With Will in tow, the two spend their weekends at digs, tunneling so far underground they find a deserted subway station. When he is not 'busy' working in the museum, rationing out his stash of chocolate and humoring the elderly townspeople who keep bringing him rotting and rusty finds from their cellars that they are sure the museum will want to display, he is active with excavations of his own.

Will's father is a somewhat defeated archaeologist forced to take a job as a museum curator in Highfield, a part of London that was first settled during Roman times. She is the one who keeps the family fed and organized, telling her father when the bills need paying, cleaning the house and keeping up with her school work. Will's younger sister, Rebecca, is his seeming opposite with her dark hair and adult ways.

His mother spends all day watching television, while at the same time recording the shows she is missing to watch late into the night. At fourteen, the aptly named Will Burrows is a pale skinned, fair haired boy living what seems to be the typical suburban life of a teenagers who is part of a dysfunctional family. Tunnels, which h as eerie interior illustrations by co-author Brian Williams, is a little slow going at first, but as the story gathers steam and explanations for the oddities are gradually revealed, the pace and tension build quickly. I was also on the edge of my seat because I am a touch claustrophobic (I had to close my eyes and chant a mantra to make it through a twenty minute tour of the catacombs in Chiusi, Italy this summer) and the vivid descriptions in this book of the underground scenes left me short of breath and feeling like the weight of the earth was pressing on me. My mistake! For starters, Tunnelsby British authors Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams does not have dragons, wizards or magic (at least not in the first book in the series.) and it is not fantasy! It is solidly science fiction, a brilliant mix of Jules Verne, Charles Dickens and a little Mark Twain all rolled into one fantastic, innovative, utterly creative plot that is so rich and detailed that I was on the edge of my seat for most of the book.

I have become so weary of the constant presence of dragons and magic in books since Harry Potterand Eragon hit the shelves that I often don't even read the jacket flaps of most of the fantasy that is published these days. It was tagged, as are most non-reality based kid's books published recently, as the next Harry Potter. This was one of those books that I avoided when it first came out in January of 2008 because of the hype that surrounded it.

Roderick gordon