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Tunnels by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams
The Blurb On The Back:
Fourteen-year-old Will Burrows lives with his family in London. He has little in common with them except for a passion for digging which he shares with his father.
When his father suddenly disappears down an unknown tunnel, Will decides to investigate with his friend Chester. Soon they find themselves deep underground, where they unearth a dark and terrifying secret - a secret which may cost them their lives.
Fair-skinned, white haired Will has little in common with his neat-freak younger sister, Rebecca or tv-obsessed mother but his father relies on Will's love of digging to help him carry out archaeological excavations. When Will's father goes missing, Will enlists his best friend Chester to help find him. Doing so brings the pair into contact with a mysterious society that exists below London and is controlled by the brutal and ruthless Styx, people intent on keeping their society a secret. Unable to escape the hidden world, Will and Chester discover dangerous secrets, including one that will tear Will's dysfunctional world apart and threaten their lives.
Over 150 pages of this novel consists of establishing scenes, including countless ones of Will and Chester digging tunnels only to find them mysteriously filled up again, Dr Burrows stumbling across a theory that might bring him the fame he craves and Will wondering why his dad's gone missing. There's nothing really exciting about them either and the tedium of having to trawl through them may well put may readers off.
Once Will and Chester arrive in the underground society, the story picks up its pace, with the authors doing well to create a sinister parallel world that exists in tandem to ours and is both threatened by and suspicious of the world above. With its quasi-religious rules (including a requirement that inhabitants go to church once a day) and cunningly brutal Styx (a type of secret police force), there is a real sense of menace surrounding Will and Chester and tension is well maintained.
Particularly well handled are the scenes where Will is plunged into contact with new Downworld relatives he never suspected existed (of these, the most interesting is his Uncle Tam, a bluff man who likes to bend the rules). Will's sense of confusion and disbelief is well conveyed, although he is oddly passive when it comes to trying to escape his predicament or rescue Chester. Rebecca is however the more interesting character, the neat-freak forced to run the Burrows household because no one else can be bothered to do so, there's a brilliant character twist with her that will set up an interesting dilemma for the rest of the series.
If the pacing improves, then I will read on in this series because the set-up is so interesting and it’s an unusually dark tale with a lot of grit.
The Verdict:
The first 150 pages are really slow and the endless establishing scenes could and should have been pared back. That said, the underground society created by Gordon and Williams is sinister and brutal, the family secrets that Will uncovers creates a nice dilemma for him and there's a shocking twist towards the end that should establish a fascinating conflict. I'd read on, but the pacing does need to improve.
Fourteen-year-old Will Burrows lives with his family in London. He has little in common with them except for a passion for digging which he shares with his father.
When his father suddenly disappears down an unknown tunnel, Will decides to investigate with his friend Chester. Soon they find themselves deep underground, where they unearth a dark and terrifying secret - a secret which may cost them their lives.
Fair-skinned, white haired Will has little in common with his neat-freak younger sister, Rebecca or tv-obsessed mother but his father relies on Will's love of digging to help him carry out archaeological excavations. When Will's father goes missing, Will enlists his best friend Chester to help find him. Doing so brings the pair into contact with a mysterious society that exists below London and is controlled by the brutal and ruthless Styx, people intent on keeping their society a secret. Unable to escape the hidden world, Will and Chester discover dangerous secrets, including one that will tear Will's dysfunctional world apart and threaten their lives.
Over 150 pages of this novel consists of establishing scenes, including countless ones of Will and Chester digging tunnels only to find them mysteriously filled up again, Dr Burrows stumbling across a theory that might bring him the fame he craves and Will wondering why his dad's gone missing. There's nothing really exciting about them either and the tedium of having to trawl through them may well put may readers off.
Once Will and Chester arrive in the underground society, the story picks up its pace, with the authors doing well to create a sinister parallel world that exists in tandem to ours and is both threatened by and suspicious of the world above. With its quasi-religious rules (including a requirement that inhabitants go to church once a day) and cunningly brutal Styx (a type of secret police force), there is a real sense of menace surrounding Will and Chester and tension is well maintained.
Particularly well handled are the scenes where Will is plunged into contact with new Downworld relatives he never suspected existed (of these, the most interesting is his Uncle Tam, a bluff man who likes to bend the rules). Will's sense of confusion and disbelief is well conveyed, although he is oddly passive when it comes to trying to escape his predicament or rescue Chester. Rebecca is however the more interesting character, the neat-freak forced to run the Burrows household because no one else can be bothered to do so, there's a brilliant character twist with her that will set up an interesting dilemma for the rest of the series.
If the pacing improves, then I will read on in this series because the set-up is so interesting and it’s an unusually dark tale with a lot of grit.
The Verdict:
The first 150 pages are really slow and the endless establishing scenes could and should have been pared back. That said, the underground society created by Gordon and Williams is sinister and brutal, the family secrets that Will uncovers creates a nice dilemma for him and there's a shocking twist towards the end that should establish a fascinating conflict. I'd read on, but the pacing does need to improve.