Book Review – The Tripods – The White Mountains By John Christopher

The Machines
Having an affinity for War Of The Worlds and alien invasion and dystopian novels and enjoying stories of one-man-against-the-system and escaping society this book probably does the best job of hitting all those marks.

While being a Young Adult Novel, being a story from 1967, this either feels more general because we’ve gotten less mature or the story holds up as generally good sci-fi. Taking place in a post-war with the Tripods, humanity lives in small villages in relative peace and functions just like any small town. In our initial setting there’s mills and churches and homes and community centers. The only catch is that around everyone’s 14th birthday a Tripod “caps” you and you become servants to them. The big catch is that no one knows, not even us as the readers, what the Tripods are or what capping even does. Aliens or robots or an unseen nation-state? Capping seems to quell any rebellious spirit against the Tripods but there is something mostly “off” about people that our main character Will seems to notice as his time of capping gets closer. Will’s rebellious spirit causes him to want to run away and does so when he meets a fake capped person who tells him about a land of freedom. And it’s off on the adventure we go.

The Humanity
Will is a whiney teenager but he’s not without his redeeming qualities. Both sides of this swing make him a very believable character and adds some naivety we’d expect from a sheltered life. His adventure out into the world feels very My Side Of The Mountain/Hatch like with the looming danger of Tripods that are unknown and unrevealed.

Will’s adventures out into the world and resolving to find freedom is a tale that speaks to a number of people. The setting is quickly established but mystery surrounds to much to uncover. Other than just sheer desire and the loss of one of his friends to capping, it would have been good to develop more of why Will wanted to rebel and run away. One could argue that this would limit in relating to Will, but the character is introduced well enough and it could be done by expanding out that desire for freedom and liberty or that reason why the Tripods should be distrusted when everyone else seems ok with it.

Will seems to grow and change and not always for the better; which, again, puts his character into the believable camp. He almost seems like a YA Holden Caulfield who wants to break free but also do it alone but then resents the isolation of being alone from his point of view. There are times when the author does a good job of showing a flourishing of understanding of striving for liberty. One line stands out well as a turning point, “I have traveled a long road since leaving the village, not only in hard reality but in my attitude towards people. More and more I had come to see the Capped as lacking what seemed to me the essence of humanity, the vital spark of defiance against the rulers of the world. And I had despised them for it.” What a great line and a great moment of character growth – although the building to that moment seems to have lost some of the details along the way.

The World That Once Warred
The unfolding of the world is done quite well. The description of old-world tech is there but sometimes the lack of detail or description that the character doesn’t have makes it difficult to guess. The author doesn’t come from an Ernest Cline authorship of revealing the answer to your reader and then shoving their nose in it again and again in case someone zoned out in your explaining everything to them. The different types of societies discovered are odd but also familiar. In post-apocalyptic worlds, you want to enjoy the journey to see what the world has become and reading this book some 50 years after publication you get more tones of an alien and changed world. With a YA novel, I don’t expect long explanations about the loss of the human spirit or why religion is still practiced and clearly there would be a religion of the Tripods that would form. The world is built so that it’s stable for believability but the imagination of explaining between the lines has a lot of freedom.

The Fall & Spark Of The Spirit Of Man
One of the biggest drawbacks, without spoilers, is the ending. From my understanding, there wasn’t a whole trilogy planned, and the end – just happens. I enjoyed the mystery of a number of plot points still didn’t have mind-blowing revelations but the abrupt and, frankly, borning nature that’s less than half a page is disappointing.

But I’m cheating and know there are three other books which I, of course, am going to immediately read. For those actual young adults, the story is straightforward and hits on the themes of the human spirit and liberty. For the adults who haven’t lost the desire to read books about running away and being the lone person standing up against the world, you can find yourself in this story as you try to escape – The Tripods!