The Night of the Triffids Summary and Reviews

The Night of the Triffids
by Simon Clark

The Night of the Triffids
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Book Summary Information

Author: Simon Clark
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-10-01
ISBN: 0340766018
Number of pages: 469
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Book Reviews of The Night of the Triffids

Book Review: "Triffids" deserves a sequel but this ain't it.
Summary: 1 Stars

This book starts a generation or so after "The Day of the Triffids" ends, with the world again being plunged into darkness, this time because the earth has passed through a cloud of cosmic dust, or something. The cloud conveniently doesn't cut off the heat as well, so we don't just freeze to death. The triffids, of course, take advantage of the situation, and have to be survived all over again.

The hero, son of the original hero, Bill Masen, investigates the event and finds himself taken to America, where another community is holding out on Manhattan Island (why there, for Pete's sake? It would seem even less promising than London, and far less so than America's own Southwest or Great Plains states). In New York (small world isn't it?), he runs into his father's old enemy, Torrance, who was setting up feudal baronies in the last chapter of the original novel, and has now tried his luck across the pond. Torrance hasn't changed much. While the status of the blind is less of an issue now, it seems that Blacks are kept pretty much in their 1950s place. The sequel then runs off into various adventures with new varieties of triffid, and rival groups of human, which I can only hazily recall, and probably won't bother going back to.

In short, a thorough disappointment, and for me at least an infuriating one. I would have loved a decent sequel to Wyndham's book, which is up there with "Earth Abides" as one of my favourite disaster novels, but which left so much more to be told. But this doesn't even come close.

Incidentally, another reviewer asked when "The Day of the Triffids" was supposed to have taken place. Fortunately, we were told that Masen removed his bandages on Wednesday 8th May, which narrows it down a bit. My perpetual calendar shows the following years, subsequent to the book's publication in 1951, when such a date existed - 1957, 1963, 1968, 1974, 1985, 1991, 1996, 2002. Since it's clearly set in the present, or at least very near future, we can probably forget the last four, and a reference in "Night" to the Berlin Wall eliminates 1957. My bet would be 1963, with 1968 and 1974 as possible but less likely. But others may have their own opinion.

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