Product Description

Fleeing from an Anti-Tractionist sect, the Green Storm, Tom and Hester are left drifting in the frozen Ice Wastes, slowly dying of cold after the Jenny Haniver's engines have failed. They are saved at the last minute, finding Anchorage, a once-beautiful ice city that has fallen on hard times. Crippled by plague, there are barely fifty souls on Anchorage now, and the teenage margravine has made a desperate choice. They are heading for America, the Dead Continent...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10658 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Predator's Gold is the stunning sequel to the award-winning Mortal Engines and, incredibly, it is just as exciting and page-turning as its predecessor. Reeve's further stories of cities on wheels, flying over a ravaged future Earth are compelling--complete with characters that you care passionately for, action that leaves you lost for words and inventiveness that takes some beating.

Two years after their escape aboard the airship (the Jenny Haniver) at the end of Mortal Engines, Tom and Hester, now lovers, find themselves the twin objects of attention of a terrorist organisation called Green Storm. In the misguided belief that the grotesquely incomplete preserved body of their hero, Anna Fang, can be resurrected to ensure their anti-traction goals, they cite Tom and Hester as essential capture targets.

But when they take shelter aboard the once-magnificent city of Anchorage, after a bruising air battle with some of Green Storm's gun ships, Tom and Hester encounter a whole new set of problems. This prestigious ice city is heading disastrously towards America, the fabled Dead continent, under the guidance of the fraudulent explorer Pennyroyal. There is danger everywhere and the travellers must be careful to survive.

Sequels can sometimes disappoint, but the eagerly awaited Predator's Gold cannot be faulted. Reeve's exemplary novel has the depth to satisfy the most literary and demanding readers, and yet his story delivers enough verve and white-knuckle drama to keep the lighter readers well-served too. Neither is it a slight to describe this novel as full of old-fashioned adventure--because there is something reassuringly familiar about its accessibility. It has a whiff of the classic about it and that is certainly no bad thing. (Recommended for ages 10 and over.) --John McLay

Synopsis
Fleeing from an Anti-Tractionist sect, the Green Storm, Tom and Hester are left drifting in the frozen Ice Wastes, slowly dying of cold after the Jenny Haniver's engines have failed. They are saved at the last minute, finding Anchorage, a once-beautiful ice city that has fallen on hard times. Crippled by plague, there are barely fifty souls on Anchorage now, and the teenage margravine has made a desperate choice. They are heading for America, the Dead Continent...

Customer Reviews

Good but not great
Tom and Hester are back, making their way in the strange world of Municipal Darwinism and traction cities. This book gets them into more dangerous situations, with more weird characters and fantastic ideas from the imagination of Philip Reeve. There are plenty of new characters, and some from the first book making a return appearance.

The story's good again, with a strong flow, and the descriptive writing is up to the high level Reeve set himself in the first book, but overall it doesn't hang together as well. The plot doesn't have the same drive as Mortal Engines, and there's a lot of hopping around between different locations which can be confusing. Multiple new characters are introduced, some only for a short while, with no clear purpose in the plot. As in the first book some of the minor characters are better filled out than some of the main ones (I found Uncle never really came alive for me, whereas Smew was well defined).

However the characters of Hester and Tom are maturing and we learn much more about how they operate, and their backgrounds. The writing is also more mature than Mortal Engines, I found, and I thought this is aimed at a slightly older audience than the first book. There is far more development of the relationships between characters, for example, particularly Hester and Tom, and a lot of quite gory killing. There is less humour, and perhaps less invention (although it would be difficult to keep up with the first book). I also thought that some of the technology described in this book didn't really fit in the world which Reeve is building: the crab cameras for example, seem very high-tech compared with the other machines in the book.

So overall it's extremely enjoyable, but doesn't quite hit the high standards of Mortal Engines. I'm looking forward to reading number 3 though!

EPIC! AMAZING!!
This book is absolutely amazing - AS good as Mortal Engines. I couldn't put it down, in fact, i got sunburnt because i was reading is so much in the sun! I've also just read infernal devices which is also fantastic, and i can't wait to start reading a darkling plain, its sitting on my bed but im saving it for when I'm on holiday and I CANT WAIT!! Philip Reeve is a genius!

Brilliant!
Absolutely bloody brilliant! Am reading these four books in the order they were written, this being the second I now cannot wait to read the other two. Totally unputdownable, an amazing and imaginative tale of adventures that twists and turns unexpectedly, keeping you guessing all the way through. Thoroughly enjoyed it!