The White Mountains

This is the first book in a series. It was my grade school introduction to the concept of young adult post-apocalyptic themes. The fact that one of the central characters is a visually impaired young man who finds a pair of life-changing eyeglasses was a big deal to me. This might be the book that solidified my interest in post-apocalyptic literature. The fact that this apocalypse is the result of an alien invasion is just icing on the cake.

This is a lighter dystopia, in many ways—call it a unicorn chaser for 1984 and V for Vendetta, if you will! It’s a YA novel, and I found it a quick, fun, pacy read—as are its two sequels. You can often pick up all three in a single volume, which is how I read them. I don’t want to say too much about the first book, because so much of the fun of its opening chapters lies in figuring out what on earth is going on. You’re dropped into the peaceful English village of Wherton—a rural idyll on the… show more.

A young adult novel from 1968 (before they called them that) this book kept me up most of the night reading when I was ten or eleven years old, running (in my mind) from the great tripod creatures that threatened to take over the world. I was rapt. Christopher drew me so thoroughly into his world that my heart literally raced, and the scenes I witnessed as I fled across the White Mountains are with me still. I read it again as an adult, and only then did I fully appreciate it as a true classic of science fiction,… show more.