Fever Crumb Books in Order

The Fever Crumb books take place long before Mortal Engines, when the shattered world is still finding its way toward the age of moving cities. They are prequels, but they tell a more intimate story about a young engineer trying to understand where she belongs.

Fever Crumb has been raised by Dr. Gideon Crumb and trained by the Order of Engineers in a future London. She is logical, capable, and used to being treated as an exception in an organization that does not expect girls to do this work. Yet she also has memories and instincts that do not fit the life she has been given.

In Fever Crumb, Fever leaves the Engineers to assist archaeologist Kit Solent on a secret project. Her journey leads her into the city's uneasy relationship with the Scriven, a people feared and nearly erased after an earlier conflict. The questions around Fever's identity become as urgent as the political dangers surrounding her.

A Web of Air moves to the crater city of Mayda, where Fever becomes involved with an attempt to build a flying machine. In Scrivener's Moon, the earliest mobile cities are beginning to take shape, and Fever heads north in search of the Scriven's ancient homeland. The technology that will transform the world is arriving, but it does not arrive cleanly or safely.

These books have steampunk machinery, ruined landscapes, airships, engineers, and secrets from a damaged past. They are also about prejudice, belonging, and the cost of treating people as problems to be solved. Fever's calm, observant personality gives the series a different feel from the later Mortal Engines quartet.

The trilogy can be read before the main series, but it works especially well after Mortal Engines. Readers who already know the later world will spot the early versions of ideas, places, and conflicts that shape the future.

Start with Fever Crumb, then continue directly through A Web of Air and Scrivener's Moon.