This is an extraordinary fiction from a brilliant author...It's six months after the tumultuous events on Brighton, and Wren Natsworthy and her father Tom have taken to the skies in their airship, the Jenny Haniver.

Wren is enjoying life as an aviatrix but Tom is troubled by matters of the heart - the last, shocking, encounter with Hester, and the old wound caused by Pennyroyal's bullet.

Until a fluke encounter with a familiar face sets him thinking about the ruins of London and the possibility of going back...Meanwhile the fragile truce between the Green Storm and the Traction Cities slinters and hostility breaks out again.

Events are set on a collision course as things end where they began, with London...In "A Darkling Plain", Philip Reeve brilliantly completes the breath-taking adventures that began with "Mortal Engines".