History Literature / MortalEngines

Traction Cities' military and ideological counterpart, the Anti-Traction League, is a vast Eastern coalition of static settlements, who aim to remove the abomination of Traction Cities from the world.

** In Northern mythology, Odin was the one-eyed god of death. This about says it all.

** In Greek mythology, the medusa was a half-woman half-monster creature who would turn anyone into stone if they looked directly at her. The MEDUSA from ''Mortal Engines'' does do this after a sort ([[spoiler: it's mentioned that there are carbonised statues of people on the lower levels of Panzerstath-Bayrouth, the city London fries with MEDUSA, that were flash-cooked by its intense heat]]), but it mostly just kills everything in it's path.

* MadeOfIron: Shrike, who survives being run through with a sword, falling into a ravine, and ''being run over by a city'', among many ''many'' other things. In fact, he's actually older than the Traction Era itself, and has lived through it all.

* LightningBruiser: Traction cities are very fast (London hits 100 kph in the first book), and when armed for war can pack insane amount of firepower and armour.

* TogetherInDeath: Invoked by Hester at the beginning of the second book. Played straight at the end of the fourth.

** Ultimately subverted: Oenone's medical skills (again, she works with ''{{cyborg}}s'') turn out to be just as relevant to the plot as her electronics skills. Also, despite her computer-themed name, which one would expect to be associated with cold, rational logic, she turns out to be one of the kindest and nicest characters in the books.

* TakingYouWithMe: [[spoiler:General Naga]]. And HOW.

* TalkingTheMonsterToDeath: Tom stops [[spoiler: the Stalker Fang from using ODIN]] by talking.

* ThatManIsDead: "I am not [[spoiler:Anna Fang]]. We are wasting time. I wish to destroy cities." (Admittedly in this case the character did literally die.)

* TimeSkip: There's one between each book, but the most significant is the 15 year one between ''Predator's Gold'' and ''Infernal Devices''. During this skip[[spoiler: the teen protagonists grow into adults and end up with their own teenage daughter, the Green Storm takes over the Anti-Traction League, and the traction/anti-traction conflict escalates into an all out war.]]

* TogetherInDeath: Invoked by Hester at the beginning of the second book. [[spoiler:Played straight at the end of the fourth]].

* TragicVillain: [[spoiler: Valentine ultimately turns out to be this by the end of the first book.]]

* VillainProtagonist: Hester Shaw, though it all depends on how you see the Anti-Traction League as opposed to London. By the end of the book she's [[spoiler: definitely not a villain in any sense]]. In later books, she [[spoiler: sort of slides back down toward the villain side of things]].

* WretchedHive: [[spoiler:Brighton after the Lost Boys take over]] is described as this.

* [[ZeppelinsFromAnotherWorld Zeppelins From A Post-Apocalyptic Future]]: Heavier-than-air flight has all but died out and been replaced by airships. However: Ornithopters and gyrothopters have just been reinvented in A Darkling Plain, used effectively by the Flying Ferrets. In A Web of Air, heavier-than-air flight is achieved by Arlo Thursday [[spoiler:and then promptly crushed to prevent it being used against the newly-created traction cities]].

* LayeredMetropolis: London has become this, thanks to Quirke, who transformed it into the world's first mobile city. The 7th tier houses the engine district, while St Paul's Cathedral sits on the uppermost tier. Later in the series, as we see more and more Traction Cities, we find that they're all layered -- in fact, the number of layers a city has becomes a sort of short-hand for the amount of power and wealth it possesses. Small cities might have just two layers, [[UrbanSegregation with the poor citizens]] sharing the lower tier with the engines and other machinery [[UrbanSegregation while the wealthy live in the fresh air and sunshine above]]. Some of the largest and most powerful cities may have up to a dozen layers (the higher, the more respectable). Only small towns make do with only a single deck.

-->--Opening sentence of ''Mortal Engines''

* NiceGuy: Tom ''embodies'' this trope.
** It's for this reason that 'everybody likes Tom', which is mentioned at least once in every book that features him.

* OfficialCoupleOrdealSyndrome: [[spoiler: Tom and Hester ''and'' Katherine and Bevis. [[KillEmAll It really doesn't end well...]]]]

-->--Opening sentence of ''Mortal Engines''. [[spoiler:[[BookEnds Closing sentence of the entire series]].]]

* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Deliberately and avoided by Hester Shaw, who is horribly scarred and disfigured. As in missing an eye, most of her nose, and a good chunk of her mouth.

* MagnificentFlyingMachines: Airships of all shapes and sizes play a major role in the setting, and air travel is heavily romanticised. Air merchants ply the "Bird Roads" in their little tramp ships, seeing the world and having glamorous adventures; nations go to war with fighter-airships and {{Airborne Aircraft Carrier}}s; rich playboys may ride around their mansions in tiny couch-sized blimps. When the secrets of heavier-than-air flight are finally re-discovered later on in the series, all sorts of improbable ornithopters, autogyros, and other rickety flying machines are added into the mix.

