The White Mountains (The Tripods #1)

The world is controlled by the Tripods. No one is sure if they are all machine or part machine and part organic, but everyone is afraid of them. When you come of age you are pulled up into a tripod and returned with your hair shaved off, a metal mesh "cap" on your head and changed. You don't seem quite as alive somehow. You don't play anymore, you serve. Almost everyone serves the Tripods, whether a farmer or a member of the royal court, male or female. There are a few exceptions. They were somehow incompatible and instead they went mad.

A boy watches as one by one his friends are taken and changed by the Tripods and he decides to run. He eventually joins up with two other runners and they learn of a network of people who are fighting the control of the tripods. These people tell them how to reach a place where they will be free of them, a place called the White Mountains, but it's across the sea where the language is strange. And it's a good bet that if you are "capped" in a place where they don't speak your language that you'll be incompatible.

*John Christopher is a pseudonym of Sam Youd.*