" I read Mortal Engines when I was a teenager and they had a big impact on my imagination. I loved Philip's vision of a dented and dirty future. Recently I read the books again and they inspired me to redesign some of the characters. Here's the first set, I hope you like them."

is just about to released upon an unsuspecting world (copies have been sighted in the wild at Waterstones in Edinburgh already), so for the next few months this blog will be largely concerning itself with Seawigs, Sea Monkeys, lost explorers and short-sighted mermaids.But before that happens, I thought I should rev the oldone last time. Illustrator Niall O'Reilly got in touch recently with these character studies. Tom, Hester et al look a bit cooler than I'd pictured them when I was writing the book, but that's good - it's always interesting to see new interpretations of them. And maybe they would have looked more like this if I'd been writing it today - shockingly, it's now nearly a quarter of a century since I started work on it.Niall says,