Author | Roderick Gordon Brian Williams |
---|---|
Original title | The Highfield Mole |
Cover artist | David Wyatt |
Country | UK |
Language | English |
Series | Tunnels |
Genre | Fantasy Science Fiction Subterranean fiction Lost World Adventure |
Published | 2 Jul 2007, The Chicken House |
Media type | |
Pages | 472 |
ISBN | 978-1-905294-42-8 |
OCLC | 132316306 |
Followed by | Deeper |
Tunnels is a subterranean fiction novel by British authors Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams. It was initially self-published as The Highfield Mole in 2005, and re-released as Tunnels by The Chicken House in 2007. The story follows Will Burrows, a 14-year-old 'archaeologist', who stumbles upon an underground civilization called The Colony. Will and his friend Chester flee The Colony and set out to find Will's father, in the Deeps, a place even deeper in the Earth than The Colony.
Tunnels was critically well received, although some complaints about its lengthy, slow start were recorded. The book placed on The New York Times Children's Chapter Books Bestseller List in February and March 2008. It is the first book in the Tunnels series, and was followed by Deeper (2008), Freefall (2009), Closer (2010), Spiral (2011) and Terminal (2013). BBC Audiobooks and Recorded Books have released audio editions.
The main influence in fourteen-year-old Will Burrows’ life is his father, Dr. Burrows, and together they share an interest in archaeology and a fascination for the buried past. When Dr. Burrows begins to notice strange 'pallid men' where they live in Highfield, and then promptly goes missing, Will and his friend Chester go search for him. They discover a blocked passageway behind bookshelves in the cellar of the Burrows home and re-excavated it, finding the passage leads to a door set into the rock, and beyond the door is an old lift that takes them down to another set of doors. A cobblestone street lies beyond, lit by a row of orb-like street lamps; houses that appear to be carved out of the walls themselves flank the street.
They are soon captured by the police of the underground community, known as the Colony. In prison, Will is visited by Mr. Jerome, and his son Cal. They reveal Will was actually born in the Colony, and that they are his real family; Mr. Jerome his father, and Cal his younger brother. Will is eventually released from the prison and taken to the Jerome's home, where Will and Cal's Uncle Tam are delighted to see him and inform Will that his adoptive father, Dr. Burrows, was recently there, and had willingly traveled down into the Deeps — a place even deeper in the Earth than The Colony. Will learns that the Styx, the religious rulers of the Colony, are either going to enslave Chester or banish him to the Deeps to fend for himself. Will refuses to abandon his friend, and Uncle Tam formulates a plan for him to rescue Chester and to take him back to the surface.
Will and Cal attempt to rescue Chester before he is sent to the deeps on the 'Miner's Train', but the Styx arrive and they are forced to leave Chester behind. During the botched escape attempt, it is revealed that Rebecca, Will's adoptive sister, is actually a Styx implanted in his family to monitor him. The boys head through a series of tunnels to the Eternal City, an old stone city, estimated by Will to be from Roman times, where the air is filled with deadly bio-toxins. They avoid the Styx soldiers, who patrol the city with their vicious stalker attack dogs, and eventually emerge on the bank of the Thames. Will makes for his home in Highfield, but there Will's health deteriorates, so Cal helps him to his Auntie Jean's flat where he recovers. Soon they return underground to find Will's adoptive father and attempt to rescue Chester once again. They encounter another Styx patrol, and Uncle Tam kills a member of the Styx, whom he calls Crawfly, but is mortally wounded in the fight, and the strong-willed Uncle Tam chooses to stay behind to give the boys time to escape. With the help of Imago Freebone, a member of Uncle Tam's gang, Will and Cal escape to a small hiding place halfway between the Colony and the Eternal City. There, they rest and mourn for Uncle Tam; and are told by Imago that Chester's train to the deeps will pass directly under their hiding spot shortly. They jump down into the train through a hole in the floor of the hiding spot and find Chester. Together they ride down to the Deeps. In the book's epilogue, Rebecca kills Imago, who was hiding on the surface, by poison.
