Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #231097 in Books
• Published on: 1991-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 428 pages

Customer Reviews

superb fantasy trilogy for 10+
One of my favourite books as a child was the third in this trilogy, The Weathermongers, about a brother and sister who are half-drowned because the boy is a "weathermonger" - someone who can change the weather just by willing it. The England they live in has been overcome by a kind of mass hysteria, or hatred of machines, forcing its people back into a medieval way of life. The pair escape to France, where the French are mystified by this new England, and the sudden change in their own weather. The children get sent back and discover the madness and magic are due to the reawakening of Merlin...I've admired many subsequent Dickinson novels, but none has haunted me quite like this one, and now I find there are two other books, The Devil's Children and Heartsease, which precede it. The first tells of the coming of the madness, and of a moving journey made by Nicky, abandoned by her parents and picked up by a family of Sikhs. They use her as their "canary", to warn them of when they're about to do something dangerous, and eventually settle near a village where they are regarded as fairy folk or devil's children, painfuly relearning the craft of smithing. Of course, Dickinson isn't jst telling a story but a parable about how different cultures and races need each other, and about trust - the theme of the next novel. These are wonderful stories, making the familiar strange, and like John Christopher's Tripods Trilogy would be perfect to read and discuss in a class - if the National Curriculum allowed for more imagination.

total BBc 70's heaven
If you where alive in the early seventies, and you watched the dramas aimed at 12-13yr olds then I suggest you buy this. The quality of the story binds well with the feeling of being 12-16yrs old during the height of the Cold War. The feeling that you were not in control of your own destiny and that fate was the only thing that decided your destiny. This rinds well with the teenage power that 'The Children will provide their own destiny', whilst the adults got busy with the destruction of society, the Children would get on with it, with a little help from Children that were really adults (Young adults felt like Children).

If you are a child of the Cold War buy this and remember the feeling that at any time, that the clock for armageddon was ticking.