Rating: 
Summary: Night of the Triffids
Review: A good read, it stays close to the theme of the original although it does step on the toes of its predecessor a bit by immitating the style to almost a formulaic fasion, though not to a great distraction. I mean common it is written though the eyes of Bills son so you'd expect there to be some similarities. To it's credit it does go quickly and is digested without much trouble. If you're looking for literary fiction this ain't it, it's actually enjoyable.
Rating: 
Summary: A bit of a disappointment
Review: As someone who has read most of John Wyndham's (the author of the original "Day of ...") books, I hoped to find something similar in this book. I did. The writing style of it looks the same as the original, but several things are different/wrong: All of Wyndham's books were short, clear and concise. This one is much too long and verbose. Each of Wyndham's books showed how human society is fragile by changing some "little" thing and then telling what the catastrophic consequences would be. This allways gave food for thought. This one tries a little with the darkness and the "new" triffids, but it fails IMHO to do it in a believable way. Wyndhams books were believable even though they introduced strange things like walking plants. The reason behind the darkness (the night) in "Night of ..." seems silly and out of place. And then there are the "new" triffids. In the end you start asking yourself when there'll be triffids driving cars, or flying aeroplanes.
The book started well, feeling like a new Wyndham book, but in the end, after too many pages, I was left with an empty hollow impression and the feeling of having wasted my time. This was the first and last book I'll read by Simon Clark.
Rating:
Summary: Don't triffle with the Triffids
Review: Granted the book is dedicated to John Wyndham and has the evident approval of his estate. Yet one of the great sci-fi writers of the last century must be rolling in his grave over this episodic and often downright silly romp, loaded with absurd plot contrivances and strained dialogue. Wyndham was a model of intelligence and restraint. Here Simon Clark goes for the gusto, creating cardboard heroes and Snidley Whiplash villains in what reads like a tribute to dimestore pulp sci-fi. In a word: Dumb.
Rating: 
Summary: A Triumphant Return of the Triffids
Review: I am a fan of both Clark and Wyndham, and it was a great feeling to see such an homage paid to a classic. Clark managed to capture the feeling of Wyndham's book while not losing his own voice, no mean feat. I highly recommend this book whether or not you've read the original.The Night of the Triffids takes place 30 years after the first book, with William Masen's son as the main character. We follow David through many adventures beginning on the Isle of Wight and continuing on to America. The cast of characters was well rounded and believable. I was sorry to put the book down at the end but was very glad to see the door was left open for another possible sequel.
Rating:
Summary: Not Wyndham, but it is still Triffids
Review: I am always saddened when a good author passes. Sometimes another author will take up some of the ideas. Sometimes that is a good author like Simon Clark. One night the Earth is plunged into darkness and triffids can once again get the upper hand on humanity. Our hero, son of the previous hero, immediately finds himself in the middle of things twenty-five years after the original tale. After crashing a plane while trying to discover the extent of the darkness, he discovers floating mats of vegetation that can transport triffids to island communities, some people are immune to triffid poison, there are some major settlements in the Americas (including Manhattan), triffids are adapting to changing environments, and all is not as it seems. He is rescued and taken to Manhattan where tens of thousands of people live in pre-blindness splendor. The Manhattan power structure is very interested in some of the developments from our hero's colony. He quickly becomes a pawn in some major power plays that could have serious repercussions for his home community. A very wonderful extension of the triffid story. My only problem was the appearance of the giant triffids. While there size is not out of the scope of plants, I felt they should have suffered some in the mobility department. Much longer than the original, this tale is full of action, discovery, human interest and hope for humanity. A must for triffid or Clark fans.
