Philip Reeve is a British author and illustrator of children’s books and is best known for the 2001 young adult novel “Mortal Engines” and its sequels. “Mortal Engines” won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize in ages 9-11 years and made the Whitbread Book Award shortlist. The book is the first in a series called the Mortal Engines Quartet which includes “Predator’s Gold,” “Infernal Devices” and “A Darkling Plain.” This was followed by the Fever Crumb prequel series: “Fever Crumb,” “A Web of Air” and “Scrivener’s Moon,” which depict events many years prior to those of “Moral Engines.” The books feature two young adventurers, Tom Natsworthy and Hester Shaw, who live in a lawless post-apocalyptic world inhabited by moving cities. The movie adaptation of “Mortal Engines,” directed by Christian Rivers and a screenplay by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson, opens this Friday December 14. It stars Hugo Weaving, Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan, Jihae, Ronan Raftery and Stephen Lang.

“Mortal Engines” is set in a post-apocalyptic world that is a product of a “Sixty Minute War” which caused geological upheaval. To escape the earthquakes, volcanoes and other instabilities, a nomadic leader named Nikola Quercus installed huge engines and wheels on London and enabled it to dismantle (or eat) other cities for resources. London is now hunting again, chasing a terrified little town across the wastelands and soon, it will eat. The book focuses on a futuristic steampunk version of London, now a giant machine striving to survive on a world running out of resources. Tom is a young Londoner who has never lived outside his traveling hometown. His first taste of the outside world comes when he gets in the way of an attempt by the masked Hester to kill Thaddeus Valentine, a powerful man she blames for her mother’s murder and both Hester and Tom end up thrown out of the moving “traction” city to fend for themselves.