John Christopher's trilogy, 'The Tripods', turns out to be carefully structured. The first book, 'The White Mountains', introduces us to a post-apocalyptic world in which human civilisation has fallen back to mediaeval technology after worldwide defeat by the Tripods. We travel with three pivotal characters out of their realm of control, aiming at the rebels in the White Mountains. The second book, 'The City of Gold and Lead', answers the question that surely every reader of that first book must have asked: who's behind the Tripods? It turns out to be aliens, agreeably weird ones in their impeccably designed city. Two of those three characters infiltrate to learn about them and one is able to return with information to spark this third book.

He's Will Parker, a young English boy who left his village only a year before the aliens would have removed his free will by Capping him. He makes it back to base and the information he brings has the potential to change everything. Their leader Julius calls a conference to explain the plan they will follow. In the short term, everyone will disperse across the globe to convert as many boys and girls as they can before they're Capped and lost to the cause. They'll also organise near the three Tripod cities and attempt to develop some means of synchronised attack that will hopefully wrest control of the planet back from the aliens.

Initially, this feels like a fracture. Will is to go southeast in the persona of a trader. He's joined by Fritz, the German boy who was such an important part of the second book as the other rebel who made it into the alien city in his native country. Henry, Will's cousin, who travelled south with him in the first book, will head over the pond to the Americas to be part of the team tackling the alien city there. And Beanpole, the French boy they met in France with an aptitude for mechanics, will, of course, join the research base, working on that means of attack.

Certainly Will isn't particularly happy about this state of affairs, for a bundle of reasons, but he's also someone able to knuckle down and get the job done. While Fritz is better with languages, it's Will who does more of the talking, as they travel for a full year, taking them to Greece, Egypt, and even Russia, eventually returning to the caves that have become the new rebel HQ where they're given a new assignment: to capture a Master, the name these aliens use to describe themselves, alive. Now we're back in business!

Well, not entirely. Now Will is stuck at base and the guard commander he's reporting to turns out to be Ulf, the unreliable sailor who spitefully stranded him during their journey north to compete in the alien's tournament in the previous book, the same games intended to get rebels inside the alien city. That Will managed to do that was despite Ulf. Needless to say, he's frustrated that he's now under his command. However, it's a particular turn of events involving Ulf and Will that truly sets this story into motion. A vulnerability at last!

And so we go, but the author is a patient man. While it seems like the rebels now have everything they need to win the day, they still have work to do and it's especially difficult for those tasked to take down the city in Germany, just because of how timezones work. The three attacks have to be synchronised, because the aliens have communication technology, and that means that Will, Fritz and the others sent in to the German city have to do their work at noon. What's more, while they succeed—that shouldn't be too much of a spoiler—it isn't without serious obstacles and plenty of delicious suspense as they figure out how to surmount them. Also, not everyone does succeed and that prompts backup plans and backups to the backup plans and...

It's never a given which instalment of a trilogy I'm going to like most. It's probably most often the first, because it's the one that sets the scene. Sometimes it's the third, because that's when it all wraps up, usually through the most powerful and emotional scenes of them all. Surprisingly often, it's the one in the middle, because the first has to set things up and the last has to wrap them up, but the one in between doesn't have to do either and can concentrate instead on things many of us care about most: building characters and telling story.

Here, with the three books so carefully delineated, to the degree that they tell a complete story while not preventing each from being read in isolation as a standalone novel, it's this one that I'd call my favourite. There are a few points that drag a little but only while they're happening. They have meaning soon afterwards and I don't consider any of them superfluous, even the journeying that Will and Fritz do as salesmen without much time spent in any one place. What makes it work so well is that it's a balance of everything the series does well, whether that be a combination of naivete, bravery and sacrifice or one of planning, daring and improvisation.

I'll leap ahead to the end of the book, because that happens in a way I didn't expect, one that's an unusual combination of pessimism and optimism. Generally speaking, this is a very hopeful trilogy as we follow the path of resistance throughout, even before we've actually met them. Most of the first book is a journey of children to the resistance, but they're still sent there deliberately by one of them. From there, we learn more and work hard and gradually reach a point where the human race can, at long last, mount an attack to reclaim our own world. Everything's hopeful, backed up by the willingness of many to put in the effort.

However, after the day is won, as of course it is, however much loss is suffered in getting there, it falls to the Conference of Man to map the way forward and it seems like it's about to do so with a stab at a global government, until a lone member manages to wreck the whole thing. Every ounce of hope that's sustained us throughout three books all the way to a complete underdog victory in a battle against an insurmountable enemy, seems suddenly dashed. The suggestion is that we're all going to return, in our moment of triumph as a species, to tribalism and that hurts. However, the very final note returns us once more to hope, as an Englishman, a Frenchman and a German, agree to fight for peace among men. I hate that and I love that. It's quite the ending.

And that's it for the trilogy known as 'The Tripods', which was published relatively quickly with two books in 1967 and the third a year later. However, John Christopher would return twenty years on with a prequel called 'When the Tripods Came'. Otherwise, he wrote many novels under a number of pseudonyms and in a number of genres, initially for adults but eventually for children. In fact, it should be pointed out that John Christopher is actually one of those pseudonyms, because he was born Christopher Samuel Youd, first published as C. S. Youd and with Christopher Youd and Samuel Youd both adorning novels before he conjured up John Christopher. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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