Book Review: Terminal (Tunnels 6)

This is the sixth and final installment of this series of science fiction, world inside our world books.  What is worse, the people living inside want to get rid of t he people living on the surface.  We continue to follow Will and Elliot who are in the center of the world, and appear to be the only ones living after the release of a deadly virus (they were inoculated).  However they find a few survivors, and then with them go on a search for an answer to stop the war.  Eliot, because of her Styx (the bad guys) blood is able to work things in the inner world, and senses that she has to fix things.  She is the only one who can.
However her efforts put she and Will back in danger way.  In the meantime, everything on the surface is going to heck; especially around London.  Who can stop the Armagi, the killing creatures of the Styx.  They seem to be all powerful, but not powerful enough to rip open a tank.
This final book leaves some to be desired.  There is lots of death.  There are also dangling things out their at the end, and questions unanswered.  After six books, it is hard to tie up everything.

Book Review: Spiral (Tunnels 5)

Spiral (Tunnels 5) by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams, Chicken House, Scholastic, New York, 2012.

This is the fifth installment of this series.  The battle between the Styx and all other sentient beings on the planet takes a couple of twists in this book.  The battle is more in the foreground, if you can see it.  It is mostly carried on by people who are black lit (hypnotized) and have inner parts removed and replaced with bomb material.  In essence, the person is the actual bomb so the bomb cannot be detected.  These bombers are all from England, so now the world is mad at England.

The fight is carried by Drake and his team to the Styx.  The first discover a transformation where the Styx are laying eggs which are to become a super army.  However, Drake and his team are able to intervene in time, but put down this threat.  Now there are two threats however.  Will and Elliot and Drake and a couple of his men went into the inner world, where the Styx were using the New Germanians as hosts.  They went with the goal of sealing the world off with nuclear explosions.  They actually are successful.

However a second operation on the surface does bring success to the Styx, enough success that the entire existence of humanity is in peril.  That is where we leave our story for the next book in the series.

This book has lots of death.  Parents and major characters die during the course of the events.  Chester loses his parents as his mother is darlit and sets of a bomb vest.  Many of Drake’s team lose their lives.  Previously Will lost his father, and his mother was tortured, his brother killed.  This book is different in that regard.  You don’t know who may die next.

However, the action is good, and there is plenty of intrigue.

Book Review: Closer

Closer by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams, Chicken House Scholastic, New York, 2011.

This is the fourth book in continuing saga “Tunnels” about Will and his family and friends as they travel through the underground tunnels they have found, and battle the Styx, their ruthless adversary, and the Rebecca twins who pretended to be Will’s sister  but now have become his worst enemy.  They want him dead, and he them.  They get their chance, and cause great emotional pain but do not quite get Will.  Both Will’s parents have been subject to the evil of the Styx. 

In this book we have a twist; a schism among the Styx themselves.  Eddie, Elliot’s father (the girl that has befriended Will and his companion Chester who is half colony and half Styx) wants to over throw his own leadership, and uses Drake, Will and his friends to help him in this cause, while pretending to be the friend who is wanting to see his daughter safe. 

This is still a roller coaster underground.  There is more to come.

Book Review: Freefall

Freefall by: Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams, Scholastic Books, New York, 2010.  This is the third in the series by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams about Will’s ventures to the center of the earth.  This time they actually fall to the very center, and discover a new world and sun inside the earth—on earth on the surface, and another in the center of the earth.  He and his father and Elliott have come this far to make sure the evil twins Rebecca 1 and Rebecca 2 are out of action, as well as the phial of deadly toxin contained.  This is a real war against the Styx, a sinister race of thin, super muscular beings.

The Styx win a battle in that they get Will’s mother, and extract everything from her brain using the black light torture device.  They are looking for whatever she knows about the resistance group lead by Drake.  She resists, so they are forced to use higher settings, and get what they want, even though it means she will likely die.  At the end of this book she is on the brink of death.  There are a couple of Styx who are half revolting.  One saved Drake, as he is the father of a young woman Drake saved.  The other is a guard, who takes Will's mother home, to nurse her.

This book is less claustrophobic than the first book, unless you dwell on the part of the story of their being in the center of the world.  They have air, and vegetation, and a sun (too hot) and space.  They can’t even see the ceiling, so it appears to be a regular world.  There just are no people, except they do catch up with those evil twins.  It also appears there is no way out.

Book Review: Deeper

Deeper, Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams, Chicken House, Scholastic, New York, 2009.

 

This is the second book in this series, following the first book Tunnels.  This book continues with the conflict between the Styx, and our hero Will.  In the first book, Will traveled underground looking for his father, who had tunneled into a civilization under the ground.  Now Will has the evil Styx, who rule the underground in a Naziistic fashion.  In the first book, Will, his friend Chester and his brother Cal.  They are no matches for the dangers of the deep, and if not for being rescued by two renegades, Drake and Elliott.  Elliott is a young woman, who has been with Drake for some time and although about Will and Chester’s age, is an accomplished member of the team and very good at stealth and being quiet. 

Will does not meet his father, but he is around and doing archeological investigations, but falls down a big hole called the Pore. 

Drake is assumed captured by the Styx, and finished off by Will and Elliott to avoid his being tortured.  However, they have come across a plot by the Styx to release a deadly disease topside, and the surface.  They have already had a successful release of a disease not so deadly (although some people died). 

The Styx have also recruited Will and Cal’s mother Sarah, to track and kill Will, who they have convinced her killed her brother, Tam.  This is not true, but Tam was killed trying to protect them. 

Rebecca, the step sister of Will topside turns out to be the face of evil of the Styx.  She is wanting to kill anyone associated with Will, and does a pretty good job of it. 

The Styx track and chase Will and company all over the underground.  Elliott is also pretty good at setting off large explosions in the hopes of buying time as they look for a safe place in the underworld.  However Sarah, with Cal’s cat (large and known as a hunter) tracks the trail of Elliott and the boys.  However, Elliott, thinking she is a Styx, shots her.  They boys realize who she is, but they are unable to take her with them as theirs is the need for speed.  They leave her for dead.

The Styx slowly drive Elliott and the boys into a trap, which when sprung gives the boys no way of escape, except perhaps down the Pore.  Can their mother save them before she dies?  Can Drake help them escape?

This book is very enjoyable, and has plenty of tension and excitement.  However, it is a bit claustrophobic in those tunnels some of the time.

Book Review: Tunnels

Tunnels by: Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams

Will likes to dig, like his dad.  Theirs is a pretty dysfunctional family, but he and his dad share a love of digging and finding things.  However in this book they find much more than the bargained for.  First his father, and then Will and his friend Chester, both find a world under London.  Except this is not a happy world, but a world controlled by the Styz, and everyone is afraid to stand up to them, so for years they have all lived in fear, and at the whim of the Styz.  Will and Chester fall into the middle of this, and are tortured, and questioned, and abused.  Will discovers a new family, and he and his birth brother take off to the surface, but come back to the underground to rescue Chester.
In this world, and ours, not everything is at is would seem.  Relations are not always who you would think they are.  His younger sister may be the most evil Styz of them all.  And your allies sometimes don't have long to live in this environment.
This book took a while to get going, and it is claustrophobic to be under ground so much of the time, but in the end it was very exciting.