Age 12+

Reeve’s award-winning Mortal Engines told of a future in which peripatetic cities pursue and consume smaller towns. It also introduced Tom, a charming young historian, who fell in love with Hester, a scavenger whose face was badly disfigured by a sword blow, her ugliness outweighed by her courage in Tom’s heart. Predator’s Gold rejoins the lovers, now cruising the world in their airship. This ripping and intelligent sequel is a tale of jealousy, betrayal and high adventure, as Tom and Hester come to the kindly, half-deserted town of Anchorage, ruled by a pretty “margravine”. Desperate to avoid metropolitan rapacity, Anchorage heads hopefully across the northern ice fields for the Dark Continent — once called America before the ages-old Sixty-Minute war, which ended the world as we know it. Rumours say that this wasteland is now green again, but are they true? Meanwhile, Anchorage's location is saleable to the huntsmen of predator cities. This inventive fantasy involves rich characters including a smug bestselling writer of a fake explorer’s memoirs, a tribe of lost boys trained as burglars and manipulated by a Faginesque sadist, dangerous experiments in resurrection that create murderous monsters, nail-biting pursuits, terrible punishments and violent battles. It is also insightful about human emotions —- from love and parental loss to what it feels like to kill another person.

PREDATOR'S GOLD by Philip Reeve

(Scholastic £ 14.99)

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