Chronicles of the Invaders

About the Chronicles of the Invaders series

Chronicles of the Invaders is a young-adult science fiction trilogy co-written by John Connolly and Jennifer Ridyard, set on an Earth conquered decades earlier by the Illyri, a technologically superior alien species that now rules the planet through a mix of military occupation and uneasy cooperation with human collaborators. Syl Hellais, the Illyri governor's daughter, has grown up believing her people's rule is basically benign, until direct contact with the human resistance -- and with Paul Kerr, a young resistance fighter she becomes entangled with -- forces her to see the occupation's cost from the other side for the first time. The trilogy tells its story from both an occupier's and a resistance fighter's perspective, alternating enough that neither side reads as simply right.

Across Conquest, Empire and Dominion the political situation escalates from occupation drama into wider interstellar conflict, as threats beyond the Illyri-human standoff emerge and Syl's divided loyalties -- to her family, her species, and the human cause she's come to sympathize with -- get harder to hold together. It's a considerable tonal departure from both writers' other work (Connolly's supernatural crime fiction, Ridyard's screenwriting background), aimed at the same YA alien-occupation territory as other genre series of the era, and complete at three books.

How to read this series

Publication order -- Conquest (2013), Empire (2015), Dominion (2016) -- is the only way to read this trilogy; the occupation storyline, Syl's shifting loyalties and the wider interstellar threat all escalate continuously across the three books toward a single conclusion. The trilogy is complete and there's no indication of further volumes. It's unconnected to either co-author's other series -- distinct from Connolly's Charlie Parker novels and Samuel Johnson trilogy, and outside Ridyard's screenwriting work -- so no outside reading is required.