Book 28
Fever Crumb by Philip Reeve
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Honestly, it’s more like a 2.5 stars. It’s not badly written but it is not my thing. This is my second book by Reeve, who is considered a steampunk master, but I didn’t really like either of them that much and I do see things repeating in his stories (very depressing far-future dystopias and cities that walk around under their own power).
Fever, however, is an interesting character which is why I even finished the book. Fever Crumb it the titular character, a fourteen year old girl who was a foundling. She was raised by the Order of Engineers as one of their own even though she’s a girl and everyone knows women aren’t reasonable creatures (it literally says so in the book). She’s raised by Dr. Crumb to be an Engineer and to have a Vulcan-like approach to emotions. The Engineers live in Godshawk’s Head, a remnant of a mile-high statue to Auric Godshawk, the last of the Scrivener kings on the outskirts of London.
We quickly learn that this is thousands of years after the ‘Downsizing’ an apocalyptic event. Several hundred years ago the Scriveners took over London. They’re basically genetically altered humans with inky spots on their skin who consider themselves superior to humans. At the end, the Skinners, normal human Londoners, killed them off, skinning them as proof of their deeds. Of those only Bagman Creech is around and his brand new apprentice Charley.
Fever is raised apart from the rest of the superstitious (and therefore silly) Londoners with the shave-headed engineers until one day Kit Solvent, an archeologist appears and asks for her specifically to help him with one of his digs. Kit has two young kids, Ruan and Fern. Fever goes with them, perplexed by the normal family situation in a not-so-normal house. The house turns out to contain a passageway to Godshawk’s long-lost lab. However, Fever’s mismatched colored eyes are noticed and she is taken as a Scrivener.
All heck breaks loose and violent riots erupted, timed unfortunately as a gypsy group known as the Movement, arrive to take over London. In the midst of this, Fever learns her true heritage and is thrust into the middle of the conflict from which she may not survive (seriously, Reeve does kill off characters with ease).
While Fever is likeable and a good female heroine, I had some serious problems with the book. For one, I don’t find it tremendously credible that in a few thousand years all we managed to rebuild was to like a turn of the 20th century tech level while borrowing high tech things. It’s stated repeatedly no one knows how this stuff really works (electricity for example is sporadically generated by things like treadmills) even though they have books they know how to read. Think about all we achieved from 1900-2000 a mere 100 years. Does it seem likely we’d never rebuild in thousands of years with remnants of old tech and the design specs lying around? Surely someone could have at least figured how to reestablish hydroelectric dams.
But even if I bought into this bit of world building, I had issues with what starts the whole drama moving forward (and it’s character driven since there isn’t much of a plot here other than Fever finds out who she is and people want to take over London). Kit Solvent should know that Londoners are a superstitious bunch ready to kill any Scrivener. Dr. Crumb should know it too, especially when his past is revealed. They both should know that Fever’s mismatched eyes would be seen as a sign she’s a ‘dappleskin’ and that she’d be hunted and killed. But no one even tries to hide it. She’s spotted literally the moment she steps off the transport at the London station. If they had tried to hide it and she was discovered I would have had a lot less trouble believing in the whole story but that was dumb and I spent half the novel thinking ‘boy that was dumb.’ I doubt I’ll look for the next book in the series. Fever was interesting but the rest of it, not so much.
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