Fever Crumb (Mortal Engines Quartet 5, Prequel) [Hardcover]

Philip Reeve (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 4, 2009

The author of the best-selling and critically beloved "Mortal Engines" quartet has written a stunning prequel. "Fever Crumb" is set a generation before the events of Mortal Engines, when cities are just beginning to devour each other. Is the mystery of Fever, adopted daughter of Dr. Crumb, the key to the secret that lies at the heart of London?

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Starred Review. Grade 5–7—Reeve's "Hungry City Quartet" (HarperCollins) remains a landmark of visionary steampunk imagination, with a future where traction cities roll about chasing down smaller cities, which they devour for parts in an exercise called Municipal Darwinism. Returning to this future, Reeve gives readers a story that takes place decades before the rise of the traction cities and examines the social and political milieu that led to that major societal change. Fever Crumb is the adopted daughter of Dr. Crumb, and the only female member of the Order of Engineers. Taken from the safety of the Order into the streets of London, Fever discovers a world where bands of Skinners have virtually exterminated a mutant race of people with speckled skin known as the Scriven. Suspected of being a Scriven herself, Fever must elude capture while she searches to find out who she really is. The answers she finds have far-reaching implications for the future of the world. Reeve is not just an excellent writer, but a creator with a wildly imaginative mind. The future London setting of this story is well imagined and feels like a place Charles Dickens might have described had he been a science-fiction writer. Plot details such as the origin story of the resurrected cyborg Stalker Shrike will resonate with fans of the earlier titles, but this book can also be read independently by those who are new to Reeve's work. A must for any fantasy collection.—Tim Wadham, St. Louis County Library, MO
(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Set some centuries before the Hungry City Chronicles, yet still well into the future, this prequel series opener stars young Fever Crumb, reared by the Order of Engineers in the massive head of an unfinished statue, to operate with a slavish devotion to logic. (In one delightful scene, a group of engineers pours out of the head’s nostril door “like a highly educated sneeze”). Uncertain of her heritage, as well as the source of the memories invading her mind, Fever embarks on a rather typical quest of discovery with anything-but-typical trimmings. London is a nearly medieval backwater, where relics of ancient technology hint at a time thousands of years ago when people still understood how to make circuit boards and microchips. Reeve’s captivating flights of imagination play as vital a role in the story as his endearing heroine, hissworthy villains, and nifty array of supporting characters. Although there’s all manner of foundation work to gratify readers familiar with the world introduced in 2003’s Mortal Engines (including the genesis of Municipal Darwinism and the origins of a very familiar figure), Reeve has crafted a swiftly paced story worthy of standing alone, both in terms of where Fever’s adventure may lead her next as well as the connections to the Hungry City Chronicles. It may not be possible for Reeve to ever fully explore this world, but that shouldn’t keep him from trying, hopefully in many books to come. Grades 6-9. --Ian Chipman --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Scholastic (May 4, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1407102427
• ISBN-13: 978-1407102429
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,312,003 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars strong 3, some pacing issues, strong characterization, May 31, 2010

By 

B. Capossere (Rochester, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fever Crumb (Hardcover)

Fever Crumb is a prequel of sorts to Philip Reeve's fantastic Hungry Cities/Mortal Engines series. I say "of sorts" in that it's set in the pre-history of the Hungry Cities world but far back enough in time that Fever Crumb doesn't act as a direct lead-in to the larger series, but rather sets up the major concepts and incipient events of that series rather than give us more of the same characters. Though it's set earlier, I'd still recommend beginning with the later books because while I enjoyed Fever, the Mortal Engines books have a much stronger impact (think starting the Narnia series with The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe vs. The Magician's Nephew)

In the later series, cities are large, mobile monstrosities that war with one another in order to gain needed resources, one city devouring another. It's an annex or be-annexed world. In Fever Crumb, though, London is still geographically bound to one place, though smaller localities have taken up the nomadic life and one such alliance from the North--The Movement--appears on the horizon seemingly ready to invade. People are clearly on edge, especially as it wasn't all that long ago that there had been a violent uprising in London against the Scriven, the long-lived and seemingly inhuman tyrannical overlords who had ruled over London for centuries. All the Scriven were killed or driven out, but the memory of death and violence is still fresh, as is resentment toward anything remotely "other."

Fever is a young woman, a foundling brought up by Doctor Crumb in the uber-rational guild of Engineers who consider emotions silly and hindrances to logical living (they live, fittingly enough, in a giant head). The book mostly begins when Fever is sent out to work on an archaeological dig with Kit Solent, who is looking into secrets possibly buried beneath the home of the last Scriven overlord.

Clearly Reeve is going to be working several plots here. One is the simple suspense of the encroaching Movement--what do they want? Is it an invasion or something different? Will London fight or not? Another is the suspense regarding the dig--what, if anything, will they uncover? Will uncovering it be a good or bad thing? Yet a third is Fever's slow discovery of the truth of her lost background. Still focused on Fever, Reeve also explores her growing conflict between the rational, emotion-free approach she's spent near her whole life with and her newly-awakened sense of the emotional life. There are side-plots and mysteries as well surrounding several other characters: Doctor Crumb, Kit Solent, the old man who killed the last Scriven overlord and who remains ever vigilant, the old man's young apprentice in Scriven-hunting (called "skinning" for reasons you might imagine), and an ambitious tavern owner seeking to use the unrest to his own ends.

