Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

To John Christopher's final Tripods novel, The Pool of Fire, which charts the inevitable downfall of the alien Masters at the hands of humanity. It's a fair ending to the series, but it suffers from uneven pacing and, as with the other books, a completely male dominated cast; even the sexless aliens — Christopher mentions in his prologue that they propagate through parthenogenesis — are given a very male gloss.

Having survived their investigation of the City of Gold and Lead in the previous book, Will and Fritz find themselves assigned a new task: to travel the world, recruiting teens who have not yet been capped to the cause of the resistance. Having done this for a few years — long enough for Beanpole and his fellow scientists to reinvent the technology of the Ancient World — they return to Germany to assist with the struggle against the Tripods. Following a plan laid down by Julius, the leader of the resistance, they ambush a Tripod and take one of its Masters captive. Through chance they discover a simple way to strike back against the aliens, if only they can get back in to the city.

With Will & Fritz leading the strike against the German city, Henry targeting the one in one in Panama, and others taking the one in the Far East, the resistance hope to take out their enemies in a single strike. The plan largely succeeds, leaving most of the world free, but with America still under the thrall of the Masters. With the aliens expecting the arrival of reinforcements from space, the resistance are unable to rest on their laurels and decide to use aeroplanes and balloons, both newly rediscovered, to destroy the remaining city. Once everything is played out, the unity of the resistance shatters into quibbling nationalistic factions and the book ends with Will, Beanpole, and Fritz — English, French, and German respectively — turning their backs on their plans for a quiet lives in order to build a new political consensus.

A satisfactory conclusion to the series with some good moments of tension, although I'm not entirely sure the opening travelogue adds much. The ambush of the Tripod works well largely because Will's old enemy, the barge captain Ulf, reappears and, through Julius' words and actions, we get to see that he isn't the petty tyrant that Will believes, but an embittered alcoholic who sees in Will the ghosts of his own missed opportunities. The daring raid on the City works well — as in the previous book, Christopher is good at invoking the oppressive atmosphere of the place — but there are some problems with the way the whole scenario plays out.

(The scientist in me can't quite buy into the destruction of the dome — if atmospheric pressure has always been lower in the City as the rush of inward air suggests, why should the simple admission of terrestrial air cause the dome to collapse inwards? And why does the capping program re-establish itself when the Fritz switches the pool of fire back on? And why don't the Panamanian Masters use their ability to control the capped to keep the americas under control?)

Other problems include the total lack of female characters — a Master reading the book would have literally no idea humanity wasn't entirely male — and uncomfortable pacing in places. But it's more action packed than the first book and, if not as evocative as the second, it is a fair end to a series whose principle appeal, if I'm honest, is a nostalgia for the terror I felt when I first saw the TV series...

For reasons of nostalgia, I've revisited John Christopher's The White Mountains. The first of his three Tripods novels which I came to via the BBC adaptation — my memories of the series are vague, although I do remember being deeply creeped out, but not so much so that I didn't wolf down the books from the library.

The story opens with country boy Will Parker losing his only friend, his cousin Jack, to adulthood when Jack is Capped by the Tripods. When a vagrant called Ozymandias offers will a map showing the way to the White Mountains and freedom, Will decides to run away rather than risk being Capped and losing his free will. To his surprise he is joined by his cousin Henry, whom he initially dislikes, and later by a clever Frenchman nickname Beanpole. Travelling cross country they make their way through the ruins of Paris, take refuge in a feudal chateau where Will is tempted to stay, before making a mad final dash for the mountains, outwitting a group of hunting Tripods along the way.

The book is short and very straightforward; a real Boy's Own adventure. Christopher does a nice job of the world building, having the main characters encounter things with which the reader is familiar — the Shmand-Fair, Notre-Dame de Paris, a crate containing rifles — but which Will can only describe in the vaguest and most baffled of terms. The character aren't particularly profound while Eloise, the only girl, doesn't really serve a purpose other than to remind Will of the cost of giving up his dream of freedom and becoming an aristocrat.

Despite being a sentimental re-read, the book ultimately falls a little flat; partly because the characters lack depth and partly because they feel like they're so safely cocooned by the narrative that they can't help but succeed. The Tripod hunt, when it comes towards the, adds some much needed tension but it doesn't entirely make up for the rest of the narrative. But on the plus side, the book is short and I remember the second book being rather better...