, exclaims — "is that bimbo supposed to be me?" Possibly played straight in the movie, as the teaser shows Hester with both eyes and no scars on the top half of her face. She is masked from the nose down though, so we've yet to see if she has any of the other facial disfigurements. As shown in the second trailer, she does have a fairly substantial scar across her cheek and mouth, but still has her nose. Likely due at least partially to the difficulty (not to mention expense and time in the makeup chair) in portraying such extensive scarring.

Betty and Veronica: Although they don't meet until the very end of the book, Katherine Valentine and Hester Shaw can be seen as this. The second book plays the trope straight with Freya Rasmussen and Hester Shaw.

Beware the Nice Ones: Although Bevis Pod is genuinely nice, Katherine is still shocked to see how calmly he can kill .

. BFG: Hester gets a huge armour-piercing jezail in A Darkling Plain, which also features lightning guns and anti-city artillery. MEDUSA ( a giant laser weapon ) and ODIN ( KillSat

Bilingual Bonus: Lots of these in German, French and Chinese, in particular some of the city names.

Bittersweet Ending: The Traction War cost untold numbers of lives, Tom and Hester are dead and Shrike is left bereft...but New London heralds the rise of a type of moving city that will no longer damage the world, Wren and Theo go on to make new lives for themselves, and Shrike, after hibernating for hundreds of years, wakes up to find the world green again and settles into his new role — and family — as a remembering machine.

Blind Weaponmaster: The Stalker Fang is blind for the first half of A Darkling Plain, but can still fight people and even stalkers.

is blind for the first half of A Darkling Plain, but can still fight people and even stalkers. Blood Knight: Hester admits to Tom that she enjoys violence, though it's less about fighting and more about killing.

Bodyguard Betrayal: Shrike attacking the Stalker Fang.

Book Dumb: Hester, especially compared to Tom.

Book Ends: The first line of the first book becomes Shrike retelling the story hundreds of years later at the end of the fourth book .

. Brick Joke: At the end of the first book, Tom insists (not convinced himself) that someone must have survived the destruction of London . About halfway through the fourth, it turns out he was right. A small, but funny example is Wren's stylish haircut, first briefly mentioned at the start of A Darkling Plain, and then forgotten until a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment halfway through the book...

Broken Bird: Hester, so much.

Broken Ace/Broken Pedestal: Thaddeus Valentine isn't as nice as he seems...

Chekhov's Gun: Mortal Engines: The seedy, which Tom finds at the very beginning of the book and later uses as a payment to be accepted aboard a town. Early in the book, Katherine mentions that her father's copilot during his expedition to America was a woman, which enables her to figure out the link between her father, Pandora Rae, and Hester Shaw much later . The Tin Book of Anchorage in Infernal Devices. In A Darkling Plain, Wolf Kobold pays Tom and Wren so they fly him to London. At the very end of the book, Wren remembers the money and uses it to buy her own airship.

Came Back Strong: The typical purpose of Stalkers is to resurrect someone as a super strong warrior.

Came Back Wrong: Stalkers remember little to nothing of their previous life. This doesn't stop people from trying to bring back their loved ones through these methods.

Combat Pragmatist: Hester uses basically anything she can find as a weapon, including crossbows, BFGs, knives, swords and a typewriter(!).

Convection Schmonvection: Zig-zagged with ODIN's beam . Orla Twombley was badly burnt despite being miles away from it, while Naga was right next to it and wasn't harmed.

. was badly burnt despite being miles away from it, while was right next to it and wasn't harmed. Colony Drop: Slow Bombs are remote-controlled asteroids.

Cool Airship: The Jenny Haniver. It's built of junk, but hey, so's the Millennium Falcon. A connection noted by Tom's "It's made of junk!" comment upon first seeing the Jenny.

Cool Boat: The Limpets used by the Lost Boys, amphibious spider-legged walkers that double as submarines.

Court Mage: Nintendo Tharp. He has powerful apps.

Crapsack World: Downplayed. Traction cities run the social gamut from relatively egalitarian to barbaric pirates but they are all under near-constant risk of being attacked and devoured by a larger city or running out of fuel and starving - especially now that prey is scarce and times hard. Static settlements have the worst of it, being at the bottom of the food chain. The Anti-Traction league is doing relatively well in Asia by hiding behind the shield wall and a powerful airship fleet, but it's steadily losing ground (and cities) in Africa. And then it gets taken over by the Green Storm who launch a war against the Traction Cities.

