Literature / Pilgrennon's Children

The series protagonist is Dana Provine, an autistic girl with the ability to mentally interact with computers, who discovers that she and her twin brother Cale, along with three other children, came about as a result of unethical genetic and technological experiments. The plots concern Dana's encounters with deuteragonists Professor Jananin Blake, her vengeful genetic mother whose gametes were used without her consent; Doctor Ivor Pilgrennon, the remorseful genetics and psychology researcher responsible for the experiments; the other children; and various high-tech threats. The series explores themes such as revenge, forgiveness, repentance, family and belonging, intergenerational trauma, ethics and consent in science and medicine, and the duality of genetics and environment.

The books in the series are:

1. Pilgrennon's Beacon (2010)
2. Pilgrennon's Gambit (2024)
3. The Emerald Forge (2012)
4. The Lambton Worm (unknown, listed on publisher's website and in books as fourth)

Pilgrennon's Children contains examples of:

• Abandoned Area: In Pilgrennon's Beacon, Ivor lives in hiding with Alpha and Peter, two of his children, in an abandoned World War II base on a tiny, uninhabited island off the coast of Scotland. The base was obviously meant to be secret, and he doesn't know what its original purpose was.
• AB Negative: Dana has a rare blood type, which Jananin shares, allowing her to donate blood when Dana is found to be anemic spoiler:from the forcible blood draw in The Emerald Forge.
• Action Girl: Jananin Blake. Skilled in kendo and iaido, and knowledgeable about poisons and explosives.
• Adults Are Useless: Dana's teachers show varying levels of incompetence, ignorance, overwork, and general apathy. Miss Robinson in Pilgrennon's Beacon in particular, is so ignorant that she makes an ableist comment to Pauline implying that Dana's autism is an act for 'attention' and is so incompetent that she fails to implement her own solutions to keep Dana safe from the bullies that have been reported to the school.
• Anti-Hero: Jananin Blake. Principled and loyal to those she trusts, a competent fighter and problem solver, and so good at her job she's employed by one of the top universities in the country and has been awarded a Nobel Prize for one of her discoveries, but with a hair-trigger temper, a sadistic streak, and a tolerance for collateral that any reasonable person would consider totally unacceptable.
• Anti-Villain: Ivor Pilgrennon. His former research is illegal and deeply unethical. Initially when Dana encounters him after a decade in hiding, he provides a highly curated and misleading version of events. When he does admit the truth to her, his attitude is somewhat self-pitying. On the other hand, he expresses remorse for his past behaviour and seems to genuinely care about Dana and the other children. Complicated further by a revelation of childhood trauma caused by his abusive parents and sister's suicide, and when it becomes apparent that he doesn't see autism as a disability, sees autistic people as a persecuted minority, and was motivated to some degree by the belief he was helping.
• Archnemesis Dad: Ivor Pilgrennon.
• Brain/Computer Interface: Dana and Pilgrennon's other children, who have radio transceivers implanted between their frontal lobes, which allow them to interface with wireless technologies and GPS signals.
• Calling Parents by Their Name: When Isaiah Redwood comments on this to Dana, suggesting most people in America use "mom and dad" she replies, "Those aren't their names."
• Camera Spoofing: Dana overrides a school CCTV camera in The Emerald Forge with images of the empty corridor so people won't know she and Eric are in the building after school.
• Changeling Fantasy: Dana's genetic parents are literally an iaido-practising Nobel laureate and an information terrorist in hiding in an abandoned military base.
• Chekhov's Gun: In Pilgrennon's Children Dana has a broken fuse that was given to her by her foster father Graeme. At Roareim, her fuse is accidentally mixed up with Ivor's good fuses, and he ends up using it to make his Compton bomb, meaning the bomb doesn't generate an EMP, and the three have to destroy their target another way.
• Cool Airship: The Stormcaller in The Emerald Forge is an enormous and not very aerodynamic vehicle that stays in the air by means of driving charged particles in a magnetic field, and drags whole weather systems around with it.
• Cope by Creating: In The Emerald Forge, Dana has started making Airfix models, on her therapist's advice that she go somewhere quiet and do something she enjoys that takes up all her concentration whenever she gets upset.
• Deadpan Snarker: Jananin Blake throughout much of Pilgrennon's Gambit. Her murderous hatred of Ivor is quelled by an alliance of necessity against a common enemy, and their relationship gradually evolves into a grudging mutual respect. Examples include him asking her to help him choose a jacket that would suit him and help him blend in, to which she replies that the store doesn't stock straitjackets, and refusing to lend him a knife unless its intended use is seppuku.
• Designer Babies: Ivor donated sperm from his autistic patients anonymously to a fertility clinic, which resulted in Alpha's conception. He created embryos by combining his own edited DNA with Blake's stolen ova and a number of other women's donated ova to create the other four children. Jananin refers to his efforts as "eugenics experiments."
• Disappeared Dad: Eric mentions in The Emerald Forge that his dad left, he doesn't know where for, and that his parents never really knew each other.
