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A review by dark_reader
The City of Gold and Lead by John Christopher
2.0
Less likely to bore the modern young reader that The White Mountains, it's a fine book, dated and unlikely to capture the attention of its target age now, but a worthy classic of children's dystopian science fiction.
Finally, we see directly actual hardship stemming from the domination of the tripods. Other than the low-technology society, there seemed little limitation on individual freedom or evident mind control, until such time as this book's heroes are taken to the titular city of the masters, and there, still, only a few hundred people out of multiple countries' population were affected. But in that setting, finally the truth of this series's future-past Earth is revealed.
The aliens and their city struck me as Lovecraft-light, not dissimilar to the Great Old Ones of The Shadow Out of Time crossed with The War of the Worlds' own tripod-driving beings. The narration is subdued by contemporary standards, largely factual and requiring the reader to generate any emotion. I often found myself thinking that fiction writing in general has gotten simply better over the past decades, more engaging and exciting, if this and its contemporary classics are any measure.
Not a bad series and one I picked up from a library booksale because it looked "classic" and vaguely familiar, to populate our family library with the aim of providing plenty of potentially grabbable browsing material for my children, it has sat unread for many years until I finally opted to work through many such books. I don't feel the need to sing any praises for it to my children now. If a dystopian classic is needed, I would rather steer them to John Wyndham.
Finally, we see directly actual hardship stemming from the domination of the tripods. Other than the low-technology society, there seemed little limitation on individual freedom or evident mind control, until such time as this book's heroes are taken to the titular city of the masters, and there, still, only a few hundred people out of multiple countries' population were affected. But in that setting, finally the truth of this series's future-past Earth is revealed.
The aliens and their city struck me as Lovecraft-light, not dissimilar to the Great Old Ones of The Shadow Out of Time crossed with The War of the Worlds' own tripod-driving beings. The narration is subdued by contemporary standards, largely factual and requiring the reader to generate any emotion. I often found myself thinking that fiction writing in general has gotten simply better over the past decades, more engaging and exciting, if this and its contemporary classics are any measure.
Not a bad series and one I picked up from a library booksale because it looked "classic" and vaguely familiar, to populate our family library with the aim of providing plenty of potentially grabbable browsing material for my children, it has sat unread for many years until I finally opted to work through many such books. I don't feel the need to sing any praises for it to my children now. If a dystopian classic is needed, I would rather steer them to John Wyndham.