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The Guardians Paperback – November 4, 2014

by John Christopher (Author)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 113 ratings
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In a world where two nations rule all, Rob must find a way to live among them both in this futuristic story from the author of the Tripods series.

In the future, the world has been divided into two societies. One is the Conurb—a sprawling, modern city where technology rules and people live with only the bare minimum they need to survive. The other is the County—a land of green fields and beautiful mansions, where the people have turned back the clock to a pristine past.

Rob has always lived in the Conurb, but after he is sent to a terrible boarding school, he decides his only option is to take a chance and cross the Barrier into the unknown world of the County. There he meets another boy who introduces Rob to the very different society, and all the wondrous things that come with it.

But even though Rob wants to believe that the County is a utopia, he begins to learn about the darkness that lurks beneath the smiles of his new family and friends. And when sinister secrets are revealed, Rob is forced to make a choice: stay in the County, where everything is a perfect lie, or return to the Conurb, where life is hard, horrible, and real.
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  1. Reading age
    9 - 13 years
  2. Print length
    288 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Grade level
    4 - 8
  5. Lexile measure
    750L
  6. Dimensions
    5.13 x 0.8 x 7.63 inches
  7. Publisher
    Aladdin
  8. Publication date
    November 4, 2014
  9. ISBN-10
    1481418343
  10. ISBN-13
    978-1481418348
  11. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John Christopher was the pseudonym of Samuel Youd, who was born in Lancashire, England, in 1922. He was the author of more than fifty novels and novellas, as well as numerous short stories. His most famous books include The Death of Grass, the Tripods trilogy, The Lotus Caves, and The Guardians.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Guardians

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Aladdin; Reissue edition (November 4, 2014)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1481418343
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1481418348
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 9 - 13 years
  • Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 750L
  • Grade level ‏ : ‎ 4 - 8
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.7 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.13 x 0.8 x 7.63 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 113 ratings

About the author

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John Christopher

John Christopher

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Sam Youd was born in Lancashire in April 1922, during an unseasonable snowstorm.

As a boy, he was devoted to the newly emergent genre of science-fiction: 'In the early thirties,' he later wrote, 'we knew just enough about the solar system for its possibilities to be a magnet to the imagination.'

Over the following decades, his imagination flowed from science-fiction into general novels, cricket novels, medical novels, gothic romances, detective thrillers, light comedies ... In all, under his own name and a variety of pen-names, he published fifty-six novels and a myriad of short stories.

He is perhaps best known as John Christopher, author of the seminal work of speculative fiction, The Death of Grass, and a stream of novels in the genre he pioneered, YA dystopian fiction, beginning with The Tripods Trilogy.

'I read somewhere,' Sam once said, 'that I have been cited as the greatest serial killer in fictional history, having destroyed civilisation in so many different ways - through famine, freezing, earthquakes, feral youth combined with religious fanaticism, and progeria.'

Titles published under the pen-name of Hilary Ford and under his own name are also available on Amazon.

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
113 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

RadioMaven
5.0 out of 5 stars I loved this series when I happened on it as a twelve-year-old
Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2014
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I loved this series when I happened on it as a twelve-year-old. I didn't realize at the time how sophisticated John Christopher was as a novelist -- not how important this particular book was among his works.
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Phinca
4.0 out of 5 stars A thought-provoking read for children.
Reviewed in the United States on February 25, 2015
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John Christopher, author of the Tripods trilogy, was one of my favorite writers when I was a child growing up in London. This story's hero is a boy called Rob who lives in a future England where there is a rigid social division between the crowded bustling Conurb and the quaint genteel County - and, as far as Rob knows, everyone seems to like things that way. When I first read this book, it really intrigued me because the border between Greater London and the County of Surrey actually ran through our back garden!

Returning to this book as an adult, the story naturally seems less substantial than it did in my childhood, especially when compared to today's YA dystopic fiction such as The Hunger Games or Divergent. But it remains an engaging and thought-provoking tale which would give young readers a good entry point into this genre.
2 people found this helpful
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Rap unseal
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful.
Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2011
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Like other novels by John Christopher this is engaging and original. I was caputured by this story as a child when I read it and upon re-reading it as an adult I find that it has lost none of its magic.
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Dipra
5.0 out of 5 stars The Guardians
Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2001
I read this book as a part of a study to do with books. This book deals with a lot of moral issues including thoughts on social control. In the book, John Christopher describes the place as being totally different but actually were under the same group of people who wanted to make England a better place. he shows the different ways of control and how people will go to certain extents to stage a rebellion!! This book is one of the best I have read and makes it a fantastic book for teens!!
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Tim Lukeman
4.0 out of 5 stars An underrated novel by a fine storyteller
Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2019
John Christopher is best known for his Tripods books & rightly so. But several of his standalone novels for younger readers are just as good. THE GUARDIANS is among the best of them, looking at a future in which the mass of people exists in the violent squalor of the Conurb, basically monstrous slums where the mass of labor lives & struggle, and the County, were the minority of the elite dwell in deceptively green simplicity of the pastoral past.

When Rob, a boy from the Conurb, escapes from his surroundings after the death of his father, he finds his way into the County. There he is taken in by a kindly family of the elite, who pass him off as a cousin of their son Mike. Rob soon grows to enjoy his new life, only to be alarmed when he discovers that Mike belongs to a group of young would-be rebels. How could anyone want to destroy such a peaceful, genteel, nurturing sort of life?

What follows entails a couple of sinister twists, including an offered deal-with-the-devil for Rob. And at this point, my sole dissatisfaction with the book appears. The ending is good, but much too short; it calls for expansion, or even a sequel, which never came to pass. Easy enough to extrapolate what Rob will do next, and maybe that's enough for the point of the story. But like other readers, I'd have liked to have seen more.

