A Web of Air [Paperback]

In a far future after an atomic war the people are rebuilding.
In a traveling show and merchant train of large platform trucks
a young engineer girl who is half mutant travels to far land's end.
There she finds a reclusive scientist working on a secret project.
There are unknown villains lucking in the shadows.
When at last the tables turn, the new young love is frustrated.
The end leaves us open for a sequel.
So the plot is well done/ thought out with change ups and character twists
that keep us interested.
I liked the novel
and would buy other books by the author.

The term "young adult fiction" sends shudders down the spines of a great many readers. Even young adults. For a lot of people it means Twilight and its dozens of pulpy clones. For teens it often means issue-driven novels about bullying, drug addiction, sexism, prejudice, and so on, all of them frightfully earnest and educational. Adults like to push books like these on kids with the introductory phrase, "Read this, it'll do you good." It's the literary equivalent of a multivitamin, and just as palatable.

A Web of Air is the second prequel to the Mortal Engines Quartet (consisting of Moral Engines, Predator's Gold, Infernal Devices, and A Darkling Plain), and you won't like it at all if you insist on your young adult novels containing vampires battling puberty or teens dealing with thorny issues ripped from last week's episode of Oprah. Author Reeve somehow manages to make a wildly entertaining novel without angst or the undead by relying on those old standbys imagination, humour, and a lean, fast, exciting plot. The world of the Mortal Engines Quartet is set in the far future after the obligatory global apocalypse. Civilization is back, roughly speaking, to the Victorian age, although there are a host of mad differences, not the least of which is that cities are now giant (seriously humungous) tracked vehicles that patrol the Earth literally devouring other, smaller, cities. It's called Municipal Darwinism. The prequels began with Fever Crumb and they're meant to describe how Earth's cities went from stationary to mobile.

Web again follows the character of Fever Crumb, a teenage girl from London who's also a member of that city's Engineer class, a monkish group devoted to engineering and science. Fever has fled London with a band of traveling actors and they fetch up at a city by the sea where, I'm guessing, Portugal used to be. The city is Mayda (located inside a volcanic/impact crater) and one of its residents is Arlo Thursday, a young man who is rediscovering the principles of manned flight. Fever assists him in building a crude plane, but there are those who feel planes would pose a grave threat to cities, and they'll do anything to stop Arlo and Fever.

So there you have it: the building blocks for a ripping yarn. But that's only half the fun. Reeve is a superbly imaginative writer, and his talent shouldn't be hidden in the young adult ghetto. His ability to create new worlds and societies (always the litmus test for a top-notch fantasy writer) is outstanding. J.K. Rowling could take lessons from him. In fact, in Fever Crumb Reeve drops in a Harry Potter joke that's as funny as it is cleverly set-up. Humour is another quality that separates Reeve from the pack. When you hear the term post-apocalyptic your first thought isn't, ooh, that'll be a laugh riot. Reeve's storytelling can be very dark and very bloody, but he realizes that these moments work better when there are brief, but alternating, moments of levity.

Web is Reeve at his imaginative best. The acting company Fever travels with (echoes of Nicholas Nickleby) is neatly described, and the city of Mayda is a brilliant creation with its stately homes and pleasure palaces mounted on funiculars traveling up and down the inside of the crater walls. Add in a cult that worships an aquarium ornament from our own time and some talking seagulls, and you have one more in a series of novels that will undoubtedly become a modern classic.

Read more of my reviews at JettisonCocoon dot com.

The Downsizing left knowledge and technology hopelessly crippled -- including the complete loss of flight technology.

So guess what "A Web of Air" is all about! The sequel to Philip Reeve's "Fever Crumb" takes our Engineer heroine into an unfamiliar land, and confronts her with the greed, ignorance and cruelty that hampers scientific development. There's a palpable sadness and bittersweetness to the tale, which is marred only by hints of anti-religious bias.

Two years have passed since Fever, Fern and Ruan left London behind them, and the Engineer girl has been working at Persimmon's Ambulatory Lyceum (a traveling theater). But while they are staying in the city of Mayda, Fever encounters a tiny glider. The glider leads her to the eccentric young inventor Arlo Thursday, who is trying to create a flying machine.

Unfortunately, there are people in Mayda who are after Arlo -- some want to steal his inventions for themselves, while a shadowy figure wants to destroy anyone who attempts flight. And even as Fever begins to fall in love with Arlo, she finds that she may not be able to trust anyone else -- and the greatest treachery may come from where she least expects it.

"A Web of Air" is a rather tragic book -- betrayals, teen love, conspiracy and a lost technology that might be destined to STAY lost. In fact, the entire novel is imbued with the glimpses of a world that has not only been lost, but forgotten or relegated to myth. For instance, a popular folk legends tells of Niall Strong-arm, the man who romanced the moon goddess in his fiery chariot.

Reeve also shows us a darker side of his postapocalyptic steampunk world, which is changing radically as London acquires its new wheels and structures. His writing is strong and colorful, lightly painted with echoes of lost civilization, but he really stabs you in the heart sometimes with the sadder scenes, such as the fate of poor Weasel or the lengths Fever must go to help Arlo.

But the book does have one big flaw: religion. Reeve basically depicts all religion as being baseless lies (ironic, considering what we learn about the Engineers), and ALL followers of it are ravening illiterate morons. It leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

Fever takes a huge step forwards toward.... well, being a psychologically normal person instead of a fanatical engineer. How? She falls in love with Arlo, first with his scientific brilliance and then with his lost, adventurous spirit. Reeve shows her slowly softening up with time, and he also fleshes out countless other characters beautifully -- whether it's semi-sentient seabirds or cold-blooded assassins.

"A Web of Air" has some unfortunate implications, but is otherwise a strong, bittersweet postapocalyptic tale -- certainly a worthy sequel to "Fever Crumb."

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