Synopsis
In TUNNELS, boy archaeologist Will Burrows went in search of his missing father--and discovered a sinister subterranean world. Now, wandering the dark, hot bowels beneath the Colony with his best friend, Chester, and his brother, Cal, Will stumbles across the Styx's dastardly plan to enslave all Topsoilers by poisoning them with a lethal toxin. Slowly he begins to piece together the plot. But how can Will save all those above from annihilation when his own life is at risk down below--and when his killer sister is still at large?
VOYA
This sequel to Tunnels (Chicken House/ Scholastic, 2008/VOYA October 2008) begins with Will's biological mother, an escaped Colonist, evading the merciless Styx above ground, while Will, Chester, and Will's brother Cal are on the Miners' Train, headed into the Deeps, a place of dread for the people of the underground Colony. Chester, Will's friend from Topside, was tortured and then banished to the Deeps. Will, accompanied by Cal, has gone to save him and to look for Will's adoptive father, an archaeologist who is happily exploring the Deeps. He does not know that his daughter Rebecca is a changeling, a member of the Styx assigned to watch Will while he was growing up. Rebecca also leads the search for Will's mother, who after twelve years of freedom, is finally captured and, mislead to believe that Will is evil, that he (instead of the Styx) killed her brother, has kidnapped Cal, and must be destroyed. Soon Will's mother also is in the Deeps, armed and dangerous and after her son. Fortunately Will and company have met Drake, a Topsider brought below by the Styx for his engineering skills, who escaped and now battles against them, and Elliott, a teenage girl trained to be as deadly as he is, especially with explosives. Their mission is to survive and to stop the biological plague the Styx plan to spread topside. The cliffhanger ending leaves readers anxiously awaiting book three, Freefall. This page-turner has lots of action and deeds of derring-do for fans of dark, dystopian fantasies. Reviewer: Bonnie Kunzel