Book Review(A Darkling Plain)

This is the last book in the Mortal engine Quartet. The leadership of the Green Storm has been passed to General Naga,the second-in-command to Stalker fang, who married Oenene Zero, the Engineer who repaired Shrike. The green Storm is now observing a ceasefire with the Tration cities. Lady Naga is also promoting peace with the African Empire, where Theo Ngoni, best friend of Wren, from the Mayor's office, lives at. While Lady Naga is sent back to the Green Storm headquarters of Tianjing, the airship was sabotaged by a spy of the Stalker Fang and exploded. The spy flew away and reported to General Naga that The traction Cities had destroyed and killed Lady Naga, with the intention to start the war, but General Naga just dismisses the fact and waves it off. Cynthia Twite, the spy, then tries to poison him.

Meanwhile, just outside the borders of the Green Storm, an alliance of Traction Cities had gathered and Tom and Hester had just touched down on one of the cities. Along the way, they saw a londoner walking about and follows her. They meanwhile, make friends with a Mayor's son, who owns a Harvester-suburb. They then follow her all the way back to the ruins of London where they have started building a Mag-lev city. Stalker Fang finally manages to activate ODIN which fires on both the Traction Cities and Green Storm, causing chaos in the face-off at the border. Wolf, the suburb owner then flees London and chases New London with his suburb. General Naga is informed of this by Tom and rushes over with much reluctance. In the end, General Naga kills Wolf and Harrowbarrow, the town, and loses his own life. Tom and Hester tracks down Stalker Fang, and Stalker Fang is killed, but not before a tinge of Anna Fang's soul returns and cause her to command ODIN to self destruct. Tom dies of a heart attack and Hester commits suicide. Shrike arrives too late and carries Tom and Hester's bodies away, leaving them to rot as he hibernates until he sees signs of human life, of which he then expresses then he is a remembering machine. From this, We can learn that before making our decisions, we have to consider what purpose is it for and who caused the reaction, as we can see from the war of the two organisation while the perpetrator, Stalker Fang watches from the sides. I also can learn that while every action of a person shows a different personality, what one risk his life for is what displays one's true intention and characteristics.

Book Review(Infernal devices)

This book is the third book in the Mortal engine quartet where Tom Natsworthy and Hester Shaw now lives together in a broken-down moving city. They now have a child are are content to live in Anchorage-in-Vineland, the city. However, their child, Wren Natsworthy, after hearing all the stories of adventure and courage that the couple had experienced, feels frustrated at the boring live in Anchorage-in-Vineland, and decides to follow Caul, a former Lost Boy, which was an organisation of boy thiefs that loot cities by leaching submarines to them. Caul then met a Lost Boy, who then requested him to help steal a book in the library of Anchorage. Caul refused to steal the book, but Wren is discovered and convinced to steal the book,The Tin Book, from the library in exchange for an adventure away from Anchorage-in-Vineland on a limpet,the Lost Boys' submarines. Wren manages to steal the book from the library, but the Lost Boy were found when Hester tracks Wren down. The limpet manages to excape, but has 3 crew down and Wren on board. they then get distracted by the raft city of Brighton, which holds the Lost boys as slaves. Slowly, Tom and Hester tracks down Brighton and manage to escape, but not before Brighton is attacked by The Green Storm, a organisation to make the world green again by eradicating all traction cities. Stalker Fang, A stalker made out of Anna Fang, is killed by Stalker Shrike, who was programmed by the Green Storm engineer to kill her, but not before she memorises the Tin Book down, which was the activation code used to activate ODIN, a orbital weapon.From this story, it is possible to tell that peace is extremely fragile and that once a mistake is committed, the chains of events occuring is irreversible. In our present life, Peace should not be taken for granted and that we should be contented why what we have, unlike Wren.

Book Review(Mortal Engines)

I just read a book by the author Philip Reeve called Mortal Engines. This book is about a girl, Hester Shaw, and a tier-three London historian in a future world where cities are now mobile and have tiers, one being of the highest ranking, follow a system called municipal Darwinism where they eat the weak and get eaten by the strong. In this story, the start of the mortal engine quartet, Tom, a normal historian fallls in love with the daughter of the London Mayor's right hand man thaddeus Valentine. He follows her around and Valentine until a day where an assassin attempts to kill Valentine. Tom stops the assassin from killing Valentine and chases after her. However, the assassin, Hester Shaw tell him about Valentine's murdering of her own parents. Valentine figures that Tom knows too much and tries to silence him by throwing them out of london into the Out-country, a muddy ground consisting of all types of Traction cities. They then travel all the way back to London, while avoiding a Stalker,Shrike, which has been sent by Magnus Crome, London's mayor, to kill both of them. Meanwhile, Valentine is sent on a mission to destroy the air-fleets of the Anti-traction league and obtain the parts of an ancient weapon that can vaporise an entire Traction city. Katherine, Thaddeus daughter, finds out what they were attempting to do with the ancient device, to destroy the wall of the Anti-traction league, and stops them, causing a large build-up in energy and causing the weapon to vaporise London with it. Hester and Tom gets off in an airship just in time, before London is destroyed.

This story shows that in life, not everyone has a good intention. Life is never idealistic and that one does not always get to choose what he does and that we should always treasure that we have a choice of our life, where we get what we want and need. Developing survival skills is also vital in the real world where there is no pillar of support. You are on your own.

Japan Earthquake

The significance of this event is not only that this is one of the strongest earthquake and caused a tsunami to occur, but caused a nuclear disaster, which has great environmental and economic impacts on the economy. Firstly, the disaster will put a strain on the reserves and economy of Japan due to the need of resources and money for the victims and repair of damage done to the infrastructures of cities in this disaster.

The nuclear disaster happened with the blown outer building of reactor 2 where an immense amount of smoke bellowed into the air.Radioactive materials were found in traces in the air, slowly water was also affected. This caused a widespread concern of the health of Japan's citizens and the integrity of nuclear reactor structures. traces of radioactive iodine was detected in air above Fukushima power plant and had slowly travelled over the pacific to the US. this shows the wide impact on the environment. this also caused countries to issue an alert to stop consuming food from Japan from fears of radiation, causing the agricultural sectors of japan to slow down due to less demand. The tourism industry was also hit as countries started issue travel alerts to Fukushima area, which the world generalised it as japan and thus refrain from going to Japan altogether. slowly, foreigners were charted flights to evacuate from Japan, including Tokyo.

This has been further worsened by the lack of communication and transportation between the cities and the remote areas, making it harder to progresss and provide aid to the mountainous regions where immediate help was required. The extreme weather also caused delays in travelling and discomfort in survivors, where daily needs such as heater were out due to the loss of power.