Shrike (Philip Reeve)

Shrike (or Grike in the North American editions) is a recurring character in Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines Quartet . He appears in all the books except "Predator's Gold".

Shrike is a Stalker, a resurrected human body wired up with bizzare electronic devices. Much of his character development revolves around his struggle to understand humanity and remember his past.

Shrike is reportedly the last Stalker in existence, created hundreds of years (i.e. more than 1000 years) before the story begins during the time of the nomadic empires. The nomad empires took dead soldiers off the battlefield and reanimated them with ancient technology that made them into walking tanks. Stalkers were very effective killing machines not only because of their physical strength but because the Stalker-brain made use of the original human brain, using its strengths to become a highly efficient killing machine. Shrike is the last ancient Stalker because all of the other ancient Stalkers were either destroyed in battle or went mad and tore themselves apart (hinting that their human memories returned and they committed suicide). Only Shrike remains: he is the last of his Stalker troop, the Lazarus Brigade, and as it states in the novel "he always survives".

Shrike is first encountered in "Mortal Engines", when Magnus Crome, the Lord Mayor of London, sends him to find and kill Hester Shaw. Shrike raised Hester as a child after her parents were killed, and she is the only living thing he has ever loved. Crome promises him that if he returns her body to London, he will have his engineers turn her into a Stalker, so the two of them will be the same and she can be like his daughter. [cite book|last=Reeve|title=Mortal Engines| year=2001| pages= 177]

After almost catching Hester and Tom Natsworthy on Airhaven, he chases them across the Hunting Ground and eventually catches up with them on the Black Island. After killing Chrysler Peavey's pirates (whom Tom and Hester were travelling with), he tells Hester of his plans, and attempts to kill her. He is foiled, however, by Tom, who kills him with a sword. Just as he dies, he remembers who he was.Seventeen years later, at the beginning of "Infernal Devices", Shrike is resurrected by Oenone Zero, the leader of the Green Storm's Stalker engineers. At the moment of resurrection, he again forgets what he was in his true life. Zero tells him that he will be working for the Green Storm as the Stalker Fang's bodyguard.

Shrike is taken to Shan Guo and made to work as Fang's bodyguard, but he does not trust Zero, because she refuses to divulge why she resurrected him. One night he overhears her praying, and discovers that she is planning to assassinate the Stalker Fang. Shrike tries to kill her but realises he cannot for she implanted some kind of block when she resurrected him. He also finds that he cannot tell anyone about the plot.

As Shrike continues to guard the Stalker Fang, unable to tell her of what is going on, he finally realises how Zero intends to kill Fang - by using him as a weapon, since only an ancient Stalker can defeat another ancient Stalker. The two of them fight atop Cloud 9 as Brighton is attacked, and eventually Shrike prevails. In the confusion of the battle he meets Hester Shaw, who has abandoned her family, and escapes into the Sahara Desert with her.

The two of them travel the desert for many months, before encountering and rescuing Theo Ngoni in "A Darkling Plain". Theo convinces them to help him rescue Oenone Zero, who has been captured by Traction Cities and is to be sold into slavery. Eventually they manage to rescue her and escape to the lands of the Green Storm, where they discover that the Stalker Fang has activated an orbital weapons platform and intends to destroy the world. As Shrike is the only thing that can defeat her, he attempts to find her along with Hester and Tom Natsworthy.

They are attacked by Stalker birds before they reach Fang's hideout, however, and Shrike tumbles out of their airship and lands in a frozen lake. He arrives at Erdene Tezh after everything is over - the weapon has been stopped, but Fang, Hester and Tom are all dead. He implants Fang's memories into his brain then he takes Tom and Hester's bodies to a peaceful valley and lays them down, before shutting down in hibernation because he is no longer sure of his purpose in a world without Hester.

He awakes hundreds of years later to find that the age of Traction Cities is over. A village of people ask what he is, and he tells them that he is a "Remembering Machine". They ask him to tell them about the age of the Traction Cities. He obliges, and begins with the first line of "Mortal Engines", revealing that he is the narrator of the series.

hrike's Past

Throughout the series, a number of memories and recollections of Shrike's distant past are revealed.

Shrike was born more than a thousand years before the beginning of "Mortal Engines", during the time of the Nomad Empires (which preceded the Traction Era). All that is known about his life is that he was once a father, with children of his own. After he died, probably in combat, he was resurrected as a Stalker by a nomad faction. He became a soldier of the Lazarus Brigade, of which he was the last. During the story of "Mortal Engines", he recalls the horrific battles between the Nomad Empires, and the Tesla guns "like iced lightning".

What he did in between the beginning of the Traction Era and his adoption of Hester is unclear, but Mortal Engines mentions him working as a bounty hunter in the out country. It is revealed in Mortal Engines that Shrike collected broken dolls, mostly of children, for some unknown reason, and took Hester in with him as another broken child.

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