Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines books are what happens when someone looks at a nice old city, full of history and architecture and tea-drinking civic pride, and thinks: what if that thing had engines, teeth, and an appetite?
That is the joy of this series. It is proper science fiction, but not the clean silver kind where everyone wears matching jumpsuits and stares wisely at glowing screens. This is oily, smoky, slightly unwell science fiction. Cities chase towns. Towns chase villages. Airships dodge pirates. Ancient weapons wake up when they absolutely should not. Half-dead Stalkers come clanking through the emotional scenery like somebody forgot to bolt grief into the coffin properly.
Reeve writes all this with a very particular sort of mischief. The books are sold as young adult novels, and fair enough, younger readers can tear through them at a cracking pace. But these are not soft little adventure books. They are funny, nasty, romantic, bleak, clever, and occasionally mean in the best possible way. People fall in love. People betray each other. People get eaten by history, machinery, politics, or Hester Shaw having a bad day.
There are Stalkers, resurrected men who make a mockery of death and then somehow end up being more moving than half the living characters. There are traction cities, great roaring slabs of municipal ego, rolling around the wasteland looking for something smaller to digest. There is Anna Fang, who sweeps into the story with the kind of cool that makes everyone else look like they arrived by bus.
And under all the engines and noise, there is love. Not cute love. Not tidy love. Mortal Engines love is usually dented, jealous, loyal, selfish, brave, furious, or doomed.
Tom and Hester.
Hester and Wren.
Anna and her cause.
Shrike and the faint, terrible echo of what he once felt.
The machinery is huge, but the series works because the hearts inside it are always misfiring.
Best first-time reading order: read the books in publication order. Start with Mortal Engines, then carry on through the original quartet before doubling back into the Fever Crumb prequels, Anna Fang’s stories, the companion material, and the newer Thunder City books. For the full guide, see our Mortal Engines reading order.
The original Mortal Engines Quartet
1. Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve, 2001
Series role: Original quartet, Book 1
The first book is still the best place to begin because it gives you the whole mad idea in one giant gulp. London is moving. London is hungry. Tom Natsworthy is the sort of lad who thinks he understands his city until Hester Shaw knocks him clean out of that comfortable nonsense. Then there is MEDUSA, St Paul’s, Valentine, Katherine, and Shrike lurking around the edges like an old nightmare with knives attached.
It is fast, strange, funny, and more savage than you expect. The opening image of London hunting a smaller town remains one of the great “right, I am reading this now” moments in modern young adult science fiction.
Read our second-time review of Mortal Engines | Read our original “should I read it?” review
2. Predator’s Gold by Philip Reeve, 2003
Series role: Original quartet, Book 2
Predator’s Gold is the one where the world gets bigger and colder. London is gone, Tom and Hester are up in the Jenny Haniver, and suddenly the story has ice, pirates, Anchorage, Arkangel, and Professor Nimrod Pennyroyal, a man so oily you could probably run a traction engine on him.
It is a proper sequel because it does not simply repeat the first book with a different city. It asks what happens after the big adventure, when the damage is still there and the people involved have to live with each other. Tom wants romance, decency, and a little bit of normal. Hester, bless her terrifying heart, is not really built for any of those things.
This is also where Reeve starts showing how large the Traction Era really is. There are ice cities, air traders, political schemes, floating lies, and a creeping sense that every safe place in this world has a catch attached.
3. Infernal Devices by Philip Reeve, 2005
Series role: Original quartet, Book 3
Infernal Devices jumps the story forward and gives Tom and Hester a daughter, which sounds wholesome until you remember who Hester is. Wren wants adventure. Tom wants peace. Hester wants, well, several things, most of them alarming. The result is a story about parents, children, old crimes, bad choices, and underwater thieves with a flair for drama.
The book works because it lets the earlier romance curdle a little. Tom and Hester are still fascinating together, but Reeve is not pretending they are some cosy heroic couple. Their love has history in it. It has damage in it. It also has consequences, and Wren gets stuck right in the middle of them.
4. A Darkling Plain by Philip Reeve, 2006
Series role: Original quartet, Book 4
This is the big one. The end of the Quartet. The book where Stalker Fang, ODIN, Shrike, Pennyroyal, Tom, Hester, Wren, Theo, war, guilt, memory, and every half-buried disaster in the series start smashing into each other.
A Darkling Plain feels huge, but it still hurts in the right places. Reeve does not lose the people inside the spectacle. That is why the ending lands. Not because a big science fiction thing happens, although big science fiction things certainly do happen. It lands because by then, you care about the battered little souls caught inside the machinery.
The Fever Crumb prequel trilogy
5. Fever Crumb by Philip Reeve, 2009
Series role: Fever Crumb trilogy, Book 1
Fever Crumb takes us back to London before it became the great rolling monster of the first book. Fever is raised by the Order of Engineers, which means she has been trained to be sensible, rational, and not given to foolish emotional business. Naturally, she is then dropped into a story full of secrets, old blood, strange memories, and people being extremely odd about the past.
