The master of steampunk for teens returns to his disturbing futuristic Hungry City Chronicles with an interesting prequel that introduces how the world found itself with traveling city and a culture that seems to have fallen backward in time when it comes to technology.

His newest heroine is Fever Crumb, a 14-year-old orphan being raised by an Engineer. While girls are not normally allowed into the Order of the Engineers, she has been educated in order to be one of them. Her adoptive father, Dr. Crumb, took her in after she was left by her mother for him to raise. It seems that her training has gone well when she is chosen to go on an assignment to assist Kit Solent, an archaeologist who is researching the underground property of Auric Godshawk, the former leader of London and a member of the mutant Scriven people. The Scriven, who used to control the city, are ruled by everyone else with mistrust ... so much so that they were either hunted down and killed or run out of the city.

With that said, there is a high level of interest in their technology, which was based on recovering the lost technological arts of humanity that were lost after the great war. Kit Solent and Fever have no idea that what they are researching is about to not only change everything they know, but also provide insight into Fever's mysterious past.

As all of this is going on in London itself, the nomadic peoples of the north seem to be closing in on the city, and many fear what that will mean for everyone. It is this approaching danger that brings back former fears of the Scriven, which makes Fever herself a target of two of the city's hunters.

As with the other books in the series, Reeve has masterfully crafted an interesting and realistic world in which humanity is once again scrounging for survival. His characters are richly drawn and easy for the reader to care about and sympathize with. It does a really nice job of explaining how the world came to where it was in the previous books, and readers even get a preview of some of the character who carry over into those titles.

Fans of the Mad Max films and steampunk fiction should definitely take a look at this series, and this title is definitely a great addition to it.