This One Might Blow The Young Ones' Minds

Silver City by Cliff McNish is the second in what the author is calling The Silver Sequence. The book stands alone remarkably well, in large part because the writing is so intense and the situation the characters find themselves in is so horrific.

In a just a few pages McNish establishes the scenario--a child who is a few miles long hovers in the sky so that he can provide protection to the children of the world who are gathering beneath him. They are being mysteriously called there because something is coming through space to devour them.

Okay, it's not exactly probable. But the writing is so self-assured and, as I already said, intense, that you have to accept it. I didn't spend any time wondering how this could have happened or how the core characters developed the abilities they have.

Many writers have been unable to pull off a lot more likely situations.

Though it is clear that the children are still endangered at the end of the book, there is a complete story here.