Rating:
Summary: Not Wyndham, but it is still Triffids
Review: I am always saddened when a good author passes. Sometimes another author will take up some of the ideas. Sometimes that is a good author like Simon Clark. One night the Earth is plunged into darkness and triffids can once again get the upper hand on humanity. Our hero, son of the previous hero, immediately finds himself in the middle of things twenty-five years after the original tale. After crashing a plane while trying to discover the extent of the darkness, he discovers floating mats of vegetation that can transport triffids to island communities, some people are immune to triffid poison, there are some major settlements in the Americas (including Manhattan), triffids are adapting to changing environments, and all is not as it seems. He is rescued and taken to Manhattan where tens of thousands of people live in pre-blindness splendor. The Manhattan power structure is very interested in some of the developments from our hero's colony. He quickly becomes a pawn in some major power plays that could have serious repercussions for his home community. A very wonderful extension of the triffid story. My only problem was the appearance of the giant triffids. While there size is not out of the scope of plants, I felt they should have suffered some in the mobility department. Much longer than the original, this tale is full of action, discovery, human interest and hope for humanity. A must for triffid or Clark fans.
Rating: 
Summary: A waste of a tree. (It's a large-ish book!)
Review: I hadn't read anything by Simon Clark before buying this book and I won't bother reading anything else of his in the future. There was nothing that I really liked about this tale, right from the start. It wasn't difficult to read, it was that, after getting through the first couple of chapters, I felt it was all very much like vanilla-flavoured junket; it went down okay but it was all rather bland and unsatisfying. Maybe my impressions were influenced by my liking of Wyndham's tale - so much, in fact, that I have read and re-read the original story so many times over the past 40 years that I know it off by heart! The biggest disappointment of the lot with "Night Of...." is the ridiculous situation whereby the triffids mutate into several different versions, all within the space of 25 years (the gap between the end of the original book and the start of this one). I won't mention specifics, so as not to divulge anything for those who buy the book, but it struck me that at least Wyndham's triffids were hybrid plants created "in the lab" through the auspices of humans mucking around with what we would now refer to as "genetic engineering".
There are also several situations where things are just so conveniently arranged (a hidden cache of weapons, for example) that you find yourself squirming with frustration when you come across them. Clark's writing style also gave me the impression that it was aimed at a younger age group - around the early teens. There isn't one swear word; I think that the strongest curse is "Goddamn!" and there are a few "bastards" and "bloodys" around the place.
Whilst I don't believe in pouring on the expletives just for the sake of it, real life would indicate that, when faced with an attacking horde of triffids, even my maiden aunt would use the 'S' word! I have always wanted to see a sequel to the original but this certainly isn't it, I'm really sorry to say.
If John Wyndham is watching from on high, he must be one embarrassed angel. Bruce Kennewell
Rating:
Summary: Excellent read, well written and fast paced
Review: I loved the original "Day of..." having read it many times, I would go as far to say its my favourite book. I've always hoped someone would write something else in the "Triffid" universe and thankfully Simon Clark has come through. Don't be put off by the "oh its not John wyndam" etc etc posts, this really is a good read, the characters are developed well and you get that sense of discovering "alternate societies" that I liked from the original. I enjoyed the fact that Simon Clark has stuck with the same style of writing as Wyndam, one reviewer commented on the the lack of swearing being unrealistic, I just saw it as a continuation of the original style which was very old world IMHO. Overall I would thoroughly recommend this book to any fan of the original and I hope that Simon Clark continues to write more novels in the Triffid universe!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent read, well written and fast paced
Review: I loved the original "Day of..." having read it many times, I would go as far to say its my favourite book. I've always hoped someone would write something else in the "Triffid" universe and thankfully Simon Clark has come through. Don't be put off by the "oh its not John wyndam" etc etc posts, this really is a good read, the characters are developed well and you get that sense of discovering "alternate societies" that I liked from the original. I enjoyed the fact that Simon Clark has stuck with the same style of writing as Wyndam, one reviewer commented on the the lack of swearing being unrealistic, I just saw it as a continuation of the original style which was very old world IMHO. Overall I would thoroughly recommend this book to any fan of the original and I hope that Simon Clark continues to write more novels in the Triffid universe!
