Lately a lot of people have been lamenting the state of young adult novels. The heroine is too stupid, the parents are absent, the boyfriend or love interest wants to kill the heroine. None of that nonsense is prevalent in this book. Instead, we are treated to an original story about a very special girl in a very imaginative world.Fever Crumb is the story of a girl named Fever. Fever was found by Dr. Crumb when she was an infant. He brought her to his home and into the Order of Engineers. Fever is the only female in this Order. They live in a big, giant head – yes, a big, giant head - in a futuristic London, a London without technology. For all of you steampunk fans out there, this book is a dream. There are so many clever and inventive contraptions. There are paper boys, a kind of paper thin robot boy that can slip through the smallest spaces. There are the usual and also the most unusual flying machines. There is even a city that moves from place to place kind of like a cruise ship on land, only much, much larger and full of steam. I really wish these books would come with pictures or photos of these contraptions, just to help visualize these neat gadgets.I really liked Fever. Fever is a fourteen years old orphan. She has shaved off her hair, because hair is not necessary. She has two different colored eyes, which may be a hint as to her parentage. Fever is the youngest engineer in the Order. She is very rational, yet at the same time a little naïve. When she is exposed to other young children, she doesn’t understand why they would need a bedtime story because she did not think it was rational. At some points, I felt that Fever was very similar in personality to a Vulcan or perhaps Seven of Nine from Star Trek. Fever is incredibly resourceful and when there is a revelation about her background and parentage in the middle of the book, her responses to the situation were rather interesting and unexpected. To continue with my Star Trek analogy, there was even a part when a character died and his body was used to create a kind of Borg-like robot that would serve the Movement. Part human, part machine, this robot being did not have any memories of his human past. Apparently this book is part of a series. It is the prequel to the Hungry City Chronicles. I can’t wait to read the rest of the series. If you like steampunk, dystopian worlds of the future, and a heroine who is rational, then this book is for you.
