Synopsis! Summary! The Abstract!

            Fever Crumb is the embodiment of what it means to become an adult. Fever  figures out it is no longer important to be what everyone else wants her to be and decides to follow her heart, after being taught all of her life to never listen to it.

            Fever’s lives in London but a race called the Scriven had ruled over it; causing riots, and therefore the chaos involved was a serious detriment to their environment. The people live in poverty and the streets are filthy. Her world no longer remembers how to make technology because the setting is so far into the future that the people have forgotten, and they fail to pay attention to science when the main focus is on surviving.

The Scriven were claimed unhuman by Skinners, or regular people. But Scriven were really just a genetic mutation set apart by speckled skin and peculiar behavior. Their markings set them apart when they arrived in London and like the Sneetches in Doctor Seuss, deemed themselves superior over the Skinners for a time. The last overlord, Auric Godshawk was the most brilliant Scriven and left behind a legacy.

            Fever starts as an orphan, being raised by Dr. Crumb in the Order of Engineers . This order is looked down upon by London because it served the  Scriven and was outcast to live in an unfinished sculpture of Godshawk head. The colossal head is fitting for the “brains” of the city and these scientists insist emotions and anything to do with them are totally and completely unnecessary. Growing up like this, makes going out into the real world incredibly hard for Fever when she is called to apprentice for Kit Solent. In his house she begins having flashbacks; which she struggles to suppress, torn between her strict code of rationality and giving into the curiosity surrounding these memories, of which seem to belong to someone else.

While out in London, Fever’s different colored eyes and shaved head scare the Londoners and she is suspected to be Scriven. She attracts the Skinner who led the rebellion to victory, Bagman Creech. He begins hunting her with an apprentice Charley. But Kit Solent values Fever’s memories and kills old Creech. Along with Creech’s death and the nervousness sparked by the proximity of the Movement, a new riot arrises. The Movement is a group of nomadic people living on a land barge. Ted Swiney, a dishonorable pub owner ascends the leadership role and leads London into more trouble. When the Movement arrives, they peacefully take London over under General Quercus and the long-lost Wavey Godshawk.

            Before Godshawk died, he was preparing to live forever and hired Gideon Crumb to assist him. Wavey Godshawk, Auric’s daughter, had picked Gideon after he saved her life on the streets of London. This opportunity made Gideon’s feelings for Wavey grow stronger, but was fired by Auric once he was aware of what was going on between them; Scriven and Skinners were forbidden to be together. However, Wavey was already pregnant. Auric was not heartless though, he saves his granddaughter when she is born too early to survive. He had been trying to instill his wisdom, ideas and memories into brains so he could live forever. None of the bodies would sustain the transplant and perhaps in a last attempt to save Fever, he had placed his memories into Fever. The rioting had become too dangerous for Wavey and Auric was murdered so Wavey joined the Movement, and left Fever to Gideon in the Engineerum. Years later, Fever finally meets her mother after escaping to the Movement from the hazardous drama revolving around Creech’s death.

Wavey reveals Fever’s past and together they unlock Auric’s secret office, where his plans to make London the Moving City lay. However, a string of events separate Wavey and Fever. Wavey is injured and forced to wait in the secret office, until the Engineers and Dr. Crumb find her, uniting Wavey and Dr. Crumb after so many years. Fever saves two orphans and instead of going back to the secret office where she hears the Engineers and her father, she runs away to keep the children from becoming heartless Engineers like she had been raised.

Choosing to neglect her family and responsibilities, Fever decides to stop trying to be the perfect engineer, the brain behind the Moving City and the perfect daughter. Her and the children board a “traveling circus” barge. Dr. Crumb explains to those wishing to search for her, “she just needs to clear her head.” Fever’s seemingly selfish act of defiance was truly the best move for her and symbolizes the point in all of our lives when we move away from the safety net of our parents and learn we have only ourselves to depend on.