Welcome to to my final review of the Mortal Engines Quartet. We went from the awesomeness that is Mortal Engines, to
the cool second installment of Predator’s Gold, to the slight dud that is
Infernal Devices.
How does this one hold up? Only one way to find out. Spoiler
alert, and let’s dive right into A Darkling Plain by Philip Reeve.
Six months after the previous installment in the series, Tom
and Wren are still flying the Jenny Hanniver, and the former really misses
Hester, who is alone with Shrike now. The truce between the tractionists and
the Green Storm might just come to an end with the return of Stalker Fang.
Overall, I thought this was another pretty decent
installment in the Hungry Cities Quartet. Slightly better than the third, but
it still didn’t quite reach the heights of the first and second books.
The plot was definitely engaging. We get to see many
characters and locations that have been brought up in the first three books
come together here, and it worked well. The threat of peace between the
tractionists and the Green Storm coming to an end felt real, and you’re bound
to worry for your favourite character in this book, because Reeve is one of
those authors in whose books anyone can die.
The characters are once more a weaker point. Tom and Hester
are still at the very least enjoyable for the most part, and of course Shrike
and Theo were there and still some of my favourites, but many of the other
characters felt less than stellar. Wren I still simply do not like, even at the
end of the book. I simply can’t bring myself to care about her when she acts so
much like a brat throughout the two books she’s in.
I’ll just throw
another huge spoiler warning for the end of the book here... Okay,
so Hester and Tom both die. Characters like Fishcake and Pennyroyal return, and
they’re quite insufferable at this point, if they weren’t in the first place.
In fact, both of them get their happy endings, while they’re
both responsible for the heart wrenching deaths at the end of the book.
Pennyroyal caused Tom’s heart condition in book 2, which is slowly killing him,
and Fishcake, when finally given the chance to rescue the duo, chooses not to.
Hester ends up committing suicide.
I’m not against downer endings per se, but it just felt so
cruel here to have both of our leads die when the people who contributed to
their deaths still go free. I really hoped for a more bittersweet ending here,
having the losses and happy endings being somewhat spread. The only thing about
the ending I really enjoyed was Theo getting his happy ending and Shrike making
it out okay.
The ending, while sad, didn’t impact me quite as much as
that of the first book, though I’m not sure why. Maybe it is because I kinda
already expected a really sad ending or had trouble getting through this book.
I don’t really know why it was so hard for me to get through
this one. I still read it in roughly a day, but for some reason had trouble
focusing on the plot and characters.
I also feel like the characters might be a bit too black and
white. With such a colorful cast of characters I expected a little bit more
characters to be in the gray area, but quite a few of the characters are either
“good” or “bad” in the end.
So, overall, the conclusion to the Hungry Cities Quartet isn’t
my favourite book. It’s at least better than book 3, but I still didn’t like
this one too much, which is a shame, because the first book in the series is
the best book I read in 2018.
I’d definitely recommend you read the first book in this
series, but, for the later installments, I’d say follow your gut. I’m still
glad I finished this series, but it unfortunately didn’t stay consistently
good.
Rating: 3/5
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