Reviews

Gr 7-10-The final installment in the series continues the clever premise and breakneck pace established by the first three volumes. This story begins six months after the action in Infernal Devices (HarperCollins, 2006). A tentative peace seems likely to end years of warfare between gigantic traction cities that grind across the landscape consuming everything in their paths and stationary communities that denounce their destruction of nature. Then dissenting members of both sides sabotage the truce, and Theo Ngoni, Wren Natsworthy, and Wren's parents are drawn into the resulting mayhem. To complicate matters further, the Stalker Fang, a terrifying amalgam of killer robot and human corpse, has survived her presumed destruction and is intent on eradicating all human life so that Earth can recover from human depredation. Separate, interweaving story lines follow the principal characters as they encounter dozens of others from the earlier books while traversing the former Europe and Asia at top speed by airship, sand ship, traction city, and predator suburb. While readers new to the series will enjoy the hairbreadth escapes, humor, and romance, they may get lost in the complicated politics of the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft, the Anti-Tractionist League, the Green Storm, townies, mossies, etc., making the book more satisfying for readers already familiar with the impressive future revealed in the previous books. With its popular appeal and increasingly relevant theme of global-environmental conflict, this is a worthy conclusion to a series that ranks among the best science fiction for young people in recent years.-Beth Wright, Fletcher Free Library, Burlington, VT Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.

Reeve's massive, ambitious Hungry City Chronicles series roars to a fine conclusion in this fourth installment. War is raging between the Traction Cities and the vicious Green Storm, but Lady Naga has brought about peace negotiations. Loyalists to the Stalker Fang still move about, though, and young Theo is enlisted to get the Lady Naga to safety. Meanwhile, Tom Natsworthy and his daughter Wren learn that there is movement within the smoldering, immobile ruins of London; they return to their old home to learn that a New London is being secretly built, a levitating city with no need for wheels-and no jaws for devouring other cities. Elsewhere, the Stalker Fang has activated a doomsday weapon called ODIN, with the intent of blackening the entire surface of the Earth, so that it might one day be green again. Battle sequences are punctuated by a sudden switch to present-tense prose, lending a sense of immediacy to the conflicts; the finale is poignant, and it elegantly references the opening lines of the first book in the series. Taken as a whole, the Hungry City Chronicles is a remarkable body of work, one that stands beside The Lord of the Rings and His Dark Materials in terms of re-readability and scope. Complex, intelligent and rewarding, Reeve's world is truly one to get lost in. Ages 12-up. (June) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.