Anna Fang

Anna Fang is a character in Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines Quartet. Her name may be derived from the German "anfang" meaning beginning.

Mortal Engines

Anna is introduced as a friendly Asian aviator who helps Tom Natsworthy and Hester Shaw escape slavery. She seems nothing more than an honest trader with an airship called the Jenny Haniver, but they later discover that she is actually a secret agent for the Anti-Traction League, but remain her friend.

Anna is killed while battling Thaddeus Valentine at Batmunkh Gompa. Tom and Hester "inherit" the Jenny Haniver from her.

Predator's Gold

Anna's body is stolen from its crypt by a radical splinter group of the Anti-Traction League called the Green Storm. She is taken to secret base south of Greenland and turned into a Stalker. When a group of Lost Boys attempt to steal her, she kills them all and escapes her confines, taking control of the Green Storm's military forces and overthrowing the leaders of the League in a military coup.

Infernal Devices

Shortly after taking command of the League's forces and integrating them with the Green Storm, the "Stalker Fang" (as she is now known) declared war on Traction Cities. As she is not truly alive herself, she places very little value on the lives of her troops, utilising suicide bombers and not particularly caring that the war has become constant.

Fang takes steps to recover an orbital superweapon called ODIN, a remnant of the Sixty Minute War. Before she can activate it she is almost completely destroyed by Shrike, and her remains are scattered across the Sahara. They are discovered by Fishcake, a lonely Lost Boy, who agrees to help rebuild her. She remembers the activation codes for ODIN, and intends to continue her plan even if she has lost control of the Green Storm.

A Darkling Plain

Fishcake rebuilds Fang's body, but as they travel east to activate ODIN the more peaceful side of her consciousness ("Anna") begins to re-emerge. The Stalker eventually does manage to fire ODIN on several targets, and intends to trigger volcano chains to wipe out humanity, as she believes that Earth can never return to its pre-Sixty Minute War state while humans remain in control of it. Tom Natsworthy finds her and pleads with her to stop, appealing to the "Anna" side of her personality. Anna regains control over the Stalker, and stops the countdown, but she is then killed by Nimrod Pennyroyal (who still thought she was a threat).

Apart from Tom, Hester, and Shrike, Anna is the only character to appear in all four books, although the Stalker Fang is very different from the original Anna.