By David Owen

Atom, out now

Something affects four very different women in the Midwich Tower, leaving them all pregnant…

If that sounds very familiar, it’s meant to: The Fallen Children is a conscious – and fully acknowledged – reworking of the themes and incidents within John Wyndham’s acclaimed novel The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed, twice, as Village of the Damned, with a sequel movie to the original also made). Aimed squarely at the teenage market, it’s a fascinating novel for the ways  in which Owen reinterprets Wyndham, and applies his own take on the situation, which, he freely admits in his preface, is designed to show the difficulties that youngsters face today, and how many are not properly nurtured.

Owen tells his story through the voices of two of the girls who are made pregnant by the Nightout (his equivalent of the Dayout in the original), who are vastly different in outlooks, as well as Morris, the former boyfriend of one of them who takes on the role of father to her boy. A good portion of the novel recounts their lives before the Children are born, including the reactions that the news brings from their peers and parents, during which Owen makes some critical changes to the storyline that has a rather larger knock-on effect on the second half than you might originally think…

Although I’m reliably informed that some of the slang in the book is “so 2008”, the voices of the characters come across clearly, and their very different perspectives on the Children and how they affect their lives feel genuine.

Verdict: An intriguing and thought-provoking reworking of a classic novel. 8/10

Paul Simpson