The lads who played and won the deadly Game of Sunken Places (2004) discover that the powerful alien Thusser are back to conquer Earth—and this time they’re Cheating. Brian and Gregory arrive in the seemingly ordinary town of Gerenford, Vt., to find that Gregory’s intrepid cousin Prudence has been snatched, her house is growing cat hair on its inner walls and the local woods have all been replaced with tract housing inhabited by weirdly dazed suburbanites. Plainly, all is not right. Trotting in tough new monsters to go with some met in the previous episode, the author pitches his protagonists into what soon becomes a desperate running battle that takes them (and a friendly, if talkative, giant armored troll) deep underground to a climactic face-off with the scary and multi-tentacled Gelt the Winnower. Leaving the trio plunging through an interdimensional gateway in search of help for humanity, Anderson dishes up another strange, exhausting and masterful tale—with at least a promise of further sequels. (Fantasy. 11-13)
