The Night of the Triffids

    At the end of The Day of the Triffids, the hero,
Bill Masen, his wife, and four-year-old son leave the British mainland to join a
new colony on the Isle of Wight. The Night of the Triffids takes up the
story 25 years later. David Masen, the now grown-up son of Bill, is a pilot,
still searching for a method of destroying the implacable triffid plant as it
continues its worldwide march, seemingly intent on wiping out humankind. David
eventually manages to reach New York, where a very different sort of colony has
been set up, a colony whose members seem to be immune to the triffid string and
where David comes face to face with an old enemy from his father's past.
    
***
    
    From Publishers Weekly
    In John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids (1951),
mankind is overtaken-and much of it blinded-by the demonic walking plant of the
title, a monster created in a lab in an act of Cold War profiteering. Clark
(Vampyrrhic, etc.) picks up the story more than 25 years later, puts a
new narrator at the helm and spins a brisk and engaging adventure-cum-horror
yarn. Clark's narrator is David Masen, son of scientist Bill Masen (the
protagonist from Wyndham's book). The Masen family, along with a handful of
other survivors, has set up an outpost on the Isle of Wight, and have gone about
rebuilding society. A major part of this renewal involves a particularly bizarre
idea called the Mother House, a convent-like home where women spend their lives
giving birth over and over again. All seems well, until one morning when the sun
doesn't rise and the triffids, long thought condemned to the mainland, attack.
Clearly marketed as a genre horror title, this crafty continuation is elegant in
its construction. Clark's prose is clean, thoughtful and perfectly suited to his
faux doomsday-memoir approach. Less cautionary than the original, but more
literary than many books of its ilk, this is a truly enjoyable voyage.
    
***
    
    From Library Journal
    A quarter of a century after an invasion by the deadly
alien plants known as triffids blinded most of the world's human population and
caused the collapse of civilization, only a small colony of survivors on the
Isle of Wight continues to preserve what they can of society and culture. When a
new phenomenon arises, resulting in the darkening of the atmosphere, pilot David
Masen, the son of the colony's founder, sets out to discover the source of the
problem-and encounters a new group of technologically advanced survivors from
across the Atlantic. Continuing the classic tale of alien invasion begun 25
years ago in John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids, Clark envisions a
world poised to fight back against their invaders. Winner of the 2002 British
Fantasy Award for Best Novel, he retains a feel for SF pulp horror in an
action-filled tale that captures the spirit of the original story. Recommended
for most SF collections.
    
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    'The hottest new purveyor of horrific thrills currently
working on these shores.'
    -Big Issue
    
    'A master of eerie thrills.'
    -Richard Laymon
    
    'NIGHT OF THE TRIFFIDS, essentially a story of good
versus evil, is an intriguing and enjoyable sequel that should delight
appreciators of Wyndham's work.'
    -The Third Alternative
    
    'A definite confirmation of this author's growing
reputation as one of the top genre novelists around today.'
    -Starburst
    
    'Readers will relish Clark's uncomplicated cocktail of
chlorophyl and human blood.'
    -Financial Times