Crazy-Prepared: Cynthia Twite. Not only did she have a time bomb under the ship should her assassination fail (And it did), but she also already forged the suicide note for that guy she killed using her poison-tipped hairpin which she had for such an occasion.

Daddy's Girl: Wren is close with her father, Tom. The same can't be said for her mother.

Dead Guy on Display: A classical Type 2 in Fever Crumb, where the flayed skins of London's former Scriven masters are put on display following the Skinners' Riots.

Death Equals Redemption: Invoked by Hester near the end of Predator's Gold. She expects to die during the book's climax, and figures this will redeem her for selling Anchorage's course to Arkangel. She's actually disappointed when she survives.

She's actually disappointed when she survives. Determinator. Any Stalker, but Shrike in the extreme. A lot of the human characters too, particularly the frail Oenone Zero, also have an unexpected, somewhat terrifying determination to them.

A Dog Named "Dog": Despite actually being a wolf.

Driven to Suicide: Hester stabs herself in the heart rather than live without Tom.

Dropped An Airship On Him Bevis . Shrike gets run over by a city, but he gets better. He gains a bit of respect for Tom for tricking him.

Eagleland: Type II in the backstory. One historian notes that "the old American Empire was quite mad towards the end," coming up with crazy Energy Weapons that drew power from places outside the physical universe. One of them, MEDUSA, is central to the plot of the first novel.

Early-Bird Cameo: After a fashion. An aviatrix named Cruwys Morchard is mentioned in passing early in the second book; she's a significant player in the fourth and she's actually Clytie Potts from the first book, who everyone assumed died in the destruction of London .

. Eco-Terrorist: In the first book, the Anti-Tractionist League attempt to end the environmentally destructive policy of Municipal Darwinism through acts of sabotage and the occasional assassination of prominent Tractionist leaders. In the later books they are deposed by the considerably more militant Green Storm, who wage all-out war against the Tractionist cities and deploy Cyborgs and Suicide Attacks as part of their war effort. The Storm's leader, Stalker Fang, eventually hatches a plot to fire a Kill Sat to trigger a chain of dormant volcanoes, hoping that humanity will die off but life itself will survive and return the planet to its natural state

Enormous Engine: How do you think a Traction City gets around? So much so that they have to eat other Traction Cities to fuel them.

Extinct in the Future: The first chapter of Mortal Engines mentions that blue whales have been extinct for thousands of years, likely because of the world's oceans drying up or relocating because of the apocalypse.

Opposites Attract: Non-Action Guy Tom Natsworthy and Dark Action Girl Hester Shaw.

Parental Substitute: Anna Fang is hinted to be seen as this by Tom and Hester: in the first book, a conversation with Anna reminds Tom of his late mother, and in the second, Tom and Hester put a picture of Anna in an alcove aboard the Jenny meant for pictures of parents...though this is partially due to neither of them having any pictures of their own. Shrike wants to be this for Hester and often refers to her as "his daughter" . Dr. Crumb to Fever. This is what Crumb tells Fever, at least. It turns out he's her real father.

Pervy Patdown: Wren boards Harrowbarrow with the intention of meeting Wolf Kobold, and one of his minions insists on searching her for weapons before the meeting takes place. Afterwards, she wonders to herself what sort of weapons he expected her to be concealing in her bra.

Planet Spaceship: Magnus Crome believes that this is the logical conclusion of Municipal Darwinism: Once London exhausts all of the Earth's resources, humanity will survive by turning Earth itself into a Traction Planet, and becoming a race of Planet Looters. His belief in this vision of the distant future is why he won't be swayed by arguments that Municipal Darwinism is unsustainable.

Pocket Protector: Pennyroyal survives being shot because the bullet is stopped by a book he had on him. Of course, the book in question is the Tin Book, a book with pages made out of metal.

Posthumous Character: Auric Godshawk is an important character in Fever Crumb, despite being dead. He's learnt about through flashbacks, other characters' comments and his own memories which were implanted in Fever.

Precursors: The Ancients, i.e. us.

Professional Killer: Hester has this role at the start of A Darkling Plain.

