Phillip Reeve- Fever Crumb

Fever Crumb

Scholastic Books

Philip Reeve

2009

 “Godshawk looked surprised, the way that people generally do when you ask them philosophical questions in shrubberies in the middle of the night.”

Over a year after I read and reviewed Phillip Reeve's debut young adult novel Mortal Engines, I felt the urge to indulge in another piece of imaginative sci-fi/fantasy from the same world. The Mortal Engines universe had been a hit upon release back in 2001, leading to a bunch of sequels (research be damned) featuring the same characters. I skipped all those in one foul swoop, and instead moved straight to Reeve's first installment in a prequel series; Fever Crumb. Truth be told my very first knowledge of Reeve's work came from a recommendation from a friend about five years ago to specifically read Fever Crumb in liu of us both being very big fans of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, making this book just another example of me finally getting around to an old installment on the mental to-read pile (and let's not get into the details on the physical one).

Anyway, Fever Crumb is set a few centuries before Mortal Engines, which still means it's set in the far, far future comparative to us. The whole premise of the universe is that it's set far after the fall of civilisation as we know it, even far after the rise and fall of civilisations after that. Secrets of old-world science and technology are either lost forever or hidden by those cultivating power, and so humanity goes on in an interesting hybrid of medieval-like surroundings and societal structure supported by the constant archeological hunt for mysterious old technology, manifested in things as varied as space hoppers and zombie cyborg sentinels. The action is set in future London, crucially differentiating itself from the Mortal Engines series with the city not yet having developed the huge trank tracks and massive engines to make it mobile. Reeve also introduces the concept of a genetic race war between humans through the Scriven, genetically advanced humans who consider themselves homo superior. It all makes up for an interesting world, though not original or charming enough for me to find particularly memorable.

Cool dude Phillip Reeve

As this is young adult fiction, the lead character is a young adult. Fever Crumb was a child of mysterious origins who suddenly finds herself questioning everything she knows about her past and her place in the world. Fairly standard stuff, but surely influenced by Pullman's Lyra in the way she's written and developed. As she becomes entangled with important figures in London and the leader learns more about the delicate power structure of this contrasting universe, the plot becomes more action-packed and revelatory, enough to keep my attention at least. It had to be like that, to push through the key problems I had with Fever Crumb, which upon reveal will surely prove that I'm a grumpy old man who probably shouldn't have been reading this book because it wasn't for me. Of course I'm talking about the quality of prose.

Mortal Engines was rough in that regard, but I forgave it and hoped for better in the future because it was Reeve's first book. Fever Crumb was at least his fourth, and disappointingly showed me no improvement whatsoever. It's difficult to fully judge, of course, because the genre of young adult by definition requires some dumbing down in certain ways to appeal to a wider audience, so I obviously don't expect the work of Joseph Conrad or something. But even with my limited experience with the genre, I've witnessed authors like Pullman and Terry Pratchett (with Dodger, for example) crafting the style in such a way as to remain simple to read yet still convey more style and substance within it. Reeve does have a knack for the odd funny line, and his universe building skills are not to be sniffed at, but his characterisation and attempts to build tension and mystery falls a little short of his better contemporaries. As a result of that I find myself left invested in the details of the overall universe, and so I'm not sure if I'll pick up any other books from it. I am a literary snob though, so I can absolutely see how any readers who don't have unrealistic expectations and are looking to invest in an imaginative universe could very easily get hooked.

Phillip Reeve- Mortal Engines

Mortal Engines

 

Harper Collins

Phillip Reeve

2001

“Is it...dead?" asked Tom, his voice all quivery with fright.
"A town just ran over him," said Hester. "I shouldn't think he's very well...”  

At first glance, illustrator Phillip Reeve's debut novel Mortal Engines doesn't look like the type of fiction a well-respecting adult reader would be seen in public with, but my desire to try and catch upwith my reading pile meant that I was cramming brief bits of reading where ever I could. I'd been looking forward to getting to the book for some time now, specifically to try and fill a particularly-sized gap that I felt in my reading appetite; that for a bit of young adult fiction. I'm a big proponent of the potential of the genre to create the right type of atmosphere for an author to create amazing fantasy, and there's no better example of this than Phillip Pullman's truly epic His Dark Materials trilogy, where Pullman dramatically pulled his readers through an intense inter-dimensional adventure with philosophical and religious themes playing out across an amazing, neo-classical setting. I was looking for an imagination as vast as that, and the premise of Mortal Engines captured my attention.

I was probably most attracted by the promise of steampunk; that curious artistic mixture of classical Victorian design reinterpreted in futuristic ways. Mortal Engines is set thousands of years from the present, in a post-apocalyptic future where devastating war has changed life as we know it, and destroyed most knowledge of the past. While computers and other electronics  no longer exist, the mad scientists of the future have turned the very cities they live in into almost unrecognisable machinery. Each city is placed upon huge constructed tank tracks, that connect to immense steam engines that propel them across the desert planes. With natural resources extremely scarce, each city and town is forced to prey upon smaller ones. The city of London is one of these; larger than most but not invulnerable.

Reeves refrains from giving every detail of this world immediately, leaving plenty of mysteries unsolved even at the end of this book (which is the first in a series of three). He narrows the perspective on this amazing world when he introduces his unassuming main character, a young orphan named Tom. It's through Tom's perspective and experiences that things become a lot more simplified and typical; I'm not sure if this is a slight or not, but Reeve's portrayal of Tom is hardly original; for one he's an orphan, and all orphans in all books ever always eventually overcome the odds. In other developments common to all children's literature, Tom quickly becomes tightly wrapped-up in a major conspiracy involving the adults he knows, where he and his friends go against the odds to do what's right. It's oddly comfortable, in the spirit of Harry Potter and all that.

It's because of this that I enjoyed the book; though the adventure is fast-paced and exciting, and the plot full of twists (without giving too much away, Tom finds out that the leaders of London aren't quite as benevolent as they like to appear and are planning on using some rediscovered olde tech to conquor their enemies via killing masses of innocents) Reeve's writing remains fairly simple. In some respects it's limited, far behind the narrative mastery of Phillip Pullman and lacking the emotional power of J.K. Rowling's books, but it does retain a sense of wonder and  majesty suited to the uncanny backdrop of events. At some point I'll certainly pick up the second book in the series, with some hope that Phillip Reeve's talents as a writer grew with experience.