Mortal Engines #2, Predator's Gold

What I Liked: I don’t often like a sequel better than the first book, but Predator’s Gold may be the rare exception. It takes place two years after the events in Mortal Engines. Tom and Hester have been making a decent living aboard the Jenny Hannover airship they sort of inherited/stole from Anna Fang. Little do they know that people are looking for them.
They get mixed up with a new passenger named Professor Pennyroyal who is very famous for his dashing adventures to exciting places like the dead continent (America). They end up at Anchorage which has a small population after they were decimated by a plague from an old-world tech device they found. Their ruler, Freya, is a girl younger than Hester and Tom and doesn’t even know how to dress and shower herself since her servants perished. Yet, everyone wants her to take charge and her word is absolute.
Pennyroyal, Freya, and those left behind at Anchorage provide some comic relief at times. The city is further plagued with underwater pirates that quietly skulk around stealing everything they can find with the residents left scratching their heads as to how things are disappearing.
Tom makes a terrible mistake once Freya sets her sights on him. Of course, Hester sees everything and plots revenge. Both of their actions lead to major consequences as they both seek to atone for their mistakes.
Final Verdict: I listened to the audiobook of this book and enjoyed it. The narrator did an excellent job with mood and voices making the events easy to follow. Hester still has a lot of room for growth. She could have confronted Tom about his bad behavior but since she feels her facial disfigurement affects her worthiness to being loved she goes to the next level to get revenge. The ending made me want to go immediately to the next in the series.