Christopher,J.(1994). Macmillan Publishing Company.
Roger Sutton (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, July/August 1994 (Vol. 47, No. 11))
After the death of the Master (who was Ben's hitherto-unknown father), Ben and his adoptive family are forced to leave their home on the Old Isle for the Mainland, where worship of the Dark One holds sway, and where terrifying demons fly overhead during religious services known as Summonings. The setting is a dismal future Britain, where people are forbidden to use machines, buildings may be no higher than "six times the height of a man," and dim stories of humans landing on the moon are dismissed as lies, for everyone knows that the Moon is the home of the demons. The menace is convincing but the premise is complicated, really too big for the book, and the storytelling is unwieldy: Ben and his "sister" Paddy are chased and caught all over the place, but we are never quite sure why. Most of the mystery is cleared up at the end, but the revelations (the meaning of Ben's inherited amulet, the true nature of the demons) seem arbitrary, almost as if the author didn't know where he was going until he got there. While the book doesn't have the expert adventure of Christopher's popular Tripods books, it does have an appealingly impetuous young hero, lots of action, and the promise of at least one sequel. Ad--Additional book of acceptable quality for collections needing more material in the area. ( )