The Switchers Trilogy is a fantasy

Fantasy

Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

 book series for young adults, written by Kate Thompson

Kate Thompson (author)

Kate Thompson is an award-winning writer for children and adults. Born in Halifax, Yorkshire, she has lived in Ireland, where many of her books are set, since 1981. She is the youngest child of the social historians and peace activists E. P. Thompson and Dorothy Towers...

. The series is mainly set in Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

. The leading characters are teenagers with the power to shapeshift

Shapeshifting

Shapeshifting is a common theme in mythology, folklore, and fairy tales. It is also found in epic poems, science fiction literature, fantasy literature, children's literature, Shakespearean comedy, ballet, film, television, comics, and video games...

 (or "Switch") into the forms of animal

Animal

Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and...

s and various supernatural

Supernatural

The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...

 creatures.

Major characters

• Tess: An only child who lives with her parents in Dublin city. Tess is thirteen at the beginning of the first book, and the final book deals with the events which precede her fifteenth birthday, concluding with her turning fifteen. Tess is a Switcher (shapeshifter
  ShapeShifter
  ShapeShifter is an Application Enhancer plugin for Mac OS X developed by Unsanity that allows the user to make system-wide modifications to the appearance of the operating system's graphical interface by applying GUI skins through “injection” into running code and without modifying system files,...
  
  ), as well as being the principal protagonist
  Protagonist
  A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
  
   of the series. She is initially reluctant to accept the existence of the supernatural world which her powers make open to her, and her rather narrow view of the world limits the array of forms which she can take. However, as the books progress, she becomes increasingly open-minded, and her range expands greatly. Throughout the series, Tess struggles with the choice of what to become when she makes her final, irreversible Switch on her fifteenth birthday.

• Kevin: Another Switcher. When he discovered his ability to Switch, Kevin used the animal world as a means of escape from his unfulfilling human life, eventually deciding to leave behind humanity altogether. In Switchers, he appears as a shabbily dressed teenager living on the streets. He assumes the form of a phoenix at the end of this book- albeit out of necessity; he had been hit by a missile while in the form of a dragon and a phoenix was the only form he could think of to save his life-, but Tess finds a way to transform him back into a human at the end of Midnight's Choice, Kevin subsequently coming to accept his human status.

• Elizabeth "Lizzie" Larten: A widowed woman living alone in a semi-rural part of Dublin. Lizzie was once a Switcher herself, but evidently chose to remain human by the time she lost the gift on her fifteenth birthday. She owns many cats, uses atrocious grammar, and is rather eccentric in her views. She acts as Tess's confidante and adviser in matters relating to Tess's powers as a Switcher.

The Switching Power

The term "Switching" is used in these books as a euphemism for shapeshifting. Most of the series' main characters either possess this gift or did at one point, and are referred to as "Switchers". The power is not limited to creatures of the current age or of the natural world, and can be used to assume the form of animals long-since extinct or of supernatural creatures. However, unless the Switcher is aware of their power's potential as such, these fantastical dimensions of the gift remain untapped. At sunrise on their fifteenth birthday, all Switchers lose their power, and are forever bound to the form in which they exist at that moment. No explanation is given as to this phenomenon.

Toward the end of the first book, Lizzie reveals that all children are born with the ability to Switch, but that unless they discover it before they turn eight (the age at which their minds begin to conform to the ideas presented by others) it remains dormant within them and never surfaces again. Therefore, very few children ever learn to use the power.

In Wild Blood

Wild Blood (novel)

Wild Blood is a fantasy novel by Kate Thompson. It concludes the stories of Tess, a young Irish shapeshifter , and Kevin, a former Switcher. It also introduces several other characters, such as Tess's three cousins and their father Maurice...

, the final book of the series, the Switching power is revealed to originate from interbreeding between humans and members of the Tuatha Dé Danann

Tuatha Dé Danann

The Tuatha Dé Danann are a race of people in Irish mythology. In the invasions tradition which begins with the Lebor Gabála Érenn, they are the fifth group to settle Ireland, conquering the island from the Fir Bolg....

, who were well known for their shapeshifting abilities. This book also reveals that Switchers can choose to become like their fairy ancestors, and so retain their gift beyond their fifteenth birthday, but such a transformation permanently cuts them off from the human world.

Switchers

A lonely teenage girl named Tess finds solace in using her ability to 'Switch' to explore the animal world. When she meets Kevin, another Switcher, he reveals to her that an enormously powerful force is threatening to usher in a new Ice Age

Ice age

An ice age or, more precisely, glacial age, is a generic geological period of long-term reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers...

. Kevin and Tess alone have the power to stop this terrible threat. Before she knows what is happening, Tess finds herself leaving behind her comfortable home and her parents to journey with Kevin to the Arctic

Arctic

The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...

 circle, where they must face the fearsome and ancient krools.

Midnight's Choice

With Kevin happily settled into the form of a phoenix

Phoenix (mythology)

The phoenix or phenix is a mythical sacred firebird that can be found in the mythologies of the Arabian, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Chinese, Indian and Phoenicians....

, Tess turns her attention to helping a depressed fellow Switcher named Martin to choose his path when he turns fifteen. But Martin's habits of Switching are unconventional, for he has taken refuge from his grief and loneliness in the cold, dark persona of a vampire

Vampire

Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...

. Soon Tess is in a race against time to save Martin, and herself, from the darkness of the vampire world.

Wild Blood

Tess' fifteenth birthday looms ahead, the day when she must soon decide on one, permanent form which she will wear for the rest of her life. Her choice is not made any easier when her parents send her to stay with her cousins in Clare during her birthday. While at her cousins' house, Tess discovers that there is something strange and frightening lurking in the nearby woods, beckoning her to join it in its otherworldly domain.

Major themes

The primary focus of the series is the idea of "coming of age", and the possibilities with which teenagers are faced in the modern world. This theme recurs throughout many of Kate Thompson's books. The series also deals with various mythological

Mythology

The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...

 creatures such as vampires, phoenixes

Phoenix (mythology)

The phoenix or phenix is a mythical sacred firebird that can be found in the mythologies of the Arabian, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Chinese, Indian and Phoenicians....

 and fairies

Fairy

A fairy is a type of mythical being or legendary creature, a form of spirit, often described as metaphysical, supernatural or preternatural.Fairies resemble various beings of other mythologies, though even folklore that uses the term...

, as well as shapeshifters

Shapeshifting

Shapeshifting is a common theme in mythology, folklore, and fairy tales. It is also found in epic poems, science fiction literature, fantasy literature, children's literature, Shakespearean comedy, ballet, film, television, comics, and video games...

 (referred to as 'Switchers' in the books). The idea of choice is another a central theme of the series.

Publication history

Switchers, the first book of the trilogy, was originally published in Ireland by the Aran Press in 1994, and was republished in Great Britain by The Bodley Head

The Bodley Head

The Bodley Head is an English publishing house, founded in 1887 and existing as an independent entity until the 1970s. The name has been used as an imprint of Random House Children's Books since 1987...

in 1997. Midnight's Choice and Wild Blood followed in 1998 and 1999, also published by The Bodley Head. The three books were published in one volume by Random House in 2004.

The Switchers Trilogy received very favourable reviews from The Irish Times, as well as from The Sunday Telegraph and Books for Keeps.