Mortal Engines takes place in a post-post-post-post-post-apocalyptic UsedFuture. Nations no longer exist, except in the lands of the Anti-Traction League. Traction Cities - entire cities mounted on caterpillar tracks for mobility - are fiercely independent city-states, using giant jaws to devour one another for resources in a horribly unsustainable city-eat-city environment known as Municipal Darwinism: large cities eat small cities, small cities eat towns, towns eat suburbs, and everyone eats non-moving or "static" settlements. Trade is mostly accomplished by airship, though sometimes cities of roughly equal size (unable to devour each other) will stop to trade. Much of the AppliedPhlebotinum involves Old-Tech, ancient remains of lost civilisations ranging from statues of MickeyMouse ("animal-headed gods of lost America") to {{Lost Superweapon}}s.

Something worth mentioning, given the amount of back-and-forth editing in the page history, is that the most prominent Stalker is named Shrike in most editions and Grike in the North American ones. For ThemeNaming reasons made clear in ''Fever Crumb'' - that is, all the Stalkers in his 'batch' were named after birds - 'Shrike' (a small predatory bird) makes considerably more sense than 'Grike' (a feature of limestone pavements).

!!This book series provides examples of :

* {{And I Must Scream}}: Aspects of this in stalker technology. Individuals do not find rest in death, i.e. [[spoiler: Anna Fang / Kit Solent]], but instead are nightmarishly brought back to life through creepy old-tech (there are some gruesome descriptions of how this happens). What makes it eligible for this trope is [[spoiler: they often remember who they were, and quite possibly are unable to destroy themselves for various reasons - such as due to tinkering done to their brains. They must endure as half-preserved, monstrous killing-machines. ]]

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: The Traction War cost untold numbers of lives, Tom and Hester are dead and Shrike is left bereft...but New London heralds the rise of a type of moving city that will no longer damage the world, Wren and Theo go on to make new lives for themselves, and Shrike, after hibernating for hundreds of years, wakes up to find the world green again and settles into his new role - and family - as a remembering machine.]]

** In a play, 'Niall Strong-Arm' is sent by 'Mad King Elvis of America' to the Moon, where the Moon Goddess, (Princess?) Diana falls in love with him.
** Reeve is just fond of this trope in general - "blog" is adopted as profanity in ''Fever Crumb''. And, of course, in the same book, the "Hari Potter" cult throw away gag.

* IGaveMyWord: Once Crome and his people have learned all they can from Shrike, Crome could very well have had him dismantled, but he chooses to let Shrike go, and Shrike has faith that the Engineer will give him his 'heart's desire' - [[spoiler: which is to have Hester Resurrected into a Stalker.]]

* EcoTerrorist: The Green Storm, who toppled the considerably more peaceful Anti-Tractionist League and deploy {{Cyborg}}s and {{Suicide Attack}}s in their war to end the environmentally destructive policy of Municipal Darwinism. [[spoiler:Their leader, Stalker Fang, eventually hatches a plot to fire a KillSat to trigger a chain of dormant volcanoes, hoping that humanity will die off but life itself will survive and return the planet to its natural state]].

* LaserGuidedKarma: Wavey Godshawk is the one who [[spoiler: turned Kit Solent into the Stalker Shrike. Years later, Shrike kills her by cutting her in half.]]

** Though humanity's back on its feet (15,000 or so years will do that for a civilization) the Sixty Minute War had such massive environmental effects and dumped so many nukes that south China was flooded, Antarctica de-frosted, seas moved around, pretty much everything north of New York City froze solid, Australia seems to have vanished (though WordOfGod says he just never got around to writing anything about it) and ''Panama ceased to exist.'' Not flooded, '' severed and destroyed.'' [[spoiler:''Scrivener's Moon'' reveals that it was wiped out in a series of directed asteroid strikes.]] Class 2, verging on a class 3a.

** MEDUSA ([[spoiler: a giant laser weapon]]) and ODIN ([[spoiler: a {{KillSat}}]]).

Creator/PeterJackson and WETA Digital are currently working on a film adaptation of the first book, Mortal Engines, though the release date remains uncertain.

* MasculineGirlFeminineBoy: Hester and Tom, complete with romantic tension, and especially in the first half or so of ''Mortal Engines''. Tom is a sensitive, emotional, often naive NonActionGuy, while Hester is a BadAss ActionGirl who doesn't talk much and suppresses her feelings. Tom is constantly shocked by the rough world beyond London, while Hester is the one who's seen it all before, has a tough skin, and gets irritated by Tom's difficulty coping until he starts to adjust. As a bonus, Tom is handsome and conventionally attractive, while Hester has a huge disfiguring scar.

** Though humanity's back on its feet (15,000 or so years will do that for a civilization) the Sixty Minute War had such massive environmental effects and dumped so many nukes that south China was flooded, Antarctica de-frosted, seas moved around, pretty much everything north of New York City froze solid, Australia seems to have vanished (though WordOfGod says he just never got around to writing anything about it) and ''Panama ceased to exist.'' Not flooded, '' severed and destroyed.'' Class 2, verging on a class 3a.

* KarmaHoudini: somehow played ''and'' averted with Pennyroyal: he never paid for [[spoiler:shooting Tom and stealing the ''Jenny Haniver'']] but at the end of the last book, [[spoiler: his reputation is ruined and he spends a fair amount of time in prison. Though he does get released and married eventually, nobody ever trusted him enough to publish the one truthful book he wrote, not even his wealthy wife]].