Horizon – Deadzone

Jennifer A. Nielsen's Deadzone is the second book in the Horizon series, a survival adventure for 10 year olds about crossing a desert that seems designed to turn you back.

What happens

The jungle is behind them. In front is a valley of clay, bare rock and cactus, and Javi reckons it's what forever looks like.

Somewhere at the far end there's a building. The children think the answers are inside it, so off they go with half a canteen of water, a few flares and a radio that only plays static.

Molly gets voted leader (she was acting like one already, to be fair). She gives everybody a job and keeps one thing to herself. There's a wound on her shoulder with a green rash spreading out from it. It doesn't hurt, but it isn't healing.

The river running down the hillside isn't water. It's thick, green and glowing, and it eats a hole in Yoshi's shoe. Little green birds copy Molly's voice perfectly, which is charming right up until they bite.

Then the robots arrive. Hundreds of brick-sized ones pour down the hill and start piling rocks across the trail. Are they blocking the way, or pointing the children somewhere safer?

Nobody can agree, and the arguing is the best part. These are robotics club kids, so to them a robot army is a programming question. Who's giving the orders? Could they catch one for parts? Javi volunteers to grab one, which goes about as well as you'd expect.

It's funnier than it sounds. Javi keeps trying to name things (his "rob-ants" gets voted down straight away) and Yoshi tells a very large robot that its mother was a mailbox.

It's worth knowing that the danger is real, not cartoon danger. The children are hungry, thirsty and already hurt, and they say out loud that they might not get home. One big robot has toothed pincers that snap a smaller robot clean in half, and it comes very close to doing the same to a leg. Molly's wound is the quiet worry underneath, and a squeamish reader may like that least. One who enjoys being a bit scared and likes to out-think the characters has plenty here.

One practical thing. Deadzone carries straight on from the first book, and its opening pages give away how that one goes. So begin with Scott Westerfeld's Horizon, which is book one.

What to read next

If it's the quick thinking under pressure they love, try the same author's Rescue. Meg is twelve and living in occupied France, doing secret jobs for the resistance and saving the last of the codes her father left her to solve. It's a real war this time, so a more serious read.