With this novel Wyndham abandons his contemporary-documentary settings and style and tells a future-post-nuclear-holocaust tale instead - and wow! What a difference!

In contrast to a rather dry telling of a tale in which there is little by way of incident, if possibly a lot by way of thought-provocation, as can be found in The Midwich Cuckoos or Trouble with Lichen, this is a story with much in the vein of adventure story but also a message about religion, (in)tolerance and differences between people - visible or otherwise. Every human grouping in the book (and there are several) claims the moral high-ground but in my view none of them really has sound ethics. Once again Wyndham brings to the fore his rather weak understanding of evolutionary theory but this only detracts slightly from the book, as it is a minor theme raised only near the end.

The fact that this novel generates excitement and pace - becomes difficult to put down in the second half - and has themes not based on spurious extrapolation of Darwinian evolution makes this easily and by far the best of the Wyndham books I've re-read in the last year or so. Day of the Triffids and Chocky remain in the to-read pile.