This is the third of Peter Dickinson's books about the Changes - that five-year interlude when England turns furiously against every sort of machine. "The Devil's Children" is about the very beginning of the Changes. In the panicky flight from London, a twelve-year-old girl, Nicky Gore, has become separated from her London family. Lonely, frightened and desperate, she attaches herself to a band of Sikh immigrants, who are somehow unaffected by the Changes. At first they are reluctant to take her with them, but they soon discover that she is as essential to them as they are to her.