TUNNELS
By Broderick
Gordon and Brian Williams
Reviewed by
Kenny Brechner
As long as you are willing to think of Britain as a hat in order to give a tired metaphor another moment in the sun, then we may say that Scholastic has managed to pull another rabbit out of the hat with Tunnels. Scholastic has done a particularly good job culling foreign talent for the American Market, witness Cornelia Funke and J.K. Rowling. Then Tunnels will continue that trend.
The central idea of the Tunnels is that roughly one hundred years ago an underground city was founded beneath London. The Eternal City was orchestrated by a shadowy group called The Styx. The Styx form a master class below ground, and used their influence on an influential surface dweller, or Topsoiler as they are called, in order to bring about their underground realm. At the time of the story, present day London, The Styx control a kind of apocalyptic religion, and some menacing scientific gadgets, to keep control underground. The Eternal City was abandoned due to plague, and its inhabitants now live in The Colony, on a slightly higher level. Below the Eternal City lies the Deeps, a dangerous unexplored realm to which The Styx banish their enemies.
Adult readers of YA fantasy are required to forgive eponymous names for some reason, and so it is with Will Burrows, the fourteen year old protagonist of tunnels. Will, though a Topsoiler, shares with his father a passion for digging and urban archeology. When his father disappears below ground Will, and his friend Chester follow. It turns out that Will was actually born in the Colony, from which his mother escaped, the only successful escapee on record, and that his Topsoiler family is not his real family. To top things off his sister Rebecca turns out to be a Styx, planted in the family to keep tabs on him.
For a co-written book (Roderick Gordon and Brian J. Williams) Tunnels is fairly seamless. Filled with satisfying characters, convincing action, genuine surprises, and a well controlled exposition, Tunnels is both credible and compelling. The Styx, for example, though evil, are complex and ordered in their actions. There is in fact a lot of gray area in both the underworld and the surface world, which really makes Will's individuality stand out. The bottom line is that Tunnels offers a convincing, accessible world which many readers will find habitable indeed.
