The A to Z of Railhead - C is for Cleave (by Philip Reeve)

It was only a year or so ago that I was bemoaning the general lack of space set science fiction for young adult and younger readers (although if you're a long time reader of The Book Zone you will know that I have been moaning about this for a good few years). However, in the last 18 months publishers have obviously decided that space is cool and marketable again (anything to do withh the forthcoming Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens?). In my opinion, Philip Reeve's Railhead is the best book so far (and by far) in this long overdue new wave of YA space opera (it's TRAINS IN SPACE. Need I say more? It was published two days ago and it is flippin' brilliant!)) and today I am honoured to be welcoming the great Mr Reeve himself to The Book Zone as part of the A to Z of Railhead tour. 

C is for Cleave

When I started to write Railhead, I wanted to write about a future that was worth living in - a positive vision to set against all the dystopias and apocalypses of recent fiction. So how did I end up starting in a dump like Cleave?

Zen's hometown was a sheer-sided ditch of a place. Cleave’s houses and factories were packed like shelved crates up each wall of a mile-deep canyon on a one-gate world called Angkat whose surface was scoured by constant storms. Space was scarce, so the buildings huddled into every available scrap of terracing, and clung to cliff faces, and crowded on the bridges which stretched across the gulf between the canyon walls - a gulf which was filled with sagging cables, dangling neon signage, smog, dirty rain, and the fluttering rotors of air taxis, ferries and corporate transports.

Well, maybe a hero needs to start out in some place where he’s not content. Otherwise, why would he go looking for adventure?

Between the steep-stacked buildings a thousand waterfalls went foaming down to join the river far below, adding their own roar to the various dins from the industrial zone. The local name for Cleave was Thunder City.

A few years ago, on my wife’s birthday, we went to Lydford Gorge, on the far side of Dartmoor. It’s a place about as unlike a futuristic industrial city as you could imagine. The river Lyd flows through the deep gorge. There is a famous waterfall called The White Lady, and a beautiful, mossy path leading up through the oak woods, beside the rapids. There’s also a spot called where the river plunges down into a deep chasm. Some previous landowner bolted metal walkways to the rock-faces so that sightseers could venture closer. The walkways are rusted now and maybe unsafe; they were certainly closed off the day that we were there. But looking at them from the higher path made me think about a whole city built in that way, jutting from vertical cliff faces, half drowned in waterfall spray. Ideas lie in wait for us in the landscape, and they’re not always the ideas that we expect.

Review: Oliver and the Seawigs by Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre

Oliver grew up in a family of explorers - but his biggest adventure is about to begin!

Along with his new friends, a grumpy old albatross, a short-sighted mermaid and a friendly island called Cliff, Oliver goes off in search of his missing parents. But before he can put his rescue plan into action there's the evil Stacey de Lacey and an army of greasy, green sea monkeys to contend with . . . 

Oliver Crisp's life differs from that of the majority of kids of his age in that instead of living in a house and attending school, he has accompanied his explorer parents on their adventures around the world. However, Mr and Mrs Crisp have come to the conclusion that they have been everywhere and seen everything and there simply isn't anywhere left to explore and so with heavy hearts they set off back to their house in Deepwater Bay, a house that they have hardly ever lived in. Oliver, on the other hand, is more excited than he has been for a long time - he longs to live a normal life, in a proper family house, and attend a proper school.

However, as their ramshackle house comes into view the trio are surprised to find that Deepwater Bay has gained a number of islands during their absence, and naturally the Crisp parents just have to head out in their little dinghy to explore them. When some time goes past and they haven't returned Oliver ventures out to discover that all but one of the islands have disappeared, along with his parents, and so begins a thrilling and hilarious search and rescue mission that sees Oliver meeting islands that travel, a mermaid in desperate need of an optician, a talking albatross, sea monkeys and a particularly mean villain called Stacey de Lacey.

This is one of the most enjoyable and charming books that I have read so far this year, and it shows just how talented and versatile a writer Philip Reeve is. Reading Oliver and the Seawigs it is hard to believe that this is the product of the same imagination that brought us the brilliant Mortal Engines series with its roaming, cannibalistic cities, although on reflection I guess the concept of islands that travel isn't a million miles away from this. It really is a shame that YA books tend to hog so much of the book review spotlight, as Oliver and the Seawigs is the perfect book for 7+ aged readers deserves to be acclaimed about by newspaper critics and book bloggers alike. 

