“Massive alien machines called the Tripods had ruled Earth for hundreds of years and enslaved the minds and bodies of most adults through the silvery caps they made them wear. Determined to escape the ritual Capping ceremony, Will Parker runs away, heading for the distant White Mountains and the...
One foot follows another, steady, against gravity, hardship. Overall sad struggle for boy. Hero plods, writing does not. Friends, old and new, are killed by aliens. In few years, Earth will be converted to poison. Fate of mankind looks bleak. We suffer events to see impetuous boy grow patient, cr...
I don’t think my passion for these books can be overstated.When I was in 6th grade, the day after reading that a character previously thought dead at the end of “The City of Gold and Lead” was, in fact, alive, I told my teacher that I was “partying in my head.” The thrill upon re-reading that se...
A nice stand-alone novel that is a prequel to the more-famous "Tripod trilogy." Reading this doesn't really enhance the reading of the Tripod trilogy, but it is a good story in its own right. It's a bit like reading Bujold's Barrayar prequels, Dickson's Dorsai prequels, Moran's Emerald Eyes, or e...
The story is told from the point of view of the central character, the protagonist, teenage Luke. As the story opens, he is about to turn thirteen, and he is concerned with typical teenage boy things, such as friends, fighting, and competition. Luke has been practicing with his sword ready for th...
This is the sequel to the Prince in Waiting, set in a post-apocalyptic England that has reverted to medieval tribalism. Our hero is Luke Perry (seriously), half-brother of the current Prince of Winchester. The Seers who speak for the mysterious Spirits have proclaimed that Luke will become Prince...
Two boys are drawn by a fireball into a society, parallel to 20th-century England, which has many of the characteristics of Roman Britain. John Christopher is the pseudonym of Samuel Youd.
Encountering a fireball which turns out to be a crossing point between their world and another one on a different probability track, two boys, one English and one American, face Indians, Vikings and Aztecs in their attempts to reach California. Sequel of Fireball.
Simon and Brad's fireball adventures take them to ancient China where they are exposed to incredible practices of mind control.
THE PRICE OF FREEDOM IN FUTURISTIC ENGLANDThe year is 2053 in England, a nation where people live either in the Conurb or the County. The psychological chasm that exits between the two lifestyles is vast, although there are those Commuters who straddle both worlds. Rob Randall is a boy raised in ...
This is the third and final book in Christopher’s Sword of the Spirits trilogy, and I have to say, I can’t think of any other trilogy in which the name is derived from the title of the last entry rather than the first.Having killed his brother at the climax of Beyond The Burning Lands, Luke is no...
Marty is a bright boy who lives in the Bubble colony on the Moon. He becomes friends with Steve, a prankster and iconoclast who convinces him one day to take an unoccupied crawler out on the Moon's surface to explore first station. Once there they find a journal of one of the first explorers. One...
When a deadly virus kills off most of the world's population, a teenaged boy tries to survive in a seemingly empty England. (John Christopher is the pseudonym of Samuel Youd.)
High adventure and intrigue await in this classic work of science fiction from critically acclaimed Tripods author John Christopher.After the disastrous Breakdown of the twenty-first century, the world has made a change. Now, in the twenty-third century, all cities are ordered and sterile, carefu...
A few hardy birds were singing, but the sky was dark. When the stable clock chimed three-quarters, I was not sure if it heralded seven or eight. In either case it would have been too late to go back to bed, so I washed and dressed and headed for the dining room. Despite the unpromising morning, o...
It numbed flesh after the first burning brand of its touch. But it dispersed the fog. They had their last breakfast on the Kreya at seven in the morning, and at eight, with the first beginning of half light, Olsen began to organize the transfer of the sledges to the surface of the ice, and their ...
She went to her mother’s hut and was greeted by her lovingly; they embraced and kissed each other as they always did when they met, however brief the separation had been. Her mother asked her: “Have you been to your wood, Va?” Va nodded. “Yes.” &nbs...
There were two gratings facing each other in opposite walls—small square patches of mesh in a bare expanse of pastel yellow plastic. Ventilation ducts. A door was set in another wall. It was much too centrally placed; in point of fact the bottom of the door-frame was over a foot off the floor of ...