The fun here is seeing the early shape of the world. You can feel the later Mortal Engines universe starting to assemble itself out of fear, invention, prejudice, and bad ideas that somehow survive long enough to become policy.
6. A Web of Air by Philip Reeve, 2010
Series role: Fever Crumb trilogy, Book 2
A Web of Air moves Fever away from London and gives the prequel sequence more sky. It is a book about flight, invention, belief, and the dangerous gap between a dream and the people who want to use it. In proper Reeve fashion, the machinery is marvellous, but the people around the machinery are usually the problem.
It also starts tying emotional threads toward the wider saga, especially through Kit Solent and the long shadow that will eventually lead readers toward Shrike. That is the nice trick of these prequels. They do not just explain lore. They make the later tragedies feel older.
7. Scrivener’s Moon by Philip Reeve, 2011
Series role: Fever Crumb trilogy, Book 3
Scrivener’s Moon is where the prequel trilogy really starts clanking toward the age of traction. The old world is still there, sort of, but the moving city idea is no longer just some eccentric scheme in the corner. It is becoming history. Worse, it is becoming the future.
Fever’s story becomes part of something much bigger here. You can feel the rails being laid, even if everyone involved thinks they are making clever choices. That is classic Mortal Engines. Nobody wakes up and says, “Today I shall help build a centuries-long disaster.” They just do their bit, make their compromise, and the engines start turning.
Read our review of Scrivener’s Moon
Side stories, companions, and illustrated lore
8. Traction City by Philip Reeve, 2011
Series role: World Book Day novella, later reworked into Night Flights
Traction City is a smaller bit of the machine, but still worth knowing about. It gives us more of London from the inside, especially the under-tier texture of the place. The great city is not just a big exciting vehicle. It is policing, class, smoke, bureaucracy, fear, and all the grubby systems needed to keep a monster fed.
Review status: covered through the Night Flights review rather than a standalone review.
9. The Traction Codex by Philip Reeve and Jeremy Levett, 2012
Series role: Companion guide
The Traction Codex is for readers who finish the novels and immediately want to rummage through the drawers of the world. Cities, routes, factions, history, odd details, civic madness, lovely stuff. It is not a novel, but it helps make the Traction Era feel like a place with maps, rumours, machinery, and probably a terrible smell.
Review status: best handled as part of the Illustrated World article.
10. Night Flights by Philip Reeve, 2018
Series role: Anna Fang short story collection
Night Flights gives Anna Fang more room to breathe, which is only fair given she spends much of the main Quartet being cooler than almost everybody else. These stories show more of her life, her politics, her flying, and the legend forming around her.
It is not where to start, but it is a fine place to return once Anna has already lodged herself in your head. A dangerous aviator, a revolutionary, a symbol, and a person who never quite becomes simple.
11. The Illustrated World of Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve and Jeremy Levett, 2018
Series role: Expanded visual and lore companion
This is the book for anyone who looked at a moving city and thought, yes, I would like diagrams, please. The Illustrated World of Mortal Engines expands the earlier companion material with more art, cities, factions, airships, and little pieces of lore that make the setting feel properly lived in.
It is not essential before reading the novels, but after them it becomes exactly the sort of thing you want to flick through while muttering about traction engines and Anti-Tractionist strongholds like a perfectly normal person.
Read our article on The Illustrated World of Mortal Engines
The newer return to the Traction Era
12. Thunder City by Philip Reeve, 2024
Series role: New prequel-era Mortal Engines novel
Thunder City is Reeve coming back to the Traction Era without dragging Tom and Hester out of the grave of a finished story. Good. Leave that ending alone. Instead, this book finds another route through the same battered world, with new characters, new trouble, and the same old civic insanity rumbling underneath.
The best thing about it is that it feels like a return, not a reset. The engines still roar. The politics are still grubby. The world still has that Reeve mixture of danger, daftness, and sudden melancholy. It reminds you there were always more stories moving around out there, just beyond the smoke.
13. Bridge of Storms by Philip Reeve, 2026
Series role: Follow-up to Thunder City
Bridge of Storms continues the newer run of Mortal Engines stories and keeps doing the sensible thing: exploring the world without trying to unpick the original Quartet’s ending. That ending earned its full stop. These books work best as side roads through the earlier Traction Era, where the rules are still being tested and the engines have not yet coughed themselves into legend.
As a follow-up to Thunder City, this is exactly the kind of thing this universe can still support. More cities. More smoke. More schemes. More strange little corners of Reeve’s imagination where something silly can turn sad, and something sad can suddenly sprout wheels.
Where to start Mortal Engines?
Start with Mortal Engines. Honestly, do not overthink it. You want London chasing a smaller town before you want timelines, prequels, companion books, or clever explanations. Let the big horrible city arrive first. Let Shrike be frightening before he becomes tragic. Let Hester be Hester before anyone tells you why that is such a problem.
After that, follow the publication order. The Quartet gives you the main story. The Fever books show how the machine got built. Night Flights lets Anna Fang burn brighter. The companion books open the map. Then Thunder City and Bridge of Storms prove there is still steam in the old beast.