Storm

January 1, 2014
In series opener Sylo (2013), war came to Tucker Pierce on Pemberwick Island off the coast of Maine; this middle volume picks up where the first left off. Tucker and his friends Tori, Kent and Olivia escaped from Pemberwick Island and the air-and-sea battle that raged around it to land in Portland. But it's not the historic old harbor town they remember. No one is on the streets, and while most buildings remain, some have completely disintegrated. It's clear that the battle they witnessed wasn't just for possession of their home island--it was for the entire area. But they still don't know exactly who is fighting whom, or why, or how far the battlefield extends. Taking refuge in a hospital, the teens find a few other survivors but not a lot of additional information. A looping radio transmission encourages survivors to go west, where a force is gathering to fight back. Division threatens, as the teens argue about what to do: join this resistance or find refuge. Tucker just wants some payback for the death of his best friend in the previous book. Tucker's search for the moral right leads to the concept of the "lesser evil" in ways he could never have anticipated and keeps readers completely involved every step of the way. Reminiscent of Stephen King's masterwork The Stand, this book's pace never slackens. There is no middle-volume sag in this pulse-pounding thriller. (Adventure. 10-16)

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April 1, 2014

Gr 7-10-MacHale's explosive second book in the series follows 14-year-old Tucker Pierce and company on a road trip across the country as they seek both answers and vengeance. The book begins moments after the end of SYLO, with Tucker and friends Tori, Kent, and Olivia having barely escaped from Penderwick Island only to find Portland, Maine emptied of people. They know that SYLO is a unit of the U.S. Navy and they've just discovered that the mysterious planes fighting SYLO are from the U.S. Air Force. At a hospital, the quartet meet a doctor who is able to treat Tori's gunshot wound and Jon, a young man in the transportation department. Jon has been monitoring a radio broadcast inviting survivors to a location in the Nevada desert. He joins the other four as they journey first to Boston, then to Fort Knox, and eventually to Las Vegas. Along the way, the group encounters other pockets of survivors and also meet two people that they were certain had died. Tucker learns that SYLO believes that it is fighting the Retros from the Air Force for the survival of mankind. Tucker doesn't know who to believe and even begins to suspect other members of his party. MacHale keeps readers' hearts pumping with a near-constant barrage of fight or flight scenarios and the additional anxiety of a possible traitor in the midst of the friends. Action and dystopia fans will be delighted.-Eric Norton, McMillan Memorial Lib. Wisconsin Rapids

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2014
After escaping from the SYLO quarantine of Pemberwick Island, Tucker and friends head to the mainland only to discover that most of humanity has been wiped out by the mysterious Air Force planes. They embark on a road trip to seek out other survivors and the possibility of revenge. Though there's plenty of action, the story is bogged down by superfluous exposition.

(Copyright 2014 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)