Rating:
Summary: Brave New Gardener's World
Review: Sequelising established classics of fiction can often cause an apocalypse on a critical scale within the media not unlike the global one in John Wyndam's 'Day of the Triffids'. Fan and reviewer engage in a tug of war; one side citing the sequel a 'celebration', the other side 'desecration'. With this in mind (not to mention the £18 price tag), I decided to give Simon Clark's 'Night of the Triffids' a miss last year, ardent 'triffidite' though I am. I was certain that if I read it I would be unable to block out the sounds of a dead horse being flogged, but after re-reading Wyndham's peerless original I caved in and bought it. Leaving aside the revolting cover, painted by somebody who is clearly only vaguely familiar with the Triffids, it's better than you might think.
Simon Clark had an unenviable task in capturing Wyndham's austere 1950's prose, one which could have left the characters stilted and the dialogue trite. And although some cliches do abound (plenty of 'gee's!' and 'hot diggety's! to keep you cringing here) Clark pulls off the task manfully, not unlike Wyndham's 'where men are men' narratives. The plot, where the original novel's protagonist's son David finds himself in a post holocaust New York, rolls along engagingly if a little roughly, but if nothing else this is assuredly the same world we left at the end of 'Day..'. However, where the goal of that novel was for mankind to drag itself from the ashes, here the goal is for the remaining scraps of civilisation to keep it's head above water. This is treated logically in NOTT, with conflicting and increasingly xenophobic communities tentatively making contact with one another whilst keeping the ravaging Triffid's at bay. Naturally enough, as with all the great empires of antiquity, the most prosperous community in New York, with it's electricity, TV's and cars has been founded on slavery and brutality. There the novel interestingly postulates an alternative future where the civil rights movements of the sixties did not take place, but the re-emergence of Torrence, the evil 'red headed man' of the first book is un-neccessary. The idea that he could have made it back to Brighton from Surrey through a Triffid infested England and then sailed to New York and rebuilt it is just plain silly. A new character with the same motivations would have been more believable, but then I suppose DOTT was not without it's own unlikely meetings also (the way in which Torrence himself appears both at the beginning and at the end for example).
Presumably though, one of the trickiest challenges Clark would have had to have faced was that his novel was always going to lack the central intrigue of Wyndham's; that an unthinkable catastrophe has befallen the global community without warning,and he kind of solves this by employing a wry reversal of the circumstances that opened the first book. In the beginning David awakens into a pitch darkness that has been caused not by a lack of vision but by the sun's light being blotted out by a mysterious cosmic cloud. It's a disturbing calamity that had great potential story-wise, but sadly the author seemed to have gotten bored of it and a few hundred pages later it just drifts away into the background. The original novel's second great intrigue, the Triffid's themselves, are also expanded upon here, but yet again the potential for the Triffid's hyper evolution and mutation is fumbled. Mercifully, a monster that can and has been the stuff of the most ludicrous B-movie treatment is written intelligently, but by the time we come to the end, well, I don't want to spoil it for you but imagine if Godzilla had been an enraged asparagus instead of a radioactive lizard.
What about the sinister satellite weapons that David Masen postulates as the cause of the 'Blinding' in DOTT? Could another malfunctioning weapon of mass destruction not have been the cause of the eerie blackout? And if you're going to augment the triffids why not have them interbreeding with other dangerous forms of plantlife for added nastiness? I wouldn't like to come face to face with a giant Triffid thorn bush in the dark I can tell you! Wyndham was careful to create a monster that had some footing in the science of genetic modification. Giant killer plants lumbering through Manhattan deaden that realistic quality. Reeling in my poisoned stinger for a second though, it has to be said that on the level of sheer blissful entertainment NOTT delivers splendidly. It's an archaic novel, but deliberately so, and recaptures a halcyon age of unpretentious sci-fi, the kind that makes you want to stick a fish bowl on your head, plant a flag in the surface of your garden and claim it in the name of the Earth. In an odd sort of way, the book is freed from certain modern literary constraints in it's imitation of a pre 1960's style- there's no tedious introspection here or trendy narrative chopping back and forth. Every page counts, and for that alone it's worth the four stars.
To anyone who loves the original but was in two minds about this book as I was, buy it, and approach it in the same way that the author probably did; that it's not going to be possible to beat DOTT, but it's
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