Fever Crumb

Philip Reeve's Fever Crumb: Mortal Engines is a big, strange adventure for 11 year olds about a girl brought up to believe feelings are a waste of time.

What happens

Fever was found as a baby, in a basket in a weedy pit, with a label on her wrist that gave her name and nothing else. Dr Crumb carried her home to the Order of Engineers. Fourteen years later she's still there, their only girl.

Home is Godshawk's Head. It really is a head, a giant metal one seven storeys high, and you go in through the left nostril (yes, really). Fever shaves her head like the rest of the Order. She has one brown eye and one grey one. And she tries very hard to be rational about absolutely everything.

Then an archaeologist called Kit Solent asks for her help at his house on Ludgate Hill. Fever sets off across London on her own and is lost within five minutes.

This is London long before Mortal Engines, and it isn't going anywhere yet. It's a jumble of wind trams, sedan chairs and street markets, with temples to silly gods on every corner. It used to be ruled by the Scriven, spotted not-quite-humans who were overthrown in riots years ago. Londoners still turn on anyone who looks a bit different. With her odd eyes and bald head, Fever is soon surrounded by a crowd that's sure she's one of them.

Meanwhile an old Scriven-hunter called Bagman Creech has heard the rumour. He's taken on a skinny pub boy, Charley Shallow, to help him look.

Much of the fun is watching Fever try so hard not to feel things. She almost hugs Dr Crumb goodbye and stops herself. She calls her own excitement "positive anticipation". Your reader will see what she's feeling long before she admits it!

Worth knowing before you hand it over

The history of this London is brutal. The riots left the skins of murdered Scriven hanging in the streets, and the old Skinner is a hero to the men in the pub. The landlord is a nasty piece of work who uses a homophobic slur. It's written for the very top of this shelf.

For a reader who likes a clever, awkward heroine and a world that takes a while to work out, it's a real feast.

What to read next

For another girl who arrived as a baby and was raised by a stiff, serious guardian, try Philip Reeve's Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep. She was washed up on an island shore, and the sea around her home is something everyone fears.