girl and brother save foreign "witch", help him escape

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This second book in the Changes Trilogy is set five years after the first, but follows a different set of characters. The Changes have become more grounded is this book and there is a whole generation emerging for whom this life is becoming the norm.

The society is one built on fear. When an American spy is caught, he is stoned as a Witch and left for dead. A couple of youngster conspire to help him escape from Britain, still mysteriously the only country affected by this apocalypse.

I liked this part a bit better than the first. It felt less dated, and the world seemed a little bit more explained, although many questions remain. The story is also rather concise, since it is not very long and like I noticed in The Devil's Children, the book has a very closed and neat end, which seemed a bit too simple after what happens in the book.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! ( )

This is the sequel to The Devil's Children, and I'm glad to say the story more or less stands on its own. It's set five years after the Changes which made people in England revolt against technology (some kind of mental sickness) and flee the cities, living in small villages and farming communities while deliberating avoiding modern conveniences. A man from America (unaffected by the Change) who arrived on foreign shores to find out what is going on in England, gets attacked and stoned for being a "witch". Two young people rescue him in secret. He's severely injured but they hide him in a shed and nurse him back to health with rough care. The kids are gradually becoming disaffected by the Change- the girl Margaret still feels uneasy around machinery but is curiously compelled to visit the empty city and explore. The boy on the farm, Jonathan, is intrigued by machines and good at figuring out how they work. Together they form a plan to get the injured man out of the country. It involves Jonathan manning an old tugboat through the canals while Margaret rides ahead on her pony to open bridges. It has to be secret because the locals are highly suspicious of anything unusual; even their maid's brother Tim, a gentle man with mental disabilities, is at risk of being called a witch and killed by the community simply because he is different. The plot of the rescue mission is really straightforward, what makes this book so much better is how well its characters are written. Jonthan is quick of mind and keen about solving problems, yet totally callous and dismissive of animals- when a pony balks at getting aboard the tug he just says "I hate horses" in disgust. Margaret for her part finds anything remotely mechanical confusing and avoids being around it, but is remarkably patient with the ponies and understands their behavior and needs very well. She's also pretty brave- getting chased by a pack of feral dogs, and baiting an aggressive bull as a diversion during the getaway. They make an interesting contrast and a good team. Too bad there wasn't more of the other characters in the story- the foreigner, the maid and her brother Tim are all interesting people as well. but play minor roles. It was a pretty good read. A few times it seemed like the kids made remarkably complex plans or conveniently drew overly quick conclusions, but I took it in stride to enjoy the story. The ending surprised me somewhat.

from the "a href="https://dogeardiary.blogspot.com/2018/02/heartsease.html">Dogear Diary ( )

The Apocalypse! Now! With English Children on Ponies!

Five years after the Changes affected England, the new way of life seems almost normal to children who were very young when the shift occurred. Margaret rarely thinks about how things used to be, and she shares the antipathy to and suspicion of technology and machines that has come over Britain, although she doesn't feel it as strongly as some do.

When a foreign 'witch' (actually an American intelligence agent) that her village stoned turns out to be still alive, Margaret and her brother Jonathan decide to rescue him in secret. Otto is in bad shape and partially paralyzed, but with the help of the woman who's been working for the family as a servant, Lucy, and her mentally-disabled brother Tim, a conspiracy to save Otto and get him back to his people unfolds.

In many ways, the way the story progresses, with a focus on young people independently using their ingenuity to solve problems, especially problems involving ponies and boats (the rescue plan involves a getaway in a vintage tugboat), the book reads a bit like a darker, post-apocalyptic 'Swallows and Amazons.'

The authorial standpoint on the events depicted in the book is... odd. I can't quite put my finger on it. On the one hand, this new England, yanked back into a pre-Industrial era, is horrific. It is one where strangers are stoned to death without question; where children fear, with justification, that their own families will kill them if they are caught breaking the rules, where people truly believe they're doing something charitable by keeping a mentally-disabled person in a shed like an animal.

Our main characters clearly see all these things as wrong - but they're awfully, and inexplicably, willing to forgive people their faults and try to see the best in them. Even the nasty village 'witch-hunter' who causes people's deaths and psychologically terrorizes their beloved aunt, is portrayed sort of like a cranky but lovable neighbor.

At the same time, while the faults of this society are noted, but to a degree, minimized, we have the portrayal of Jonathan, who's mechanically inclined and is attracted, rather than repulsed by technology (It seems the Changes just haven't affected him for some unknown reason). While Jonathan is bright, ingenious and has a moral compass, at the same time he's portrayed as being quite uncaring and callous toward living things, especially animals.

It's an interesting dichotomy that's set up, but I don't think the book uses or explores it as well as it could have. An opportunity to give the reader an outside viewpoint is missed, by giving the American Otto very little dialogue. And I felt like the ending was rather a cop-out (and for that matter, nearly the same cop-out that Dickinson uses in 'The Devil's Children.')

At the end, Margaret, who was always extremely reluctant to escape to America with Otto and the rest of them, decides, in a dramatic scene, to return to her home with her pony - even though she feared being killed for what she had done. Conveniently, she finds, once she arrives home, that with the death of the witch-hunter, everyone is much more mild and willing to forgive - it was just 'something [the witch-hunter] brought out in us.' This completely avoids having to deal with the anticipated consequences of Margaret's choice.

It's just like at the end of The Devil's Children, after the strict and power-hungry leader of the village is killed and the village is re-taken from a gang of thugs, suddenly all the formerly xenophobic villagers find themselves more willing to accept their neighbors.


Now, this is clearly intentional. Dickinson seems to be saying that without a misled and violent leader swaying people's minds, cooler heads might prevail. However, I'm still not sure that the events as shown in these books fully bolster that statement. I felt the books are too quick to shift the culpability for truly horrific actions onto others. The book uses the Changes (a possibly magical and inexplicable outside influence) as a device to say that people may not be fully responsible for their own actions - and to me, that puts the whole narrative on a weird and shifting footing.

I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing - there's a lot of food for thought here, and it's very refreshing to see complex issues without easy answers in a book intended for young people. Too many books published today lack anything of the sort. However, I still feel that the book could have done a bit more with these issues.

A re-read - I read and enjoyed this book more than once as a child, but long enough ago that I remembered few of the details. ( )

This continuation of The Changes Trilogy, in an England where the population has turned against all technology and leads a Medieval-style rural life, centres on a completely different set of characters to the first novel. The plot is fairly straightforward, around smuggling out a rescued "witch" on a tugboat, but mostly for me lacked excitement or particularly interesting characters. 3/5 ( )