“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
The White Mountains
Thirteen-year-old Will Parker lives on a subjugated Earth. Though he has so far led a normal boy's life in a quiet and peaceful English village, a pall now hangs over his daily existence: in one year's time, he and his cousin Henry will be taken from their village by a Tripod, a massive three-legged machine driven by the world's mysterious alien overlords, and fitted with Caps, mind control devices that are welded to the skull and used to render humanity entirely docile. Having reached the age of curiosity, Will has begun to learn more about the wonders of the ancients - the civilizations that existed on Earth before the Tripods came - and has thus started to question whether the Capping is in fact the desirable rite of passage the (Capped) adults make it out to be.
Will's doubts are further encouraged when a wanderer who calls himself Ozymandias (nice literary reference) walks into his village and tells him that not all men live under the Tripods' control - that a resistance cell has taken refuge in the White Mountains (the Swiss Alps) and is plotting to fight back. Knowing this is his only chance to remain free, Will gathers provisions and sets out in the middle of the night for the White Mountains. He is followed by Henry, whom he allows to come along despite their long standing boyhood enmity.
After crossing the English Channel, Will and Henry are captured in France. It is here that they meet a gangling, clever boy named Jean Paul, or Beanpole, as he is nicknamed for the rest of the series. Beanpole breaks Will and Henry out of their prison and travels south with them into the French countryside. Along the way, we learn that Beanpole has studied some ancient technology and dreams of reinventing things like steam engines and electricity. The boys also find an ancient city - presumably Paris - and collect a stash of grenades.
While the trio are traveling through France, Will falls dangerously ill, and the boys are forced to pause in their journey. They are taken in by a local countess and live for an extended period in her country manor. There, Will becomes smitten with the countess' teenaged daughter, Eloise, and for a time he contemplates giving up his freedom to stay with her. When Eloise is selected to serve the aliens in their city, however, Will regains his senses and flees, hurrying to catch up with the others. At one point, he is picked up by a Tripod, but mysteriously, he is not Capped.
As Will, Henry, and Beanpole near their destination, they discover that they are being followed by a Tripod. At first puzzled by the repeated appearances of their dogged pursuer, Henry and Beanpole eventually find a tracking device in Will's armpit and cut it out. But this does not mark the end of their troubles; in fact, they are eventually forced to do battle with a Tripod, which they disable with one lucky toss of a grenade. On the final leg of their journey, they are forced to hide for many nights from Tripod search parties, but eventually, the Tripods give up, and the boys successfully meet up with the resistance in the White Mountains.
The City of Gold and Lead
One year later, the resistance sends Will, Beanpole, and a stolid German boy named Fritz to an athletic tournament in Germany in the hopes that at least one of these boys will take the top prize in their sport and be sent to the aliens' city as slaves. Will and Beanpole almost miss the tournament itself when Will gets into an altercation in a German pub and is imprisoned, but with a little ingenuity, they manage to arrive just in time. At the Games, Will and Fritz win in boxing and running respectively, but Beanpole is disqualified in the long jump and is forced to return to the White Mountains.
Will and Fritz are taken to the aliens' city in Tripods with the other champions. As soon as the Tripods enter the city's glittering confines, Will is immediately struck down by an oppressive heat and a crushing weight. The Lovecraftian Masters, you see, come from a larger and hotter planet and are thus accustomed to a higher temperature and gravity. They also breathe an atmosphere that is poisonous, so Will and the other slaves must wear masks at all times save when they are resting in their quarters or in the slaves' communal spaces.
After an anxious wait in the selection hall, Will is picked by a Master and taken to a residence within the city itself. There, he serves the functions of housekeeper, gopher, and - oddly - companion, as Will's Master is extraordinarily benign and unusually curious about humanity. Will takes advantage of his Master's openness to gain more information about the Masters as a race, and learns two critical things along the way: 1) that the Masters have a vulnerable spot between their facial orifices, and 2) that the Masters ultimately plan to terraform Earth in a few years time, rendering the entire planet uninhabitable for all creatures but the Masters themselves. Fritz, meanwhile, has a much crueler Master, but he too manages to go out into the city to learn more about the Masters' technology.
Will's Master eventually becomes fond enough of Will that he decides to surprise Will by making Will's living space more comfortable. Inside Will's quarters, the Master finds Will's notes and immediately becomes suspicious. Realizing that he has no other choice, Will strikes his Master in the aforementioned vulnerable spot, killing him instantly. Will is then forced to flee the city by swimming through the waste water to the other side of the wall, where Beanpole fishes him out of the river just before he suffocates. Will and Beanpole wait for Fritz to follow, but the approaching winter finally forces them to give up and return to the White Mountains.