The characters are all pretty complex, even those that don't get a lot of page time. It'd be tough to accuse any of them save one or two of being "stock" types and those that are play a pretty minimal role. But from Fever to Kit to the old man and his apprentice, Reeve has created complicated, human, fully fleshed out characters.
The story does sometimes (not often and not for long) lag here and there--I would have argued for a stronger edit of Fever's back-story for instance--, but while I wouldn't call it "gripping" it mostly it pulls you along quickly and smoothly as you're eager to learn what happens. You'll also enjoy many of the mangled bits and pieces of our time that get sprinkled into the language of Fever's era, though a few times these felt a little forced. And there are just some wonderful bits of creative imagery here that I won't spoil, though it's tempting to rave about one in particular.

While not quite as strong as the Mortal Engines books, Fever Crumb stands well enough on its own and is certainly worth a read, even for those unfamiliar with the series. But as mentioned, while I recommend reading Fever, I strongly recommend doing so after picking up the series, not so much for plot as for a stronger introduction to Reeve's writing. If for some reason you don't and find you're not enamored with Fever, don't let it prevent you from trying the series.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reeve does it again - Astounding, November 2, 2009

By 

Mr. J. M. Haines (Merseyside) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fever Crumb (Mortal Engines Quartet 5, Prequel) (Hardcover)

When does a prequel then extend an original series, ( in this instance the Mortal Engines Quartet ), and when is it just a stand-alone companion? Well, I don't know, although I do think of the Quartet now a Quintet I also take other reviewers' points that it is really on its Todd.

Ok, minor muse/digression over, this is a great book. Philip Reeve brings a serious story to you in such a delightfully light, witty style, it is almost a paradox. You can be still on the dregs of a worthy chuckle when next thing someone is dead. But, I do stress. this is not a comedy as such.

The story involves a foundling, a baby named Fever, who grows up with the most practical of all breeds, the Order of Engineers. This is set in London, eons, ( well, centuries but eons sounds better ) before the main stories of the Quartet. But there are similarities as it is still well beyond our own time and cities are at least isolated grand fortresses even if not to the degree later on.

We are brought into the tale not too long after a civil uprising rids the city of its tyrannical rulers, the Scriven, these are a highly intelligent race who do not believe themselves to be human as we are, Homo Superior they jokingly refer to themselves. But their tyranny finally sees something snap and they were duly despatched by otherwise ordinary Londoners, who rise up and reclaim their city. But, and I know not everyone likes these too much in books ( myself I don't care a jot as long as it's still a good read ), the use of many flashbacks for certain characters let's us in on the time of Scriven rule, thus allowing greater understanding of current events.

I won't relate specifics, the book is too new to inadvertently introduce class one spoilers, but, I will say this, Fever, due to being brought up by the Engineers who of course come with a Spock-like devotion to reason and logic, goes through childhood and adolescence void of all emotions, either squashed out of her or due to it being ( almost . . . ) totally absent in her paradoxically caring but cold clinical guardians.

Mr Reeve, after reading this, is for my money, the best family-cum-kids author on the planet, just edging out the other Philip of Lyra fame and of course, JK. His writing style, is quite simply, fantastic, so much so it can make a long long tale seem like a breeze ( actually, none of his books are that long on their own, but I read the Quartet without breaks so it seemed like a mammoth single book. ) His humour comes in two main forms, he either makes you chuckle through bringing you the foibles of life in a delightfully whimsical style, mainly in dialogue but in the narrative on the odd occasion ( wait till you read the lines about the Londoners shouting who they want for their new leader ), or, he shoots you with a humorous buckshot, made of a literary alloy of in-jokes and references to our own culture here and now. Wait until you read who the LA style mantra-bleating zealots actually proclaim, I really did chuckle at that.

He also pays a clever but covert tribute to his peer, Philip Pullman, one or two of the chapters could just be in Lyra's haunts, brick marshes, alternative folks with coloured barges etc. I liked that, I really did.

Finally, whether a Quartet still, or now a Quintet, please, if new to the whole saga, do start with this, it's just like the later Star Wars films, all six make sense if you start with the Phantom menace, but here of course, it's Fever Crumb.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strong fourth book in series, October 22, 2009

By 

Peter Tyrrell "Peaeater" (Victoria, BC Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fever Crumb (Mortal Engines Quartet 5, Prequel) (Hardcover)

This is a strong fourth book in an already delightful series. I couldn't wait for the North American release so I had a copy shipped from the UK, and it was well worth the effort.

What Philip Reeve is really good at is working fresh and inventive ideas into a well-known genre, so that while I'm drawn to the post-high-tech-apocalypse setting for its own sake, I'm constantly grinning at his artistry. He has some just wild standalone hi-tech ideas (e.g. the paperboys), but is also able to make clichéd scenarios all new: wait until you read the "car chase" scene.

As in the previous three books, he does not shirk from creating morally difficult characters, which is unusual in books for teens period, let alone science fiction. He is also not afraid to let characters die, not necessarily heroically. It adds a heap of satisfying intellectual and emotional reality to an already believable and seductive storyline.

This is a prequel, and there's a certain amount of it dedicated to backstory that sheds light on characters and events in the other books, but not in a domineering way, and you could read this book first without having read the others, no problem.

If you liked the first three, you'll love this, and if you didn't like the first three, nothing will convince you.