Happily Ever Endings: Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve

Happily Ever Endings... was born out of sheer frustration. You know how when you read a series and you love it but the last book takes a little while to come out and then you sort of forget parts of the novel? That's what these posts are going to serve to remedy. Happily Ever Ending... is a short post about what happened at the ending of each book that is going to be in a series for people who need a quick reminder of what happened in the previous installment. It's really annoying when you can't remember what happens and don't have time for a reread, so this hopefully will be a huge help!

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Synopsis from Goodreads: 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 ...

The great traction city London is on the move again. It has been lying low, skulking in the hills to avoid the bigger, faster, hungrier cities loose in the Great Hunting Ground. But now, as its great mountain of metal lumbers along in hot pursuit of its quarry, the sinister plans it has harbored for years can finally start to unfold behind its soaring walls ...

Thaddeus Valentine, London's Head Historian and most famous archaeologist, and his daughter, Katherine, are down in The Gut when the young assassin with the black scarf strikes. Only the quick intervention of Tom, a lowly third-class apprentice, prevents Valentine from being stabbed in the heart. Madly racing after the fleeing girl, Tom suddenly glimpses her hideous face: scarred from forehead to jaw, nose a smashed stump, a single eye glaring back at him. "Look at what your Valentine did to me!" she screams. "Ask him! Ask him what he did to Hester Shaw!" And with that she jumps down the waste chute to her death. Minutes later Tom finds himself tumbling down the same chute and stranded in the Out-Country, a sea of mud scored by the huge caterpillar tracks of cities like the one now steaming off over the horizon.

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Happily Ever Ending: When London finally finds a new city to chase and eat, Tom goes down to the observation deck against the orders of his superiors, and gets sent down to the Gut. There he meets Valentine, his hero, and his daughter Katherine, who he thinks he falls in love with. Suddenly, a girl jumps into the room, threatening to kill Valentine, but she is fought off and then Tom chases her away. When she gets to the waste chute, she jumps out and tells Tom to ask Valentine what he did to Hester Shaw. When Valentine arrives and finds out that Tom might know about Hester Shaw too, he pushes Tom down the waste chute too and that's how Tom and Hester find themselves a long way away from London.

Hester tells Tom about how Valentine is a cruel man who killed her parents and slashed her face. Tom decides he needs to tell everyone about how awful he is, and Tom and Hester decide to find their way to an air port where they could get to London. They come across a group of people who offer them food and shelter, but little did they know that they were only giving them food to drug them so they could sell them as slaves. However they manage to escape and they get picked up by an aviatrix called Miss Fang who agrees to take them to London.

While with Miss Fang they encounter a Stalker called Shrike who tries to kill them. They end up on a pirate suburb called Tunbridge Wheels, where they are locked up until the mayor realises that Tom is from London and can help the suburb become less common and more proper and respected. But, they soon decide to get off the ship, and luckily, Miss Fang and her ship, the Jenny Haniver come and rescue them, again. But the pirates tell Tom and Hester that she's a murderer who can't be trusted, but later on in the book Tom and Hester still go with her, after he manages to kill Shrike.

Meanwhile, Katherine has found out that her father is hiding something called the MEDUSA. With the help of an apprentice called Bevis Pod she hunts around and manages to find out what the MEDUSA actually is - a killing machine. Tom, Hester and Miss Fang also find out about the MEDUSA and they actually see it in action. They decide to go to the Shield Wall which is where Valentine is headed, so they can warn the people there. Tom discovers Valentine posing as a monk and he goes to get help but Miss Fang ends up being killed by him. Tom and Hester then head back home to make Valentine pay.

They find that MEDUSA was being built in a cathedral. Katherine and Pod also knew this and had made a bomb to try and blow it up. Katherine is the one who has to place it, but before she can, she sees that her father is about to kill Hester, so she jumps in front of his sword and he ends up killing his own daughter instead of Hester. The book ends with all other characters alive, and Tom and Hester are happy that even though they probably won't be happy in the future, they will be together and that's the next best thing.

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I hope this helped! Now you're all set up to read the next one! If I've missed anything important or you think there's something wrong, let me know in the comments! I'm not all that good at these... ;)