The story follows Fever Crumb as she travels with the Persimmon's travelling theatre to Mayda, a city built in a volcanic crater somewhere off the coast of present-day Portugal. There, needless to say, she becomes embroiled in danger and intrigue. Here's the trailer that I commissioned from Ian Forster when the UK edition was published (so if you're a regular reader of this blog you'll already have seen it). You can see more of Ian's work, and get him to design blogs, websites and trailers for you, by clicking on the link to Graphic Alchemy on the side of this page.) The photos in the trailer were mostly taken by Sarah Reeve, and there's a brief glimpse of a scary-looking biomechanical tentacle thingy designed by Justin Hill, and another of some cogs and gears drawn by Sam Weber. Other images come from David Wyatt's cover artwork for the original UK edition, some of which was never actually used(!) 'Fever' is Sophia Oppel, daughter of Kenneth Oppel, the author of top-notch airship adventures for the discerning reader as well as many other things. If you haven't yet read his book Airborn and its sequels then you should; he spins a good tale, and he knows and cares how airships work, unlike certain authors we could mention, hem hem. I should point out that Sophia doesn't really have different colour eyes; Ian did that. (By magic, as far as I can understand.)
I always intended A Web of Air to be quieter and more focused on Fever herself than Fever Crumb, and in some ways it feels - and is meant to feel - very different to the other books I've written about the world of Mortal Engines. Like Predator's Gold, the second of the Mortal Engines books, it seemed a chance to turn away from the big, high-stakes, world-altering adventures of the first volume and focus in more on particular characters: for Fever the events of A Web of Air are a matter of life and death, but the vast upheavals going on in the north as London motorises and the other states and cities react to it have barely touched Mayda... yet.
A Web of Air may not be quite as disconnected from the adventures of previous books as it appears, though: as reviewer Jonathan Hunt points out in The Horn Book magazine, "The resolution sorts out the allegiance of the various players ... and sets the stage for greater things to come. It’s clear that Reeve, just as he did in the original Mortal Engines quartet, is building toward an epic, and his remarkable storytelling gifts, coupled with a trenchant understanding of human nature, make the projected volumes worth the wait."
Here's a link to A WEB OF AIR on Amazon.com.
