Beyond the Burning Lands by John Christopher

An incredibly imaginative world: post-apocalyptic England reverted to a medieval era and fractured into walled city-states that are built on the ruins of cities like Winchester and Salisbury.

In my mind they stand as some of the best YA fiction ever written. I discovered The Sword of the Spirits Trilogy in elementary school. If anyone does stumble across it, it's worth a read. I've been browsing online and trying to find an Omnibus edition to buy, but it seems this series has genuinely been out of print for a considerable amount of time. By the conclusion of book three he had pretty much become a tyrant, alienating his friends and loved ones. Christians were a despised minority.įurther, the 'hero' of the novels thoroughly managed to upset and at times derail his own 'rise to greatness'. This future society was strictly regimented and divided between normal humans (at the top) and beneath them two castes of mutants: Those afflicted by dwarfism forced into artisan and smithing roles, and those with more severe mutations who were menial servants and hard manual labourers. Over the course of the books he was gradually groomed for power and equipped with ancient war-making tools (most vividly, a Sten Gun, manafactured in hidden machine-shops under Stonehenge, if I remember rightly). The protagonist was a youth chosen to act as a sort of 'unifier' of these states by schemers and kingmakers behind the scenes. A luddite priesthood and military caste controlled the land, which was broken up into warring city-states. The plot involved a British Isles which had reverted back to paganism and feudalism following an ecological disaster. It was written by Samuel Yowd, under the name John Christopher, who also wrote 'The Tripods' and a few other chillers. Written in the finest tradition of english apocalyptic fiction, this series comprised three YA novels- 'The prince in waiting', 'Beyond the burning lands' and 'The sword of the spririts'. When I hear people discussing how violent elements of the Harry Potter novels are, I find myself wondering what they'd make of the likes of Michael De Larrabeiti's 'Borribles' novels, or another series I remembered this morning: John Christopher's 'The Prince in Waiting' or 'Sword of the Spirits' trilogy (the title for the series seems to vary depending on where you're looking). By contemporary standards, it was marvellously dark.

A thread on YA fiction yesterday got me thinking about some of the stuff I read when I was growing up.

Beyond the Burning Lands by John Christopher