Still, that's a minor complaint at best. This vision of a future divided between what we would now call the 99% & the 1% rings ever more truly today. I disagree with some reviewers who claim it's been done better since by dystopias like The Hunger Games & others; to my mind, this is not only sharp & succinct, it seems frighteningly more plausible than current YA dystopias, which feature distinctly unrealistic Chosen Ones rather than convincingly real teens like Rob. This is the dystopia that really needs to be filmed.

Recommended!
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Honorable Scythe
3.0 out of 5 stars Good Story - So Where's The Sequel
Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2007
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The Guardians is a good story, but ends too abruptly. You would think another book would be written to follow Rob's continuing adventures back in the Concurbs, and his role in an eventual revolution that would destroy the Guardians.

What can you say.
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Bruce D. Wilner
4.0 out of 5 stars not up to The Tripods, but still quite satisfactory
Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2006
I have never been a fan of "young adult sci fi" as an independent genre, but, having been introduced to Christoper's legendary "Tripods" trilogy (from which even the 2005 movie version of "War of the Worlds" borrowed liberally) as a young boy, I figured I'd read "The Guardians" when I stumbled across it on a library table and had two hours to kill.

Despite what many here have said, I would without compunction characterize "The Guardians" as a fast-paced adventure story. It details the adventures of one Rob Randall, a boy raised in a not-too-distant England, which has been subdivided into "the Conurb"--where Rob grew up, devolved into a bread-and-circuses-type situation where the masses can only be kept at bay through government-sponsored violence--and "the County"--where wealthy families and their live-in staffs luxuriate in nineteenth-century torpor. Afer Rob's father dies, he is spirited off to a rigorous boarding school where he runs afoul of the military-style discipline and is impelled to flight by his classmates' sadism. Rob succeeds in escaping under the legendary, underwhelming "fence" that divides the Conurb from the County. After injuring his foot and finding himself quite helpless, Rob is befriended by Mike, a well-to-do country boy who discovers Rob while out riding his horse one day. Mike's mother--discovering food missing from the kitchen and extracting the truth from a recently-fallen-ill Mike--rescues Rob and quickly incorporates him into the family. Rob and Mike are fast friends and are both quite happy until, one day, a wealthy visitor sees through Rob's thin veneer of "I'm Mike's cousin from Nepal"--backed up by Rob's having read a book or two about Nepalese customs, fauna, tourist attractions, etc.--and is about to deliver him to the authorities. We ultimately learn that, while Mike's father was long ago biotechnologically "subdued" (reminiscent of the "capping" in the Tripods trilogy), Mike is quite a rebel himself, "escaping" the superficial happiness of the County for the challenge of the Conurb. At the end of the story, a trepidation-filled Rob slips back under the fence to hunt for Mike, who provided Rob a forwarding address. The story wraps up rather too quickly, and I personally would have enjoyed following Rob's life story for at least a bit longer, yet Christopher does an admirable job of painting the essential elements of an imperfect future world and exploring the tormented psyche of a nice boy inextricably caught in that unforgiving world.
7 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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LovinglyLazy
5.0 out of 5 stars Gut verpackt, schnelle Versand, günstig
Reviewed in Germany on June 20, 2020
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Schnell und perfekt, danke
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L. Tait
5.0 out of 5 stars Crossing The Social Divide
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 3, 2017
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I'm quite familiar with John Christopher's work, having read the brilliant 'Death of Grass' and 'Empty world', which was equally as brilliant, this was my third foray into his world. It features a futuristic London, split into two factions, the Conurb, where the population is dense,and technology is up to the minute, and the County, where there are rolling green fields, beautiful mansions, but, no mod cons, and its inhabitants live in luxury, and not dissimilar to the lifestyle of a Jane Austen novel. Rob, a young boy living in the Conurb, after his father dies in an inexplicable accident, is sent to a state boarding school, and after a traumatic experience, decides to make a break for the County, where he meets Mike, a boy of the same age, who helps him, until his mother discovers his secret. Rob, under an alias, ends up living with Mike and his family, and all seems to be idyllic, until events take a bizarre, and dark twist. What I've noticed with Christopher's writing, from what I've read, is that he ends his stories like another adventure is about to begin, even though you've followed him through one already. It's merely an hors d'oeuvre, a canapé, a taster, if you will, and this book is no different. I wasn't disappointed, and I was thirsty for more! The narrative flows beautifully, as always, and this would make a great film. The title comes from a faction determined to maintain the status quo between the Conurb and the County. Very good!
5 people found this helpful
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Walter F.
4.0 out of 5 stars Schullektüre
Reviewed in Germany on May 27, 2022
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keine
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Barry Bootle
5.0 out of 5 stars A small piece of perfection
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 21, 2011
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I re-acquainted myself with The Guardians recently after about twenty years, and I'm really glad I did. It's a little jewel of a book and really should be back in print. I supect the reason it's not is that, due to being written in the 70s, its vision of the future (and futuristic words like plastiglass, holovision, lumoglobes) seem very dated, and would be seen as unlikely to strike a chord with people today, particularly youngsters, at whom the book is chiefly aimed. But the book's themes - mental conditioning, human freedom, and most of all the division between the rich and poor, the factory workers and factory owners - are more pertinent than ever. It's a short, plot-driven book, and the prose is spare, but nevertheless the world it creates is convincing in its detail, as are the characters. Running through it all is a rather troubling question - if people are conditioned to be happy, but are nevertheless happy, is that really such a bad thing?
7 people found this helpful
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Frank M Diebels
5.0 out of 5 stars Sehr gutes Produkt
Reviewed in Germany on December 20, 2018
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Wie beschrieben!
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