Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve

(310 p., Call Number: Y FICTION REEVE, PHILIP sci-fi)

In the distant future, the Sixty Minute War resulted in many deaths and the loss of technological knowledge. Years later, most people dwell in Traction Cities, metropolises built in tiers like wedding cakes that move across the ground on huge caterpillar tracks, chasing and absorbing smaller locales in a practice known as "Municipal Darwinism". The mighty city of London, in danger of running out of "prey," looks toward the east, where an enormous wall protects the static cities of the Anti-Traction League—the "heretics" who have chosen the barbaric practice of living on the bare earth. But London's mad Lord Mayor develops a plan to get through the wall: he resurrects a vicious and ancient technology, a post–20th-century update of the nuclear bomb, all the more horrible with time and refinement, and mounts it in the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. Against this wildly original backdrop plays the story of Tom, a young Apprentice Historian who helps mine the museum vaults of the juggernaut London. Tom becomes embroiled with his idol, the elder Historian Valentine, and also with the scarred girl Hester who owes Valentine a debt of vengeance as he works desperately to try to set things right.

Featuring a ruined future and a young hero attempting to fight back against his amoral leader, Mortal Engines is worth reading for fans of The Hunger Games.