Thunder City

Thunder City is a stand-alone novel by Philip Reeve set in the World Of Mortal Engines. It was published on 26th September, 2024. Chronologically, it succeeds Scrivener's Moon and precedes Night Flights. In publishing, it succeeds the two aforementioned titles.

Thunder City
Publication Information
Author	Philip Reeve
Publisher	Scholastic, Inc.
Release date	26th September, 2024
Chronology
Timeline	882 ᴛᴇ
Preceded by	Scrivener's Moon (chronologically)
Succeeded by	Night Flights (chronologically)

Setting

Main article: Events

Thunder City is set in 882 ᴛᴇ, 125 years before the original book, Mortal Engines, and 402 years after the Battle of Three Dry Ships featured in Scrivener's Moon, during the Golden Age of Traction.

Publisher's summary

• Back Cover
• United Kingdom
• United States

Click on each tab to view the synopsis for Thunder City.

Tamzin Pook is a fighter in the Amusement Arcade, where she does battle with Revenants - reanimated brains with armoured engine bodies - and is never sure whether she'll survive another day.

In the wheeled city of Thorbury, a rebel faction has brutally seized control and it will take someone skilled at fighting Revenants to save the day... Enter Tamzin.

Along with an oddball gang or mercenaries and a teacher named Miss Torpenhow, she must outwit a pair of assassins to secure a peaceful future.

An epic, action-packed city-eat-city adventure from master storyteller Philip Reeve.

“A rousing, swashbuckling, dystopian romp” - Kirkus Starred Review
"My favourite contemporary children's author is Philip Reeve" - Charlie Higson

An epic, thrilling, action-packed city-eat-city adventure starring brave fighter Tamzin Pook, who must travel from the spectator sport combat arena in Margate to the Thunder City, where a chilling, ruthless villain has seized power. She will face Revenants - animal/machine hybrids with ferocious appetites - dangerous mercenaries and must learn to trust a group of oddballs whose eccentricities mask their huge hearts and steadfast courage.

The epic appeal of the Mortal Engines series crosses all age barriers. Reeve’s novels have won the Guardian Children’s Award, Blue Peter Award, Smarties Gold Prize and the Carnegie Medal. Mortal Engines is now a feature film produced by Lord of the Rings director, Peter Jackson.

An edge-of-your seat adventure set in the iconic world of Mortal Engines!

Tamzin Pook is a fighter in the Amusement Arcade. And what she does best is killing Revenants.

All she knows is survival, having arrived in the Arcade as a small child. She pushes away her memories, her hopes, and her fears, and she emerges into the arena to battle the Revenants--dead brains nestled in armored engine bodies. She doesn't dare to hope or wish for anything more than to survive another day.

Meanwhile, the wheeled city of Motoropolis has been taken over by a rebel faction who killed its leaders and commandeered the city. Its only hope is a teacher named Miss Torpenhow who's determined to find the Mayor's good-for-nothing son and force him to take back what's rightfully his. But to get to him, she'll need to find someone who's skilled at fighting Revenants.

With a daring abduction, Miss Torpenhow and Tamzin Pook's destinies are entwined, and so begin their adventures together...

This stand-alone Mortal Engines novel follows an unlikely crew of fighters-turned friends: Tamzin Pook, Hilly Torpenhow, mayor-to-be Max Angmering, and washed-up mercenary Oddington Doom. Together, they must find a way to outwit the assassins that are determined to drag Tamzin back to the Arcade, and try to take back Motoropolis.

Readers, hold onto your seats-it's going to be a wild ride.

Plot

Tamzin Pook, a slave from Mayda, is the star player in the Margate Amusement Arcade. Along with a team including Skip Recap and Aya Munoz, she is tasked to fight "Revenant-Engines" of various shapes created by the inventor and showman Dr. Mortmain from dead animals, human Stalkers being long outlawed.

In Thorbury, a mid-sized Traction City known as 'Thunder City', Lavinia 'Hilly' Torpenhow, daughter of a London Historian, is the Tutor of Helen Angmering, daughter of the city's Mayor, Amadeus Angmering III. Their lesson on the Wheeled War and the Diet of Ulp is interrupted when Gabriel Strega, the banished former Chief Planning Officer of Thorbury, stages a coup with help from the nomad mercenary band the Boethius Brigade and a small group of humanoid stalkers, the Scrap Metal Seven. With the Mayor murdered by Strega, the city's engines, and Command tier captured; Hilly smuggles Helen out of danger to the upper residential tier, leaving her in the care of Mr. Werner and his wife, before fleeing the city in search of Max Angmering, Helen's older brother and Thorbury's rightful heir.

Six weeks later, after surviving her 49th battle at the Amusement Arcade, Tamzin is rescued by Hilly, disguised as a journalist from London. Escaping Margate by airship, Hilly informs Tamzin that she needs help to defeat an improved Revenant-Engine known as The Daunt, which is guarding an imprisoned Max on Paris. Mortmain sends a pair of assassins, Mr. Coldharbour and Mr. Lint, to recapture Tamzin and kill Hilly.

Arriving in Paris, Hilly and Tamzin meet up with Patrice LeClerc, Chief of the Parisian Bureau de Navigation, and an old acquaintance of Hilly's from her student days, who fears that Max will soon be assassinated. Purportedly for his own safety, Max is being held on the deepest level of the Oubliette, on the underside of Paris' chassis. As Hilly holds up the guards on the upper level, Tamzin frees Max, and finds that The Daunt is dog-like, with a dog's brain, and has been trained to receive commands. However she can not hold it at bay for long, and after finding LeClerk has betrayed them, the Daunt escapes and kills him. Fleeing into a refuse silo, Tamzin, Hilly, and Max are ejected into the Out Country along with Paris' waste, where they are rescued by a scavenger town, Weech.

