just love it !! the first one was for kid, but this one starts getting good!!!

Fantastic! Great intro of the mother. The ending leaves a wonderful opening for a continued saga. Hoping that Suzanne Collins keeps the plot alive.

I enjoy complex and intricate young reader's books, and these have so far lived up to my expectations.

Character development is handled b..Show More »rilliantly. The plot is fresh. I came away wanting to hear more about the characters and their lives.

There are some interesting points to mention. I'll limit myself to minor plot points, no major spoilers.

It's interesting that the underland word for "human" is "killer". They seemed uncomfortable with that, but it makes sense.

Not because I think humans are especially violent compared to other species. In most aspects, we're just an unremarkable species. We're not very strong, fast, or massive. We don't have any interesting body parts like wings or claws. We can't fly or burrow or spin webs. Basically all we have to distinguish ourselves are our tools. And the most distinctive and interesting tools we have are our weapons of war.

Even if the underland humans kill as much or less as the other animals, it would be a stretch to expect them to be named after their screwdrivers or shovels. I wonder now if this was the type of reasoning that the author went through. Could be... or maybe she just wanted to portray humans as being an especially violent species.

I also found it very interesting that much of this latest book seemed to be inspired by history and the second world war.

The Bane seems to be the rat version of Hitler, uniting the rats in an attempt to perform genocide on the mice - a transient species of intellectuals with no fixed home who are blamed for the current conditions that the rats find themselves under.

And his plan for killing them is to trick them into entering a volcanic "gas chamber".

And there's the classic question "If you could go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby, would you?". It's very interesting that these books touch on the underland version of that question.

It's an excellent read, I recommend it.

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