Reeve's storytelling is intelligent and witty, with clever word play, crazy happenings and a sense that you can never really guess what is going to happen next. However, his contribution is only 50% of what makes this book as magical as it is, with the other half of magic being provided by the super talented illustrator, Sarah McIntyre. Sarah's quirky and zany illustrations complement Reeve's words so perfectly. They are like cream to Reeve's strawberries. The Ginger Rogers to his Fred Astaire. The Cannon to his Ball... I think you get my drift :-)

I was very fortunate to be able to attend the launch of Oliver and the Seawigs last week (on the Golden Hinde, I kid you not), and it was wonderful to finally get to meet Philip as I have been a fan of his ever since I first read Mortal Engines. I have known for some time thanks to the magic of the interweb that Philip and Sarah have developed a close friendship, and at the Seawigs launch party it was very evident that their personalities are as perfectly matched as Sarah’s illustrations are to Philip’s words. Given that there is at least one more Seawigs style book planned (and hopefully many more after that) I would not be surprised if in years to come people will talk about the McIntyre/Reeve partnership in the same way that they talk about the Dahl/Blake pairing, and the two will become inextricably linked.

This book is perfect for young readers, and just as perfect for parents to read to even younger children as a bedtime story. It is the kind of book that I will be buying as presents for as many children as I can, especially as OUP have produced such a gorgeous looking hardcover edition. It is also the kind of book that I expect to become many future adult's fondly remembered childhood read, with well-read and much-loved copies sitting on bookshelves in homes for many years to come.

My thanks go to Liz Scott and the lovely people at OUP for sending me a copy of Oliver and the Seawigs, and for inviting me to the fab launch party last week. Oliver and the Seawigs will be available to buy in September.

Philip and Sarah at the launch party, Sarah wearing her truly amazing seawig

News: Mortal Engines series by Philip Reeve to be relaunched as Predator Cities

I received a lovely surprise parcel on Saturday, courtesy of the nice people at Scholastic. It would appear that Scholastic are relaunching the totally brilliant Mortal Engines series in June, with brand new cover designs and under the series heading of Predator Cities. I have to say, I am something of an old-fashioned purist and prefer the illustrated covers that the first editions of these books came with, but I can see exactly where Scholastic are coming from with these new designs. Although steampunk has become a genre in its own right, and is incredibly popular with many adult readers, when I mention the term to the kids at school they tend to give me a blank look. To my great disappointment, they just aren't fussed with beautiful images of brass gears, fantastic steam-driven machines and the Victorian aesthetic. However, when I showed them these new covers on Monday they were in awe, many of them saying how they looked like X-Box games. One boy who would previously have not gone anywhere near a book of this 'thickness' was almost salivating at the thought of reading it.

I know that there will be many long time fans of this series that will hate these covers, but most of them will be adults who first discovered Mortal Engines when it was released in 2001, either as young adults or as adult readers. I would like to remind those readers who may not like these new covers that these books were written for the 11+ age group, and given the wonderfully timeless nature of the stories then a redesign of the covers to entice a new generation of readers into diving into them can only be a good thing in my opinion. It would be tragic if stories as perfect as these sat untouched on bookstore shelves just because the covers were out-of-date with current tastes.

As for the Predator Cities series title? Again, the kids at school loved it, and desperately wanted to know how a city could be a predator. Some of them are going to have to wait a while to find out, as there is now something of a waiting list of pupils who want to read Mortal Engines.  

Haunted Blog Tour: Guest Post by Philip Reeve

Short stories are great! Especially those of the spooky kind. I remember reading through many an anthology of ghost stories as a child, but these days it seems that many young people prefer longer novels and there are only a minority of these compilations published each year. Back in September Andersen Press published Haunted, a superb anthology of ghost stories written by some of the biggest names in children's literature today. This book includes tales by the likes of Derek Landy (author of Skulduggery Pleasant), Robin Jarvis (author of Dancing Jax and many others), Joseph Delaney (author of the Spooks series), and many others, including the legend that is Philip Reeve. Yes, the Mortal Engines Philip Reeve! Thus I am more than a little excited that I am today hosting a guest post by Philip about his beloved Dartmoor. Not only that, there are also a couple of stunning photos taken by Sarah Reeve, as well as a special video produced by Philip's friend, author and illustrator Sarah McIntyre (look really closely - is that a ghost in one of the images in the video?).

