A teenager’s coming of age undergoes particularly harsh annealing in this intense, inwardly focused survival tale. Eccentric but ever supportive, both before and after her father’s slow death, Victor has been “Uncle” to shy, nearly deaf Sym since childhood. When she trustingly steals away with him to Antarctica, however, and finds herself roaring off into the howling wilderness in a stolen all-terrain vehicle, she gradually comes to learn that he has involved her in a mad effort to find a legendary entrance to an equally legendary underground world. As layers of deception peel away, Victor turns out to be a scary character indeed—outwardly brilliant and genial, but in truth an obsessed, treacherous, blithely murderous poisoner. Readers will find this a triply compelling tale: for its slow revelation of a deranged soul; for its young narrator, who turns out to be tougher than she or anyone else supposes; and for its wildly hostile setting, which quickly turns the secret expedition into a frantic struggle to survive. (author’s note) (Fiction. YA)