The novel was initially self-published under the title The Highfield Mole: The Circle in the Spiral on 17 March 2005, with a limited run of 500 hardbacks and 2,000 softback copies, [1] financed by the sale of Roderick Gordon's house. The book received some trade press attention before launch and the entire hardback run sold within a day. On 19 November 2005, Barry Cunningham, of Chicken House, announced that he had agreed to publish The Highfield Mole and a second book in the series. Cunningham, while working for Bloomsbury in London, famously signed up J. K. Rowling, [2] and this connection led to the book being branded "the next Harry Potter". [3]
The authors and Barry Cunningham also decided to retitle the book Tunnels, to reflect that it had been changed by some limited editing. With the announcement of the publication date, and press coverage in the UK, the price of the original self-published books jumped dramatically, with one copy selling for £950. [4] Tunnels was released in the UK as a softcover on 2 July 2007, [5] and in the United States as a hardcover on 10 December 2007, [6] and as a paperback on 1 February 2009. [7] In Canada, the book was released as a paperback on 7 July 2007, as a hardcover on 1 January 2008, and a mass market paperback on 1 February 2009. [8] In the United States, Tunnels had an initial printing of 100,000 copies. [9] In February and March 2008 it appeared on The New York Times Children's Chapter Books Best Seller List. [10] [11]
The sequel, Deeper , was released in the UK on 5 May 2008 (in the United States on 3 February 2009), and a third book, Freefall , was published in the UK on 18 May 2009 (in the United States on 1 February 2010). The fourth book, called Closer , was published in the UK in May 2010, and the fifth, Spiral , was released on 1 September 2011, the authors released the final novel, Terminal, in 2013, concluding the series as a hexalogy.
Many reviewers criticized the first third of Tunnels for its slow pace, but praised the remainder of the book for its fast-paced excitement, suspense, and adventure. In Britain, children's author Philip Ardagh, reviewing for The Guardian , thought the long wait for Will to discover the underground city could dull the reader's anticipation, noting that the event did not occur until page 170. He did observe, however, that when the city is reached, "fantastic fun" begins and that from then on its well-paced, exciting and – in places – frightening and bloody." He thought the characters "splendidly named and drawn". [12] In The Sunday Times of 7 July 2007, Nicolette Jones described the book as "a good adventure yarn ... [b]ut after 460 suspenseful pages it is frustratingly inconclusive." She noted the book became a best-seller the month of its release based simply on "stories about its discovery by [publisher] Barry Cunningham, who "found" Harry Potter." [13]
Publishers Weekly thought the book "full of holes, as if its raison d'etre were to set up the action for future books". Like The Guardian, PW commented on the slow start but noted the pace picked up once the Colony was reached. School Library Journal wrote that after a slow start, "the pace picks up", and praised the plot twists and the setting. Kirkus Reviews wrote "[d]ense but exciting" and Booklist thought "[the novel] appears to be a very promising series kickoff". The Horn Book Review felt readers "may lose patience with the slow beginning", but observed that adventure lovers would still like the plot. [14]
BBC Audiobooks Ltd. released an unabridged version of Tunnels on CD in the UK and Canada on 5 November 2007, [15] [16] and in the United States on 8 November 2007. [17] Reader Jack Davenport garnered critical praise for his "haunting tone" and his ability to depict the people of The Colony with an Irish-sounding accent and their rulers with an "intimidating aristocratic hiss." [18] In the United States, Recorded Books released an unabridged recording on 31 October 2008 read by Stephen Crossley. [19] [20]
In February 2013, Relativity Media announced it had assigned Mikael Håfström to direct a film adaptation of the novel. [21]
The Polish publishers' website features an interactive game based on Tunnels. [22]
The Wind in the Willows is a children's novel by the British novelist Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. It details the story of Mole, Ratty, and Badger as they try to help Mr. Toad, after he becomes obsessed with motorcars and gets into trouble. It also details short stories about them that are disconnected from the main narrative. The novel was based on bedtime stories Grahame told his son Alastair. It has been adapted numerous times for both stage and screen.
James Brian Jacques was an English novelist known for his Redwall series of novels and Castaways of the Flying Dutchman series. He also completed two collections of short stories entitled The Ribbajack & Other Curious Yarns and Seven Strange and Ghostly Tales.