• Dramatic Drop: In Pilgrennon's Beacon Dana and Jananin are eating together when the TV starts showing a missing persons report about Dana. When a police image of Jananin appears on TV, Jananin drops her fork.
• Elective Mute: Cale is capable of speaking, but doesn't like to. Dana does most of the speaking for him.
• EMP: 'Compton bomb' is a name popularized by the media for explosively pumped flux compression generators after Ivor first went into hiding and set off one that destroyed his research institute, using the resulting chaos to flee. In Pilgrennon's Beacon Jananin expresses concern that Ivor will set off a device that will destroy the devices in the children's brains, causing severe brain damage. In Pilgrennon's Gambit Ivor sets off a Compton bomb on a building site in London to allow him, Jananin, and Dana to break in to the bunker where one of the Cerberus computers is concealed. Jananin and Ivor try to use a smaller Compton bomb to destroy the Cerberus computer in the bunker, which detonates but fails to generate an EMP, as a result of a broken fuse used as a component. The first bomb kills Alpha, who was outside Blake's Faraday-cage car thanks to a Good Samaritan who was concerned about children left unattended, and sets off a wave of crime and destruction for miles around. Pilgrennon sets off another Compton bomb while being pursued in a helicopter, destroying his pursuers and himself and saving Jananin and Dana.
• Enemy Mine: In Pilgrennon's Gambit, Ivor, Jananin, and Dana are forced to work together to take down the supercomputer Cerberus, which manipulates votes for the government.
• Foster Kid: Dana and Cale's foster parents, Graeme and Pauline, are an uncommon positive example. They genuinely care about the kids, although Dana is still miserable with them because of difficulties at school.
• Full-Conversion Cyborg: The villains of The Emerald Forge have used Jananin's technology to place the brain and some of the body tissue of a dolphin into a mechanical wyvern body that spoiler:Gamma can control with her mind.
• The Grotesque: Norman Prendick in The Emerald Forge. Dana is horrified by her initial encounter with him, as an industrial accident destroyed his eyes and left him with skin grafts where they once were.
• Gym Class Hell: Dana hates PE, partly because of having to change in front of people, and partly because her classmates see it as an excuse to be verbally and physically abusive.
• Heel–Face Turn: Ivor Pilgrennon in Pilgrennon's Gambit. Initially, he attempts to confront Blake in such a way that the children won't be hurt. When she fails to kill him, they enter into an alliance of necessity to protect Dana from Cerberus. He comes to realise over the course of the book that his priorities have changed and that protecting Dana and Peter is all that matters to him now.
• Heroic Fire Rescue: While the Emerald Forge is burning down, Gamma climbs a chimney to escape the flames. Dana flies to her on the wyvern's back and pulls her onto the wyvern. Too weighed down to fly, the wyvern enters a controlled descent and deposits both of them relatively unharmed on the ground.
• House Husband: In Pilgrennon's Gambit Ivor's empathy and physical affection give him a role more traditionally seen as 'motherly' compared to Jananin, and typically he's more involved with Dana and the other children's day-to-day care and the matter of what they eat. Jananin disappears several times to meet contacts, look for leads, or resolve situations, leaving him hiding with the children. The one time he goes out and leaves her with the children, Dana has an autistic meltdown and Jananin loses her temper.
• Iaijutsu Practitioner: Jananin Blake is trained in iaido and carries and uses Japanese blades in several scenes, notably when she attempts to execute Ivor with the kesa giri strike in an act of Revenge. Heroes Prefer Swords, Katanas Are Just Better, and the character has some ties to Japan as explained in the second book. On Fuyutoshi, firearms and explosives are strictly prohibited (which is later explained as a plot point) and the police as well as some civilians are allowed to carry blades, with this part of the book including a martial arts fight.
• Ideal Hero: Air Commodore Rajesh Rajani. In Pilgrennon's Gambit he's an Ace Pilot who comes to the rescue. In The Emerald Forge he comes to the rescue riding a horse. Asides from some slightly dubious language he uses when referring to Russians, he is gallant and chivalrous, and seems to be an all-around good guy.
• Interrupted Suicide: While Gamma was a child in an abusive mental hospital, she broke out of her room at night, went into the bathroom, and attempted suicide by cutting her wrists with a disposable razor. She was found before she lost consciousness.
• It's All My Fault: In The Emerald Forge, Dana releases a number of experimented-on animals, which travel to Gamma's former mental hospital and set it on fire, killing dozens. Dana blames herself for the attack, but Jananin tells her that they were programmed to do it, and were probably going to be released soon anyway.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: In Pilgrennon's Gambit Jananin interrogates Ivor by burning his arm with a hot poker, but the arrival of the police prevents her taking it further.
• Kids Are Cruel: Dana's classmate Abigail delights in tormenting her, and her 'henchgirls' do whatever Abigail wants. Early in the first book, Dana gets into a fight with Abigail and some of her cronies in the bathroom, falls, and suffers a concussion, which is how the device in her brain is discovered.
• Kids Driving Cars: While Dana is trying to find Pilgrennon's hideout in the first book, she steals a car and figures out how to drive it, with much trial and error. Luckily she's in a sparsely populated area, and manages to travel a number of miles before crashing.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: In Pilgrennon's Beacon Ivor Pilgrennon admits to Dana during a heated argument between them, that apart from a few of his own genetic edits, he's essentially her father.
