One day, Jack Perdu was walking home from school, translating a Latin book he was reading, when suddenly he was hit by a car. Very luckily for him, he lived, and was able to go home two days later. That was when things got weird. One night, he heard a door slamming, and assuming it was his father, went to go look. However, he found a complete stranger, just sitting with his feet up on his father’s chair. The man at first seemed to know Jack was there, but acted as if he wasn’t, talking to himself as if he was alone. When Jack asked him who he was, he fled out the window. Jack thought he was going crazy, and his father sent him to a doctor in New York City, where his mother had died eight years ago. While there he met a girl named Euri, who took him nine floors below New York’s Grand Central Station. Jack has now entered the New York Underworld. Suddenly he is on a desperate hunt to find his mother, who may not even be there any more, while avoiding Cerberus and the Underworld guards trying to find him.
I hate to repeat myself, but this book was just as good as the last one I reviewed, Interworld, to the point where I wanted to buy it from the library. A fantastic tale, combining imagination with some Ancient Greek mythology and putting it in NYC, and Katherine Marsh has a brilliant story that will be hard to forget. Anyone who likes anything fantastical will love this novel about life after death in New York City.
Eric F. - 7th grader