Redwall is a series of children's fantasy novels by British writer Brian Jacques, published from 1986 to 2011. It is also the title of the first book of the series, published in 1986, as well as the name of the abbey featured in the book, and is the name of an animated TV series based on three of the novels, which first aired in 1999. The books are primarily aimed at adolescents. There have been 22 novels and two picture books published. The twenty-second, and final, novel, The Rogue Crew, was posthumously released on 3 May 2011, almost three months after Jacques' death on 5 February.
The naked mole-rat, also known as the sand puppy, is a burrowing rodent native to the Horn of Africa and parts of Kenya, notably in Somali regions. It is closely related to the blesmols and is the only species in the genus Heterocephalus.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a fantasy novel written by British author J. K. Rowling and the seventh and final novel of the main Harry Potter series. It was released on 21 July 2007 in the United Kingdom by Bloomsbury Publishing, in the United States by Scholastic, and in Canada by Raincoast Books. The novel chronicles the events directly following Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005) and the final confrontation between the wizards Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort.
Pocket gophers, commonly referred to simply as gophers, are burrowing rodents of the family Geomyidae. The roughly 41 species are all endemic to North and Central America. They are commonly known for their extensive tunneling activities and their ability to destroy farms and gardens.
Subterranean fiction is a subgenre of adventure fiction, science fiction, or fantasy which focuses on fictional underground settings, sometimes at the center of the Earth or otherwise deep below the surface. The genre is based on, and has in turn influenced, the Hollow Earth theory. The earliest works in the genre were Enlightenment-era philosophical or allegorical works, in which the underground setting was often largely incidental. In the late 19th century, however, more pseudoscientific or proto-science-fictional motifs gained prevalence. Common themes have included a depiction of the underground world as more primitive than the surface, either culturally, technologically or biologically, or in some combination thereof. The former cases usually see the setting used as a venue for sword-and-sorcery fiction, while the latter often features cryptids or creatures extinct on the surface, such as dinosaurs or archaic humans. A less frequent theme has the underground world much more technologically advanced than the surface one, typically either as the refugium of a lost civilization, or as a secret base for space aliens.
Paul S. Williams was an American music journalist, writer, and publisher who created Crawdaddy!, the first national US magazine of rock music criticism, in January 1966. He was a leading authority on the works of musicians Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, and Neil Young, and science fiction writers Philip K. Dick and Theodore Sturgeon.
A molehill is a conical mound of loose soil raised by small burrowing mammals, including moles, but also similar animals such as mole-rats, and voles. The word is first recorded in the first half of the 15th century. Formerly the hill was known as a 'wantitump', a word still in dialect use for centuries afterwards.
Sir Allen Lane was a British publisher who together with his brothers Richard and John Lane founded Penguin Books in 1935, bringing high-quality paperback fiction and non-fiction to the mass market.
Freeway Warrior is a series of 4 gamebooks, created by Joe Dever. The books were published between 1988 and 1989, detailing the complete story of a band of nuclear holocaust survivors as they flee Texas to the relative safety of California. In 2016, a Swedish company, Åskfågeln, started reprints.
Jennifer Donnelly is an American writer of young adult fiction best known for the historical novel A Northern Light.
The common mole-rat, African mole-rat, or Hottentot mole-rat, is a burrowing rodent found in Southern Africa, in particular in the Western Cape province of South Africa. It also occurs in Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. It is a species in the subfamily Bathyerginae.
Deeper is the sequel to the novel Tunnels, written by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams.
Freefall is the second sequel to the book Tunnels, and is the third book in the series by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams. Contrary to a number of erroneous comments in the media, Freefall was not the final novel in the Tunnels series, and the fourth book, Closer, was published by Chicken House in the UK on 3 May 2010.
Deeper may refer to:
Closer is the fourth book in the Tunnels series, written by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams. Released in the United Kingdom by Chicken House on 3 May 2010, its publication in the United States by Scholastic Inc. followed on 1 February 2011.
Roderick Gordon is the author of Tunnels, a bestselling children's book and the first book in the Tunnels series by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams.
Spiral is the fifth novel in the Tunnels Series, written by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams. It continues the story of Will Burrows in his struggle against the Styx, who have been a major and pernicious influence throughout mankind's history. Spiral was published in the United Kingdom by Chicken House on 1 September 2011; publication in the US followed on 1 May 2012.
Terminal is the sixth and final novel in the Tunnels series, published in UK on 6 May 2013.