Spiral by Roderick Gordon

437 pgs.
Target audience: Middle Reader
Rating: Wizard

 This fifth installment in the thrilling “Tunnels” series finds our intrepid heroes, Will and Chester, hiding out at Parry’s estate while undergoing intense training exercises. The Styx have begun implanting bombs inside random people set to detonate during major events so as to have maximum deadly effect. This paves the way for the Rebecca twins to implement the conversion Phase of impregnating humans with eggs which will eventually consume their hosts. Drake is gathering all his old friends with special abilities in a last ditch effort to thwart the evil Styx. One such rebel, Professor Danforth, has invented a machine that can purge Styx programming from the brain. But is this small group enough to save humanity or will everything spiral out of control? As with previous books in this series, the action is relentless from disaster to narrow escapes to betrayal to deadly battles to faceless monsters, and back to disaster upon disaster, all the way to the cliffhanger ending, it never lets the reader rest. It is wise to read these books in order due to the tremendous detail of the world the author has created. (Book provided for review by Children's Lit - www.childrenslit.com).