Haunted Dartmoor

Dartmoor, where I live, is ghost country.  You might not notice it if you see it in the summertime, when bracken greens and softens the steep hillsides, and the moorland car-parks are filled with picnicking visitors and greedy ponies hoping for a crisp.  On wire racks outside the shops and cafes in Widecombe you’ might find little books of ‘Dartmoor Ghost Stories’, but they seem like pretty thin stuff: well-worn tales of phantom monks and spectral huntsmen, and the ‘hairy hands’ which are supposed to appear and grip the steering wheels of cars on the lonely road from Postbridge to Princetown, causing them to swerve off the road (that one always sounds to me like an excuse some local farmer invented after he drove into a ditch on his way home from the Warren House Inn).  These are processed ghosts, served up for the tourist industry, and unlikely to scare anybody nowadays.

But come the autumn, when the leaves turn and the nights draw in and the bones of the landscape start to show through the thinning trees, then the true, spooky nature of the moor shows too.  In low light or sudden mists it’s hard to tell the scale of things; those figures on the skyline that you think are a line of walkers turn out to be standing stones, set up some time in the bronze-age, forming an avenue that leads from nowhere to nowhere through the heather.  The tangled woods are full of secret movements.  In one of them, Wistman’s Wood, legend has it that the devil kennels his pack of ghostly hounds under the boulders which lie tumbled between the roots of the gnarled and stunted oak trees.  I don’t believe in the devil, or ghosts, or anything supernatural, but when you’re alone there in autumn it’s easy to imagine that there’s something down among the shaggy moss and leaf mould and dead branches, watching... It’s not unfriendly, perhaps, but it’s as old as the moor itself, and it’s definitely nothing human.  That’s where my story The Ghost Wood in the Haunted anthology comes from: it’s a little gust of autumn wind, blowing down off Dartmoor on Hallowe’en...

Photo by Sarah Reeve

Photo by Sarah Reeve

Video by Sarah McIntyre

~~~

Huge thanks to Philip, Sarah and Sarah for taking the time to produce this piece for The Book Zone. However, before I go I guess you might be wanting to hear my thoughts about the anthology in more detail, so please read on for my brief review.


This book is perfect for Hallowe'en, and for any other time of the year if you love a spooky ghost story. I think what I liked most about Haunted was the way each of the eleven authors brought something very different to the mix. Some of the stories have touches of dark humour, some of them are straight pee-your-pants scary, but every single one of them makes for a great spooky read and Andersen Press have done a sterling job in collecting such a fantastic group of authors and their stories together.


I am still undecided as to which one is my favourite in the anthology. Philip's tale, The Ghost Wood, is not as scary as some of the others, but it made me think about the ancient power that could still lie within our land, despite all that has happened to it since the Industrial Revolution. Mal Peet's story, Good Boy, will have your heart in your mouth whilst reading it, worrying what will happen to main character Katie, and Eleanor Updale's The Ghost in the Machine is very clever and possibly unlike any ghost story you have ever read as it deals with haunting through the internet. For the 'sheer terror award' I think that Susan Cooper's  The Caretakers is definitely in with a shout of first prize, but if I was tied to chair and threatened by a particularly nasty ghost in order to help me make my  mind up I think my favourite of the anthology would have to be Derek Landy's Songs the Dead Sing. Readers of The Book Zone will know I am a huge fan of Derek's Skulduggery Pleasant series, for both its horror element and its brilliant use of humour, and both of these are present in his Haunted short story.


This book is a treat for fans of both short stories and horror fiction and if you have left it late to buy someone an All Hallow's Read then this is well worth buying. My thanks go to the good people at Andersen Press for sending me a copy and for arranging for Philip to write the guest post for us. If your appetite for all things spooky as been whetted then you can read a serialisation of Jamila Gavin's short story, The Blood Line, over at The Guardian by clicking here.

Attention Grabber #3: Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve

Attention Grabber is my new weekly feature where I post what I think is a great opening paragraph to a book, the sort of opening that pulls young readers in and hooks them from the start.

This week's Attention Grabber comes from Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve. It was suggested by a couple of other bloggers, but it is so great that I already had it on my list for this feature anyway. It is possibly one of the shortest Attention Grabbers that will appear on The Book Zone, but when I first read it I had one of those almost sit-com-like double takes just to check that I had read it correctly. How could anyone not read on after this first sentence?

It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.