What to read after “Mortal Engines” by Philip Reeve: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.
In an alternate 1914, the Great Powers fight with two kinds of technology: the Clankers' diesel walkers and the Darwinists' genetically engineered beasts. Prince Alek, on the run after his parents' assassination, and Deryn, a girl disguised as a boy in the British airship service, meet when the whale airship Leviathan crashes in the Alps.
Matt Cruse is a cabin boy on the Aurora, a luxury airship that crosses the oceans. When a pirate raid and a storm leave the ship stranded on a remote island, Matt and a rich passenger's daughter, Kate, search for the flying creatures her grandfather claimed to have seen before the pirates close in.
An early mining machine called the Boneshaker shattered Seattle and released a gas that kills people or turns the dead into rotters. Sixteen years later, Briar Wilkes enters the walled ruins after her son Zeke, who hopes to clear his father's name, goes in. She finds the ruined city ruled by a masked inventor and his followers.
In Victorian London, Tessa Gray is kidnapped by the Dark Sisters and learns she is a shape-shifter. Rescued by the Shadowhunters, she is drawn into a fight against a powerful enemy while navigating her feelings for two brothers, Will and Jem.
A traveller from the future changes 1840 and leaves behind an England divided between steam-driven Technologists and Eugenicists who reshape living things. Sir Richard Burton, an explorer whose reputation has been ruined, is sent to investigate the attacks of Spring-Heeled Jack and other strange events in London's East End.
After a series of waves wipes out most of humanity, sixteen-year-old Cassie is alone and running from an enemy that could look like anyone. To find her little brother she will have to trust a stranger, even as she learns how the invasion really works.
Edinburgh, 1844. Aileana Kameron hides a secret: she hunts the fae who murdered her mother, using her own inventions and a training she never speaks of. Her closest ally is Kiaran, a fae warrior who teaches her to fight, and the trail she follows leads toward something far older and more dangerous than she expected.
Thomas wakes in a maze with no memory of who he is, surrounded by boys who arrived the same way. Each day the walls open and monstrous machines roam, and Thomas becomes sure he was part of the experiment that trapped them.
After the Iron Duke broke the Horde's hold on England, Rhys Trahaearn became a hero, a merchant and a man used to taking what he wants. Detective Inspector Mina Wentworth has Horde blood and little place in London society, but a body dropped on Rhys's doorstep forces them to work together against a plot aimed at everyone in England.
Fourteen-year-old Sophronia is sent to Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy, where proper young ladies learn dance, dress and etiquette, and also lock-picking, information gathering and the quieter arts of espionage. A stolen prototype and a plot against a schoolmate pull Sophronia and her new friends into danger.
Irene is a professional spy for the Library, an institution that collects books from alternate worlds. Sent with her new assistant Kai to a chaos-infested version of London where airships, vampires and fey exist, she must recover a dangerous book that has already been stolen, and the mission quickly turns into a struggle over the nature of reality itself.
A gifted child lives in a military base, strapped into a chair for lessons while hungries roam outside. When the base falls, she and her teacher cross a broken England while she learns what she is and what she can choose to become.
In an alternate 1878, Karen Memery works at a brothel in Seattle. When a badly injured woman arrives with a ruthless man on her trail, Karen is pulled into a hunt for a serial killer, a corrupt election and a mess of dangerous inventions.
A plague kills nearly everyone on Earth. An ecologist emerges from the mountains to find empty cities and a few survivors, and spends the rest of his life watching a new, smaller society take shape without the old world's machinery.
A meteor shower blinds most of humanity, leaving a few sighted survivors in a world where walking, venomous plants have escaped from farms. A young man and a small group try to reach safety and decide what kind of society can be rebuilt.
Nathaniel is a young apprentice magician who summons the djinni Bartimaeus to steal a powerful amulet from a politician. The djinni is clever, sarcastic and far from willing, and the theft sets off a fight that neither of them expected to survive.
In a post-nuclear Labrador, communities destroy deformed crops and animals and kill, sterilize or banish people who do not match the true form. A boy who can speak with his mind hides his gift among friends, until discovery forces them to flee toward a fabled safe place.
After a flu wipes out most of humanity, a travelling theatre troupe moves between the small settlements that remain, performing Shakespeare. The story follows survivors across decades and asks what of civilization is worth carrying forward.
A wanderer in a ruined America puts on a dead postman's uniform and invents a story about a restored postal service. The lie gives scattered survivors hope, then grows into something he must defend.
In an electric-powered Victorian London, Dr. Eliza Jekyll works as a crime-scene investigator while hiding Lizzie Hyde, the reckless second self freed by her father's elixir. A killer is mutilating women across the city, and the case pulls Eliza into London's magical underworld as she tries to keep her secret and control Lizzie.
Earth has been quietly taken over by souls, parasites who erase human minds and live in their bodies. Wanderer, inserted into the body of a resistant girl named Melanie, finds the girl's thoughts and feelings still present, along with her love for a man in hiding.
A father and his young son walk through a burned America, pushing a cart of scavenged supplies and hiding from bands of survivors who hunt people for food. Their only aim is to keep moving south and stay alive while holding on to decency.
In a near-future California wrecked by drought and lawlessness, a teenage girl who feels the pain of others builds a new belief while her walled neighbourhood falls apart. She leads a small group north, looking for land and for something to hold on to.
In the vast industrial city of New Crobuzon, the scientist Isaac agrees to restore flight to a creature who has lost its wings. The experiment releases something that feeds on dreams and minds, and the city is soon sliding toward disaster.
Start with “Leviathan”, “Airborn”, “Boneshaker”: they are the closest to “Mortal Engines” in tropes and mood. Under each book in the list you will see what exactly it has in common.
How are similar books chosen?
We compare tropes (for “Mortal Engines” these are Steampunk, Post-Apocalyptic World, Coming of Age), genre, plot, era and tone. It is not “readers also bought”; it is similarity in the content itself.
Are there recent books in this list?
Yes. Among the newer ones are “Leviathan”, “Airborn”, “Boneshaker”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