• Mad Scientist: Played with and largely subverted in three of the adult characters. Dana envisions Ivor before their first meeting as being an evil James Bond villain, only to find he's nothing like that. Jananin has an autism spectrum disorder and anger issues, and despite having a job at a university and a research group, is on a couple of occasions seen to be inventing things in sheds. Steve Gideon is an eccentric polydactyl with a caffeine and nicotine addiction.
• Married to the Job: Ivor claims his wife left him because he was too engrossed in his work as a child psychologist to realize that his marriage was falling apart, and also because she wanted kids and he was more interested in the autistic children he worked with than in having biological ones.
• Mercy Kill: In The Emerald Forge, Dana throws the "sphinx," a product of inhumane experiments, off a building because she knows from its signal that it doesn't want to live.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: The villains of The Emerald Forge conduct experiments on animals that include grafting a monkey's head onto a cat's body and grafting multiple cobra heads onto a Komodo dragon in order to satisfy Gamma's obsession with mythological creatures.
• Mysterious Parent: Both of them.
• No Social Skills: Both Dana and Jananin plus several of the secondary characters, due to autism spectrum disorders.
• Papa Wolf: Jananin's father, in an anecdote she tells Dana and Ivor where he stood up to her teachers at school after an altercation she had with another pupil.
• Power Incontinence: Unlike Dana, Peter's interactions with computers tend to be unpredictable. In the first two books he wears an imitation Viking helmet most of the time to shield himself as well as any devices around him.
• The Power of Hate: During her Battle in the Center of the Mind with Cerberus, Dana draws on every horrible experience she's ever had, which causes Cerberus's two remaining heads to turn on each other.
• Punk in the Trunk: On Jananin's suggestion, Dana hides in the trunk of a man's car while he takes a ferry to the island where Ivor Pilgrennon is believed to be hiding.
• Redemption Equals Death: In the final act of Pilgrennon's Gambit, Jananin and Ivor make a plan to destroy the last remaining Cerberus unit, involving a deal that Blake will permit Pilgrennon to live in peace under an assumed identity, provided he never 'experiments on so much as a fruit-fly' again. Unfortunately the plan goes wrong, and he ends up detonating a bomb and killing himself to finish Cerberus and allow Jananin and Dana to escape from Russians.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Steve Gideon seals the remaining Cerberus computer in a Faraday cage to try to prevent it from coming to or doing any more harm.
• Seeing Through Another's Eyes:
  • Prendick can see through the eyes of one of Gamma's mind-controlled eagles, since both of them have transceivers in their brains. spoiler:Gamma uses this to ensure his loyalty, as she can take away his sight at a moment's notice.
  • When Dana rides a horse that also has a transceiver in its brain, she can feel its heartbeat and the dirt under its hooves, hear the flies buzzing in its ears, and see its panoramic view.
• Shining City: Fuyutoshi in Pilgrennon's Gambit.
• Stalker with a Test Tube: Ivor stole Jananin's ova to create Dana and Cale because she had autism, and because he believed future generations shouldn't be deprived of her intelligence.
• Tastes Like Purple: One effect of the titular beacon, which Ivor Pilgrennon set up to attract his children, is temporary synesthesia.
  Dana: I keep seeing telephones dialling. And hearing pictures.
• Technopath: Because Dana could mentally interface to computers during the critical learning period of her infancy, she can interpret data from other computers as easily as information from her senses. She can use GPS data to navigate, copy test answers from school computers, and play a VR game without a headset, among other things.
• Tinfoil Hat: Dana, Peter, and Alpha spend part of Pilgrennon's Gambit wearing foil-lined hats so Cerberus won't be able to detect them.
• Ultra Super Death Gore Fest Chainsawer 3000: In The Emerald Forge, Eric and Dana play "Pillage and Burn III," where you loot villages and use what you find to make better weapons.
• What Are Records?: When Ivor shows Dana an old computer with a mouse, Dana doesn't know what it is. She's used to using touchscreens with a stylus.
• Why Couldn't You Be Different?: Ivor's professional and personal interest in autism seems to be rooted in childhood trauma from the abuse of his older sister Lydia, who had undiagnosed autism, by their parents. When she regressed due to bullying, his mother tried to turn Ivor against her and claimed she was insane. She denied her access to her interests in the hope it would force her to be normal, but instead she just sat in her room and did nothing. After she was finally Driven to Suicide at fourteen, their parents threw out her belongings and never mentioned her again. Ivor attempts to psychoanalyse himself and his family in Pilgrennon's Gambit and concludes that his mother was unintentionally re-enacting abuse of herself by her own father on Lydia, and that Ivor's unethical experiments were motivated by the subconscious fear that if he had a child naturally, and it was neurotypical and had a personality similar to his mother's, he would be unable to love it because of what she had done to Lydia, thereby perpetuating a cycle of emotional abuse.