Publisher: Scholastic
Publish Date: 2007
ISBN: 978-1905294428
Pages: 472
Will Burrows and his father share a love of archaeology...or really, just plain digging. Will's mom never leaves the house and just watches tv in a dark room and his sister takes care of everything.
Then suddenly Will's dad disappears and Will knows it involves their digging. He gets his friend Chester to help him and what they find is amazing. There's an entire colony of people living under their city.
The characters are done decently enough, but I didn't end up feeling attached to any of them. Even when things got rough and they were in danger... I really wanted to be able to root for Will, but he just wasn't interesting enough. I never saw that 'thing' that made me think he was a hero. I think he was stubborn and perhaps foolhardy, but that was it. Chester was a follower and didn't do anything interesting, so I just dismissed him. Will's dad? He's like an absent-minded professor who wasn't even worried about his family or danger, he was just happy to be in the ground. The mom didn't have any personality and didn't seem to care about any of her family at all. The sister was the only really interesting one and she wasn't near as scary as I would have liked.
The story does drag at times, I felt like entirely too much time was spent on description and too little on either action or conversation. This isn't a dual-authored book that worked for me. I thought it would, it sounded really interesting and it's set in England, which I love. I think that I needed more explanation as things went on so that the book made more sense. I don't think I'll be reading the rest of the series.
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