More Book Recommendations
Mar. 14th, 2007 05:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
i_kenderThe Mortal Engines series by Philip Reeve (Mortal Engines, Predator's Gold, Infernal Devices and A Darkling Plain)... even though I'm only on book two, I think this series is incredible. It's about... globalisation. (ok, I'm chortling to myself now, and everyone else is looking at me funny!)
No, it's about "Municipal Darwinism"... a far-future post-apocalyptic world in which those that survived the Sixty Minute War took to turning their cities into large, mobile urban predators.... Cities on wheels, cities on tracks, floating cities, flying cities, cities that roam the wilderness looking for smaller cities (and towns and villages) to devour wholesale in their monstrous jaws, to be torn apart for raw materials and spare parts...
It also has airships. With gasbags and gondolas.
It's very imaginative, thrilling, and good.
It claims to be Young Adult or Teen fiction. This is a lie; or (at least) a glaring example of the problems of labelling and pigeonholing fiction... because it's also one of the better fantasy books I've read recently.
(nb. I'm not necessarily saying that all Young Adult or Teen books are rubbish... I'm just saying I wouldn't necessarily put this book into the Young Adult/Teen section myself purely because it has teens as its main characters. But then, people have said the same about Phillip Pullman haven't they?)
ETA: First line of the first book as a taster:
"It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea."
No, it's about "Municipal Darwinism"... a far-future post-apocalyptic world in which those that survived the Sixty Minute War took to turning their cities into large, mobile urban predators.... Cities on wheels, cities on tracks, floating cities, flying cities, cities that roam the wilderness looking for smaller cities (and towns and villages) to devour wholesale in their monstrous jaws, to be torn apart for raw materials and spare parts...
It also has airships. With gasbags and gondolas.
It's very imaginative, thrilling, and good.
It claims to be Young Adult or Teen fiction. This is a lie; or (at least) a glaring example of the problems of labelling and pigeonholing fiction... because it's also one of the better fantasy books I've read recently.
(nb. I'm not necessarily saying that all Young Adult or Teen books are rubbish... I'm just saying I wouldn't necessarily put this book into the Young Adult/Teen section myself purely because it has teens as its main characters. But then, people have said the same about Phillip Pullman haven't they?)
ETA: First line of the first book as a taster:
"It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea."
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Date: 2007-03-14 05:39 pm (UTC)Have you been to www.shelfari.com yet? Load up your shelf so I can steal!
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Date: 2007-03-14 05:40 pm (UTC)This is a fine example of People Who Don't Know And Can't Be Bothered deciding the fate of something awesome. Kinda like how Farscape was shoved over to YTV (the kids network) because it had Muppets in it. Yeahuh.
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Date: 2007-03-14 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-15 02:50 pm (UTC)Oh, I'm glad someone else has read it! I thought it was very good indeed.
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Date: 2007-03-15 02:51 pm (UTC)ps. I can't believe they'd stick Farscape on a kiddie channel... err, did they ever watch it?! Swearing, violence, sex... and that's just the Muppets! ;)
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Date: 2007-03-15 03:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-16 12:08 am (UTC)