Regional Redecoration: During the Sixty Minute War, the Earth's geography was forever changed. South China was flooded, Antarctica de-frosted, seas moved around, pretty much everything north of New York City froze solid, and Central America ceased to exist.

Riding the Bomb: More like "piloting the bomb". The fanatical Green Storm employ Tumblers, piloted heavy ordnance dropped from airships.

Right for the Wrong Reasons: Some of Professor Pennyroyal's crazy theories turn out to have a grain of truth to them — There are no savages or bears in America, but there are green, habitable areas; there are no "parasite cities", but there are the Limpets and the Lost Boys — no thanks to any particular efforts on his part, however...

— no thanks to any particular efforts on his part, however... Running Gag: In the first book, characters tend to mispronounce Tom's family name, including Anna Fang when they first meet. His encounter with Stalker Fang in the second book references this.

Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Fat Jago and Thirza. Thirza is attractive, and Fat Jago... Well, they don't call him that for nothing.

Urban Segregation: Goes hand-in-hand with the widespread use of the Layered Metropolis trope. In the first book, Tom being from Tier Two defined him as a respectable citizen of London (at least, in the eyes of people from smaller towns); the lower of London's seven Tiers were populated by progressively poorer workers. Every Traction City is segregated in this way, however many layers it may have (some only two, some a dozen). The topmost Tier will be occupied by mansions, landmarks, and the Mayor's residence; the next one below may have respectable businesses and offices; below that — working class residences. On the meaner cities, the lowest tiers may house slaves; on the nicer ones, some literal social climbing may be possible. Because the lowest tiers also house the giant engines that move Traction Cities; these are usually very unpleasant places to work and live, and of course only the top Tier gets full sunlight and fresh air. An alternate variant is seen in Predator's Gold in the case of the polar Traction City Arkangel. The less well-to-do of Arkangel live in the outer regions of the city where they are more exposed to the cold, while the city's elite live near the center where thay can benefit from the warmth given off by the city's engines.

Used Future: Played believably, once you accept the basic premise is cities eating each other.

Villain Protagonist: Hester Shaw, though it all depends on how you see the Anti-Traction League as opposed to London. By the end of the book she's definitely not a villain in any sense. In later books, she sort of slides back down toward the villain side of things.

War Mammoths: The Arkhangelsk use these in Scrivener's Moon.

Wicked Pretentious: Chrysler Peavy is a pirate leader who began having delusions of being a respectable mayor after seizing control of the suburb Tunbridge Wheels and now plans to turn it into the world's first respectable pirate suburb... a task which he utterly fails at since none of his crew share any of his ambitions, and he himself is still a ruthless pirate at heart.

World Half Empty: The basic premise is living on a giant mobile city, eating cities smaller and slower than you and running away from bigger ones. If your city gets taken by a bigger and meaner one, it will be taken by force, completely looted, stripped down for raw materials and its population enslaved. In the third and fourth books, the antagonism between Traction Cities and the Anti-Traction League turns into a total war between the Traktionstadtgesellshaft, a union of militarised German cities and their allies, and the Green Storm, a band of psychotic air-pirates who overthrow the previously peaceful League leaders and turn it into a totalitarian state obsessed with the annihilation of cities. Aboard any Traction City, even non-militarised pleasure cities, you're liable to be blown apart by man-piloted heavy bombs, fleets of giant airships and psychotic undead cyborgs armed with finger-blades; fighting for the Green Storm, you're likely to be either piloting one of the bombs or attempting to fight conventional battles against war-rigged mobile cities, and if (when) you die on the battle lines, may have the bad luck to get your corpse turned into one of the aforementioned psychotic undead cyborgs and have to do the whole stupid thing again.

Wretched Hive: Brighton after the Lost Boys take over is described as this.

Wrong Genre Savvy: In Infernal Devices, Boo-Boo Pennyroyal has watched too many romantic tragedies at the opera, and is convinced that her slaves and servants are at constant risk of falling into doomed love affairs and running away or killing themselves out of grief and heartbreak. She tries to discourage this, but is also secretly eager to play the role of the kindly, understanding mistress and matchmaker. She ends up being kind towards Wren and Theo as a result, even though they're actually in a Dieselpunk adventure story, romance is far from their top priority, and they end up being rather annoyed with Boo-Boo ("She Is Not My Girlfriend" being very much in effect).