The Young Warriors

The Young Warriors is a Jamaican novel by author Victor Stafford Reid, published in 1967.

Five teenage boys, members of a band of Maroons (runaway slaves in Jamaica during the 19th to early 20th century) living in the Maroon community of Mountain Top, pass their village's initiation tests for them to be recognized as young Maroon warriors. However, when they go out into the woods for a celebratory hunt as per their custom, they inadvertently discover that the British Redcoat soldiers, nemeses of the Maroons, are patrolling within the area.

What follows is a daring attempt by two of the boys, Tommy and Johnny, to seek aid from a neighboring Maroon band to prevent the Redcoats from learning Mountain Top's location, a mission that doubles in urgency with every passing hour...

The novel was published by Pearson Schools, and is used in Jamaican schools as an English Literature textbook. While the story itself is fictional in nature, it provides a view of the historical facts pertaining to the struggle between the Maroons and the Redcoats in Jamaica.

Tropes present in The Young Warriors:

• Big Eater: David.
• Batman Gambit: The whole plot to distract the Redcoats while Tommy and Johnny slip through their lines to seek out help from the Mocho Maroons. And the Starapple Gully ambush.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: The captain of the Redcoat army threatens to do this to Charlie to get both the location of Mountain Top and the plans to summon the Mocho Maroons.
• Commander Contrarian: Charlie.
• Chekhov's Gun: David's storytelling ability, used early in the novel to entertain the boys during their night out hunting. It's later used to distract the Redcoats while Tommy attempts to free a captive Charlie.
• Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: Charlie, during the final test in the initial chapters, disobeys the rules of the foot-race by eating food and then turning back without completing the full length of the race.
• Five-Man Band: The five central protagonists.
  • The Hero: Tommy
  • The Lancer: Johnny/Charlie
  • The Big Guy: David
  • The Smart Guy: Uriah
  • The Chick: Johnny
• Improbable Aiming Skills: During the initiation trials to qualify them as young warriors, the boys are expected to shoot arrows through four holes that decrease in size with each target, sling stones at a specified tree branch high above ground, and throw knives at a bull's-eye target and at a naseberry fruit that's been thrown into the air. Regarding the second knife-throwing test, Uriah is the only one to send his knife right through the fruit and cause the knife to land on its point.
• Jerkass: Charlie. He matures.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Chief Phillip. Also Chief James of the Mocho Maroons.
• The Resenter: Charlie is this for much of the novel. Charlie feels that he, not Tommy, should have been selected to lead the boys on their celebratory hunt by virtue of being the oldest and "winning" the hardest of the four initiation tests (Tommy was selected because he won two of the four), and later feels that he, not Tommy and Johnny, should have been sent to find the Mocho Maroons.
• Secret Secret Keeper: Tommy and Johnny, witnessing Charlie's cheating during the foot-race, keep it to themselves for most of the novel, with Tommy later and briefly revealing this knowledge to Charlie during a Shut UP, Hannibal moment. It later turns out that Chief Phillip and several of the leading men, including Tommy's father, were well aware of Charlie's cheating from the outset, and Tommy's father knew that his son knew as well.