The novel is a continuation of John Wyndham’s "Day of the Triffids". The action takes place 25 years after the events of the first novel. Over that time, triffids developed at an accelerated pace. Enormous plants appeared, with the beginnings of reason and organs of sense. The English hide from them on the Isle of Wight. The Americans do the same—facing the danger, they built in their country a wild mixture of totalitarianism and an unbridled consumer society.