I read Phillip Reeve's Mortal Engines series some years ago while I was a school librarian. I absolutely loved it even though it made me cry in several places. I have been meaning to revisit this series when I got a recommendation to read Fever Crumb, set a long time before Mortal Engines. I absolutely loved it, there are tell tale clues within in the plot to where we are in Mortal Engines, the beginnings of an idea to set a city free on a nomadic journey collecting the spoils from other cities who could not put up any resistance. I also loved the silly place names, like Hamster Heath. The little in-jokes with the names that made me smile a lot. There is a sense of the macabre about Fever Crumb, the creation of paper dolls that attack, the creation of stalkers with dead bodies, one in particular, Shrike, who has a soft spot for small children; we meet Shrike again in Mortal Engines. Overall, a damn good read, and I can't wait to start the next.