The Coprolights, mentioned in the first book, are more fully realized in this one. Unaware of the natural dangers that are all around them, they come to realize that an unnatural danger, the Styx and their elite crew of Limiters, agents who roam the deeps neutralizing renegades and Coprolights as they see fit, are in the Deeps and hunting them. Much of the book is taken up with Will, Chester and Cal's plight as they travel deeper underground.

But, she is also a complex character who balances her need to survive with her longing for the sons she left behind. While I am not big on violence, Sarah Jerome does some serious, believable, welcomed butt-kicking in this book. The survival skills she has learned as well as the tough exterior she has developed in an effort to stay alive topsoil make for fascinating reading. Indeed, the infamous Sarah Jerome, mother of Will and Cal and only person ever to escape the Colony and the Styx (the secret police, rulers of the Colony and heads of the cult-like religion that keeps the Colonists under their constant rule and frequent persecution) gets lots of page time in Deeper. In Deeper, Mrs Burrows comes to life after an encounter with a woman posing as a social worker whom she suspects if Will's birth mother. In Tunnels the only significant female characters are Rebecca, Will's younger sister, and Mrs Burrows, who remains a pathetic couch potato from start to finish and finds herself institutionalized by the end of the book. There are more twists and turns in Deeper than there are tunnels underground. Rather than unravel the whole plot as I did last time, I am going to restrain myself and mention a few highlights only and assume that most people reading this review have read the first book.

Deeper roderick gordon