The Pool of Fire
To Will's relief, Fritz does in fact make it out of the aliens' city months later, and both Will and Fritz are sent by Julius, the leader of the resistance, to the Middle East to recruit more young boys for the cause. In the meantime, Henry is sent to the Americas, while Beanpole remains behind to work with the cell's scientists on developing weapons for their planned battle with the Masters themselves.
When Fritz and Will return from the above mission, they are brought to a coastal fortress, where Beanpole and the other scientists have been formulating a plan to disable a Tripod and capture a Master. The rebels dig a trap on the customary route of one roving Tripod, but during their first attempt to make the capture, they activate their makeshift radio jamming device too soon, thus inducing the Tripod to permanently change its course. Will then volunteers to serve as bait; painting his horse and himself green, he successfully captures the Tripod's attention and leads it into their trap. Inside, the rebels find one surviving Master, named Ruki, and take him prisoner. After several unsuccessful experiments with various poisons, the rebels accidentally discover that Ruki and the other Masters are especially sensitive to alcohol.
The resistance then sends raiding parties out to infiltrate the Masters' three cities and poison the Masters' water supply. Will returns to the European city with one of these parties, where he helps in the battle to access the waterworks. Once the Masters are knocked unconscious by the alcohol, Will's group successfully shuts off the city's power supply (the titular "pool of fire"), bringing the Capped slaves out of their trance. They then manage to destroy the dome of the city itself, killing every Master within its walls. The raiding party in China is similarly successful, but Henry's party in Panama fails; the dominion of the Masters is not over yet.
The resistance then sends newly built aircraft to the Americas to destroy the final city, but this attack fails when the Masters send out an electromagnetic pulse which disables every single rebel plane. Fortunately, Beanpole, Will, and Henry have been busy learning how to fly hot air balloons - Julius' plan B. The boys, led by Fritz, launch an attack on the remaining city using their balloons. At first, this attack also seems doomed to fail, as the boys' bombs bounce harmlessly off the dome -- but then Henry decides to plant his bomb onto the center of the dome manually. When the bomb goes off, Henry is killed instantly, but his death is not without purpose, as the dome of the third city of the Masters is also destroyed by the blast.
After this final battle, humanity gets on with the task of rebuilding. The Masters do reappear as scheduled, but rather than engage in another battle with men, they destroy the remains of their cities from space and leave. Eventually, representatives of all the countries of the world gather for the Conference of Man to discuss the Earth's future. At this diplomatic assembly, the old divisions resurface, and Will, Beanpole and Fritz decide to dedicate themselves to the new cause of global peace and unity.
Overall: 8.5 - Science fiction fan Peter Graham once famously remarked that "The Golden Age of Science Fiction is twelve." Well, my father and I both read this trilogy when we were nearly twelve, and we remain very fond of it to this day. As a matter of fact, I think this trilogy is responsible for my life-long preference for science fiction that features aliens, adventure, politics, and epic stakes.
Characterization: 8.5
Regarding the characterization in these novels, two things are worthy of praise. First of all, Christopher gives us an accessible and flawed hero in Will. At first, Will has trouble being charitable to his cousin, whom he despises. He has a tendency to act without thinking in the long range, as when he gets into a fight on the way to the Games in Germany and is thrown in a pit. And he often nurses unwarranted, childish resentments, as when Julius delays his mission to the Middle East for fear that he - i.e., Will - is not ready to take on the responsibility. In short, everything about Will screams normal adolescent.
Secondly, Christopher's alien overlords are shown to be a good deal more than monolithic, faceless spiders. Christopher takes time to introduce us to the Masters' entertainments and various personal habits, thus establishing their alienness -- and he also demonstrates, with the characters of Will's Master and Ruki, that despite the fact that the Masters have not fought amongst themselves, they don't all think the same way, thus establishing their almost human variety. And he does all this without once losing sight of the menace the Masters pose to all of humanity. This is a real achievement.
Plot/Pacing: 8.0
In this trilogy, Christopher struggles mightily with the difficult task of condensing an epic story that spans many years - a century even - into three novels of juvenile length. As a result, these books are very expository. In some places, the explanations are a little repetitive - for example, Christopher notes the source of the nickname "Beanpole" a few too many times than are necessary - but usually, this exposition is interesting and quite serviceable.