Two months into Strega's regime, fearing her capture and execution, Helen is smuggled down to base tier in a small crate delivered to Mrs. Werner's brother and his son Rhaol. Suspecting Max may never return, she begins to make her own plans to retake the city.

A fan of Tamzin Pook, Weech's Mayor Absalom Croke, agrees to let Tamzin, Hilly and Max borrow the town's airship, the Hercules, to take them to Bad Luftgarten, where they hope to find General Klienhammer, head of Thorbury's Defence Corps. While still in Paris, Mortmain's assassins interrogate Inspector Melville about the Gaolbreak. Tamzin has nightmares about Eve Vespertine.

Arriving in Bad Luftgarten, a flying spa, Hilly and Max find Klienhammer unwilling to help them, but meet Oddington Doom, a mercenary from Australia. Eve Vespertine had been impaled by a Revenant a year earlier when Tamzin had purposefully failed to warn her of an attack, and Tamzin angrily confronts local artist Giotto Trubshawe about misrepresenting the death. Hilly, Tamzin and Trubshawe are attacked by Mortmain's assassins. Before they can kill them, Doom kills Coldharbour and Tamzin kills Lint. Tamzin, Hilly, Max, Doom, and Trubshawe recover at an Air B&B, but find it is cut loose from the rest of the town, and find a bomb. Having plummeted into the Middle Sea, they use the swimming pool as a makeshift raft.

Trapped in the swimming pool for days and surrounded by sharks, they are rescued by a Zagwan submarine - the Haille Maryam - where they meet Dr. Posie Naphtali, a marine biologist training octopuses as scouts for the Anti-Traction League. They are taken to Djebel Tarik, a Zagwan outpost in Gibraltar, and brought before it's governor, Kush Tundurbai, an old war ally of Doom's. Tundurbai agrees to release them and give them an airship, the Fire's Astonishment, but Tamzin is recaptured by opportunistic aviators turning her in for Mortmain's reward.

Helen meanwhile, ten weeks after her father's assassination, is scouting base tier and learning how to use a gun for the insurrection against Strega.

Realising Tamzin has been recaptured, Hilly, Max, Doom and Trubshawe begin to formulate a plan to infiltrate Margate. For Tamzin's 50th show, Mortmain intends to have her fight a special Revenant first alone, as an appetiser before her alienated former team, The others intend to free her from the paddock before entering the arena, while causing a distraction with a bomb placed by the octopuses. However, Doom over drinks and becomes highly intoxicated; he and Trubshawe are captured and Max narrowly escapes after being caught trying to cut the paddock fence. Tamzin is sent alone to face a single combat grudge match against the Revenant Vespertine. However, after Max falls into the arena, Tamzin manages to persuade Vespertine that Mortmain should be her target of her revenge, who climbs out of the arena to pursue him as the bomb goes off, causing further chaos. Failing to recruit the other players to fight for Thorbury, Tamzin is joined by Vespertine, her revenge unsatisfied, who clings to the side of the Haille Maryam.

Regrouping on Oak Island, the six - Hilly, Tamzin, Max, Doom, Trubshawe and Vespertine - prepare to return to Thorbury on the Fire's Astonishment. They find Thorbury in the Sculpture Garden, the volcanic wasteland between the Rustwater Marshes and the Tannhäuser Mountains, where it has cornered a group of towns against the banks of the Wassermauer River.. Hilly, Max, Doom, and Vespertine wait on an abandoned town, Shilpit, to be devoured by Thorbury while Trubshawe and Tamzin, posing as an artist and assistant, fly the Fire's Astonishment to Thorbury's command tier. The pair are invited to dine with Strega, while Shilpit is eaten. Strega quickly deduces who Tamzin is and sends Captain Boethius and his men to base tier. Skirmishes erupt on base tier as Max reunites with Helen. Strega sends down reinforcements lead by Jex Wommba, while Helen and her allies plot to capture the city's engines. Vespertine, after losing an arm, is taken up by the spinal elevator, as Max and Helen stop the city. Vespertine, arriving on the command tier, stops Strega from descending and defeats the remaining three Stalkers of the Scrap Metal Seven with the help of Tamzin. Wommba surrenders to Max, wanting to take her mercenaries to help with Hamburg's assault on Batmunkh Gompa. The six are lauded as heroes, but Max abdicates his claim to Thorbury in favour of Helen, who has become sympathetic to some of Strega's reforms and spares him execution. Hilly, Tamzin, Max, Doom and Vespertine decide to leave on the Fire's Astonishment, only Trubshawe wanting to stay behind to paint.

Trivia

• The novel's title might come from "Thunder City": the alternate name for Cleave, an industrial city built near a waterfall in Railhead.
• The original announcement of the book mistakenly identified Thorbury as Motoropolis.

Gallery

Cover by Ian McQue

References

Mortal Engines
Mortal Engines Quartet: Mortal Engines • Predator's Gold • Infernal Devices • A Darkling Plain Fever Crumb Trilogy: Fever Crumb • A Web of Air • Scrivener's Moon Mortal Engines Expanded Universe: Night Flights • The Illustrated World of Mortal Engines • Thunder City • Film