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A Darkling Plain Philip Reeve 9780439949972 Books

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A Darkling Plain Philip Reeve 9780439949972 Books

I read and enjoy steampunk, but sometimes I'm not in the mood, (and expect a young reader might not be in the mood), for lovingly detailed descriptions and world building. You can get page after page of description of some clockwork contraption, or a whole chapter devoted to a tour of a steam powered engine room. That's not what you get here.

Reeve is great at broad stroke world building. He creates the London traction city in a chapter or two. He shows us all of the levels, how it works, how people fit into it, and the larger world within which it operates, and he frames all of the major characters within the first 50 pages. After that we are off to the races on a high energy, twisty and marvelously colorful adventure.

And this is a marvelous adventure. Our hero is a bit timid but finds the swashbuckler within. Our heroine is tough, smart, resourceful, and on a mission. This is a fine team. Around and through them we meet a memorable cast of colorful and compelling allies and villains. This is ripping stuff. Lots of running, hiding, lurking, escaping, fighting, and derring do. I was a bit surprised by the level of violence, and not cartoon violence, in the story, but that's treated as a serious consequence of dangerous times and this is still, after all, a dystopian world tale.

So, I enjoyed this immensely and appreciated the high level of imagination and creative energy that went into building and then convincingly portraying this fascinating world.


Tags : A Darkling Plain [Philip Reeve] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The once-great traction city of London is now just a radioactive wreck, a ruin haunted by electrical discharges and the dashed hopes of the people who once called it home—people like Tom Natsworthy. Twenty years after he fled,Philip Reeve,A Darkling Plain,Scholastic Press,0439949971,Children's & young adult fiction & true stories

A Darkling Plain Philip Reeve 9780439949972 Books Reviews

Maybe I've come to expect too much from the likes of Orson Scott Card. I'm definitely NOT the Young Adult demographic I suppose this book is aimed at, but even if I were, I think I would have found this book uncaptivating. I love the idea, and really look forward to seeing the movie, but this book's treatment of the story felt insipid, lukewarm, unconvincing.

If you want to get an idea what the upcoming movie is all about, maybe it's worth $6.

I had a really hard time caring about any of the characters. Too many of them - even the apparent main characters - were just tropes and not really developed beyond those tropes. The author has a habit of making a character appear to be somewhat important, and then killing them off rather flippantly, and in a way that shows they were not really that important. After a while, I started thinking "Cool kid. Shouldn't really start rooting for him, because he's probably dead in 20 pages anyway."

And nobody really mourned anyone that was killed off. They were just - gone.

Without any spoilers, I was also bothered by the sudden character turnarounds several times - I don't think people change their core nature as readily as they were portrayed in this book. "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father prepare to die... oh, we're best friends now." Wait - what?

I guess my review boils down to this if you replaced all the character development in this book, I'd love the story.
The Story-

Tom is a junior historian in the city of London. It is a thousand years since humanity almost destroyed itself in a sixty minute war, and now all cities are built on huge traction machines that roll over the earth and snatch up smaller traction cities.

Tom is sent down to the guts to look for artifacts after London eats a mining town. While there he is surprised to see his idol, Valentine, head historian and archaeologist of London. Things turn bad when one of the mining town survivors charges Valentine and tries to kill him. Tom runs after the villain, amazed to see that it is a young woman with a scar down the side of her face and a missing eye.

Through different means, they both end up expelled from the city and for the first time Tom finds himself on real ground. Together Tom and Hester try to find their way back to London, Hester to finish her murder and Tom just to get home. However, along the journey Tom learns the truth about his idol Valentine and the ugliness of living in a city eat city world.

My Thoughts-

This book scores points for originality. The idea of an entire city, as big as London, rolling around on traction wheels and getting their supplies by eating up lesser cities and stripping them bare, blows my mind. I honestly would not have been able to picture it if it hadn't been for the movie trailer. Whether it is in any way realistic is another story, but since this is a fantasy/dystopian novel, I'll let it roll.

Let's talk about our main characters, there is actually a quad, Tom and Hester and then Katherine (Valentine's daughter) and Bevis (a junior engineer). Tom and Hester are working their way back to London, discovering flying airships and other mini cities along the way. They also learn of the resistance movement against traction cities. Katherine and Bevis both live in London. Katherine is disillusioned by facts she finds out about her father and Bevis knows the secrets of the engineers and the robots and deadly weapon that are being built. Together they try from within London to stop the insane mayor from destroying the world.

The plot is full of twists and turns and as a reader I was eager to find out what the world was like that Hester and Tom lived in. It was also interesting to see technology from our current day have such an impact in the future. There is great tension and build up and the ending scenes are full of action. I enjoyed my ride through this novel. However, I felt as if something were missing. Tom and Hester are great characters, but there is nothing very special about them. I wanted there to be something that only Hester or Tom could accomplish that would save the city or world. Some type of hidden hero archetype or unknown skill that surfaces. I needed to feel that this same adventure could not have happened to any other two kids.

So, overall I recommend this book for its originality and action and I'm giving it 4 stars!
I found out about this book after seeing a preview for the movie and doing a bit of research. The idea of a sci-fi adventure/intrigue with moving cities that need to "eat" other cities sounded like it would be a fascinating read.

Sadly, I can't say that I found the story to be nearly as compelling as the idea of it. I can't really put a finger on why I'm not enthralled. The idea is there, the action is there, but I guess the characters fall a bit flat for me. I am finding the book interesting, but not strongly and I've already started to lose interest in any of the sequels.

It's just missing the magic piece I guess.
I read and enjoy steampunk, but sometimes I'm not in the mood, (and expect a young reader might not be in the mood), for lovingly detailed descriptions and world building. You can get page after page of description of some clockwork contraption, or a whole chapter devoted to a tour of a steam powered engine room. That's not what you get here.

Reeve is great at broad stroke world building. He creates the London traction city in a chapter or two. He shows us all of the levels, how it works, how people fit into it, and the larger world within which it operates, and he frames all of the major characters within the first 50 pages. After that we are off to the races on a high energy, twisty and marvelously colorful adventure.

And this is a marvelous adventure. Our hero is a bit timid but finds the swashbuckler within. Our heroine is tough, smart, resourceful, and on a mission. This is a fine team. Around and through them we meet a memorable cast of colorful and compelling allies and villains. This is ripping stuff. Lots of running, hiding, lurking, escaping, fighting, and derring do. I was a bit surprised by the level of violence, and not cartoon violence, in the story, but that's treated as a serious consequence of dangerous times and this is still, after all, a dystopian world tale.

So, I enjoyed this immensely and appreciated the high level of imagination and creative energy that went into building and then convincingly portraying this fascinating world.