Philip Reeve: The slow movement

Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines--which has sold more than 65,000 copies, won the Gold Nestlé Smarties Award 2002 and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Children's Book Award--depicts a post-apocalyptic world where cities move across icy wastelands, hunting down smaller cities and consuming them. Although set in the future, it is a world that has had to fall back on industrial era "old tech", such as airships and the traction engine.

Predator's Gold sees a return to this world, and the continuation of Tom and Hester's adventures. Reeve, who says he has been writing since he was five years old, first became known as an illustrator for Scholastic's non-fiction series, including Horrible Histories, Murderous Maths and Dead Famous. He is also the author of the Buster Bayliss series for younger readers.

"I never had any great ambition to write children's books, I just wrote Mortal Engines and found that it was one. It's just a big fantasy novel really, but it may as well be called a children's book.

"There are no supernatural elements to this world, and I'm quite proud of that. I don't want it to be seen as part of the trend for witches, wizards and magical-mystery goings on. Although the novel is set in the future, it's a fantasy built out of the Industrial Revolution. I have a great liking of Victorian/ Edwardian history, and ideas from these periods have influenced me. In many ways I see Mortal Engines as a historical novel.

"I was looking for a setting in which to place my characters, and when I first came up with the idea of a moving city, I thought it seemed a bit pointless; but then I thought that maybe these cities would move because they wanted to catch and eat other cities. This idea seemed relevant to our own world--the way that companies and corporations operate.

"Predator's Gold is a continuation of Mortal Engines, but it is much less of an adventure story. There is a lot more about the relationships between the main characters, it's a darker take on the same world. The story is focused much more on one particular city, and there isn't as much globetrotting as you get in the first one. The third book will be vast and pack in every idea I've ever had. This one will be seen as the slow movement in-between.

"I'm working on the third book right now, but this is not a trilogy in the Philip Pullman sense: these are three separate stories. I think if I kept on beyond three there would be a kind of repetitiveness about the imagery--once you've seen one big moving city then you've seen them all. But it's a rich world, and it's fun, so I wouldn't want to rule it out all together.

"I get a sinking feeling when I wander into a bookshop and every single book on the children's table is some form of fantasy. I think the market will crash eventually. Probably quite soon in fact. Which is a worry, because that is what I want to be writing."

Philip Reeve Predator's Gold (Scholastic Press, 19th September, £14.99, 0439978890)