Clara’s Verdict
Philip Reeve’s Predator Cities quartet is one of the great achievements of British fiction – young adult by classification, but possessed of thematic ambition, prose quality, and emotional intelligence that the “adult literary fiction” category frequently fails to match. A Darkling Plain, the fourth and final volume, is the conclusion that the series genuinely deserved: vast in scope, deeply sad in tone, shot through with the dark comedy that characterises all of Reeve’s work, and brutally honest about the things that human beings do to each other and to the world they inhabit. Rated 4.7 stars by Audible listeners, narrated by the exceptional Barnaby Edwards across 15 hours and 31 minutes, and the winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize – it is a finishing chapter of genuine distinction. Do not let the “young adult” label mislead you.
About the audiobook
A Darkling Plain is Book 4 in the Mortal Engines series, also known as the Predator Cities quartet. It is not a standalone work: it is a culmination, and Reeve is explicit about this, making no attempt to introduce newcomers to the world or recap the three novels that precede it. Readers arriving here without that context would be doing themselves a significant disservice. For those who have followed the journey from Mortal Engines through Predator’s Gold and Infernal Devices, this is the ending the series has been building towards across more than 2,000 pages.
London is a radioactive ruin. The great traction cities that defined this post-apocalyptic world – mobile metropolises preying on smaller settlements in a Darwinian nightmare Reeve calls “Municipal Darwinism” – have fought themselves to exhaustion. Tom Natsworthy and his daughter Wren discover that the wreckage of their former home conceals a secret that might bring an end to the war. Meanwhile, Hester Shaw – Tom’s wife, Wren’s mother, one of the most morally complex characters in modern children’s fiction – faces a fanatical enemy willing to deploy weapons of total destruction to achieve their ends.
The Predator Cities world is one of the most inventively constructed in contemporary fiction: a future Earth recovering from a “Sixty-Minute War” in which every weapon of mass destruction was deployed simultaneously, its geology permanently altered, its survivors forced into extraordinary adaptive strategies. The mythology draws on Reagan’s Strategic Defence Initiative, on Austen (“It is a truth universally acknowledged that an explorer with a fully-charged energy weapon…”), on the imagery of Victorian industrialism, and on the deepest human instincts towards both destruction and creation. Published by Scholastic Audio Books and released in December 2017, the audiobook represents the series at its most achieved.
The narration
Barnaby Edwards is one of British audio drama’s most accomplished practitioners – perhaps best known in certain circles for his work with Big Finish Productions on Doctor Who audio dramas – and his reading of A Darkling Plain is among the finest literary audio performances in the young adult canon. He manages Reeve’s large, emotionally varied ensemble with complete clarity: each character is consistently distinctive, the tonal shifts between dark comedy and genuine tragedy are navigated without awkwardness, and the book’s climactic sequences have a propulsive urgency that sustains the listener through the final hours. At 15 hours and 31 minutes, the performance never falters.
What readers say
The 4.7-star rating from Audible reflects passionate advocacy from readers who have followed the series to its conclusion. One UK listener wrote: “I suppose this review applies to all four books in the Mortal Engines Quartet – lucky for us the preceding books were so good. This one makes no attempt to stand up as a self-contained narrative. We need to be familiar with the characters and the things they’ve done over the course of two decades.” Another called the whole series “one of the best in young adult science fiction I have read. Period.” A German reader, writing in anticipation of the Peter Jackson film adaptation, described the series’ world as “riesig” – enormous – adding that it “screams for spinoffs.” One reviewer offered the summary: “a fabulous conclusion to an excellent series – filled with action, adventure, humour, and some difficult truths about the predilections of mankind.”
Who should listen?
This is for listeners who have already read or listened to the first three books in the Mortal Engines series. Arriving here without that context would be a disservice to both reader and author: Reeve has built his conclusion on three novels’ worth of accumulated grief and love, and it earns its emotional weight only because of what precedes it. For those who have followed the journey, this is deeply satisfying closure. It is also the ideal recommendation for adults who read the series as teenagers and want to revisit the full arc in audio form. Philip Pullman, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Patrick Ness readers will find a natural companion in Reeve’s work.
Listen to A Darkling Plain on Audible UK – the ending the Predator Cities world has always deserved.
