Historical fact and supernatural elements often intermingle in the contemporary young adult novels of Robert Swindells. Perhaps best known for his anti-nuclear novel Brother in the Land, Swindells's other works realistically portray young adults dealing with family problems and social issues while also experiencing visits from shadowy figures and creatures from other planets. "His stories exhibit sheer narrative energy to a high degree: common assent among readers is that few writers' pages are more compulsively turned over," declares Dennis Hamley in an essay for Twentieth-Century Young Adult Writers. "Through an acute historical sense, profound understanding and unease about today's social conditions, and logical projection of them into convincing and disturbing dystopias, Swindells uses narrative to dramatise human failings and young adult possibility highly effectively." A Junior Bookshelf reviewer similarly states that "here is a writer who can tell a tale forcefully and clearly, and can put the young...