Concepts/Themes: 9.0
When I was eleven and a budding science fiction fan, there were two things I read that made an indelible impression on me. The first was the description of a comet falling to Earth like a second sun in Niven and Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer, which I may review one of these days if I can get a hold of an intact copy (the one currently in the Spike S. collection is in tatters - it has, shall we say, been read to death). The second was the description of the Masters' domed city in The City of Gold and Lead. I can't quite put my finger on why I found Christopher's aliens so fascinating, but I remember returning to those passages again and again to read of Will's struggle to survive in a leaden gravity and oppressive heat that gradually saps one's body and soul. Might it have been here that I learned to appreciate truly alien aliens? Probably.
As an adult, of course, I can now appreciate this trilogy's subtle literary references and thematic depth. I won't enumerate the various allusions made here - I wouldn't want to bore you after all - but two major messages in these novels are certainly worth noting. First of all and most importantly, Christopher, like many of the authors I have tackled on this site, explores what the word "freedom" truly means. Perhaps the most critical chapters that take on this theme are "The Castle of the Red Tower" and "The Tripod" in The White Mountains. In these chapters, Will is nursed back to health by the Comtesse and, as noted in the synopsis above, gradually grows very fond of the Comtesse's daughter Eloise. He also becomes adapted to the comfortable life of a French aristocrat and starts to seriously question whether freedom is worth living a desperate existence:
I reminded myself of something else - of what I had thought as I lay in bed recovering from the fever. That nothing mattered, nothing was of value, without a mind that challenged and inquired. The mood seemed far away, unreal. The Tripods had conquered men when they were at the height of their power and magnificence, capable of building the great cities, ships as big as a village, perhaps vaster wonders still. If our ancestors, with all their strength, had failed, how pitiful was the defiance of a handful of men clinging to the slopes of barren mountains. And, if there were no hope of defeating them, what were the true alternatives? To live wretchedly, like a hunted animal, suffering hardship and despair - or this life, with its fullness and security and happiness?
Eventually, the temptation to give up and settle becomes so great that Will tells Henry and Beanpole to proceed to the White Mountains without him. Thus, Will succumbs, as many in the real world do, to the allure of creature comforts, forgetting for a time that no man is meant to live in a cage, no matter how gilded that cage may be. Fortunately, Will is wrenched out of this stupor when he learns that his beloved Eloise, as the Queen of the castle's tournament, will be sent away forever to serve the Masters in their city:
I went back into my room and undressed, and tried to sleep. There were too many kinds of horror. Horror at what had happened to Eloise. Horror of the creatures who could do this sort of thing to others. Horror, above all, at how closely I had come to falling - no, to throwing myself - into something beside which suicide was clean and good. What had happened was not Eloise's fault. She had accepted Capping as the countless others had done, not understanding and knowing no alternatives. But I had understood, and had known better. I thought of the blankness of Beanpole's face, the contempt in Henry's, the last time I had seen them, and was ashamed.
Here, Christopher (as do other authors I have covered on this site) stresses that freedom and hedonism are certainly not synonymous -- and that nothing is worth giving up the former. Indeed, in this passage, you hear the echo of Patrick Henry's famous peroration - "Give me liberty or give me death!"
Another big issue Christopher addresses - one that is particularly timely these days - is the treatment of enemy prisoners. On this matter, Christopher, refreshingly, allows for very little sentimental, knee-jerk pussy-footing. In the chapter "A Little Drink for Ruki" in The Pool of Fire, Will at one point objects to the scientists' tainting of Ruki's food, and Beanpole's response is clear-headed and, dare I say, manly:
"... He may be not quite as bad as some of the others, but he is one of them. They have never had wars. The loyalty they have to their own kind is something which we probably do not understand any more than they can understand the way we fight amongst ourselves. But if we do not understand it, we must still reckon with it. And we must use every weapon we can against it. If this involves putting him to some discomfort - if it involves killing him - that is not so important. Only one thing is important: winning the struggle."
Here, Christopher displays the very adult understanding that when an enemy is hell-bent on annihilating you, the correct response is not to treat said enemy like they are welcome house guests. Baseline humane treatment is morally obligatory, says Christopher; not so is wringing our hands over every little inconvenience our prisoners of war suffer while in captivity - or granting said prisoners Constitutional rights.
On the whole, this trilogy is an entertaining and muscular apology for liberty and just war. If only we could ship copies of these books to the White House!
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