Book Review: Is (Underground)
May. 6th, 2025 09:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerAs littlerhymes and I have read through The Wolves of Willoughby Chase series, various people have informed us that they dropped out partway through the series because it got too dark. As no one told us which particular book broke them, we’ve been amusing ourselves by trying to decide what drove people away. Is it the porridge made of children’s bones? The child who gets killed at the climax? The bit where Mr. Twite walks away whistling from a burning building with a cellar full of children?
We just finished Is (a.k.a. Is Underground in the US, which I think is a rare case where the US title is actually an improvement), and have unanimously agreed that this is the book.
In Dido and Pa, Dido met a miserable neglected servant child called Is, who lived in a cold wet closet in a cellar. In Is Underground, we learn that Is is Dido’s half-sister (one feels this should have been established in Dido and Pa but let’s just go with it) when Is’s hitherto unsuspected uncle shows up at the door after being chased by wolves. He gasps out that he’s been searching for his son Arun who ran away to London and then dies.
A side note: I found Is almost indistinguishable from Dido, to the point that I repeatedly typed Dido while discussing this book withlittlerhymes. As I love Dido, this is not exactly a bad thing, but it does make the change in heroine puzzling, especially given that Dido would have the exact same family relationships that are so important to the plot in this book.
Is decides she can’t refuse a request from a dying man, so it’s off to London she goes! But in searching for her cousin, she discovers that children are disappearing all over London. Then she receives an invitation written in icing on a delicious pancake: come to the station at Euston to take the express to Playland!
This pancake sounds amazing and I am truly so impressed with Is for not eating it. Also, the aroma of this delicious and uneaten pancake is nearly the last good thing that happens to anyone in this book.
Because adults in the Aikenverse are invariably useless, it doesn’t occur to anyone that they might, let’s say, send in the guards to check out the secret train station that is spiriting children away. No, the only possible solution is for Is to take the train herself! Which she does, and she discovers that it is not going to Playland at all, but to a land in the north of England where all children over the age of five are legally required to work, usually in either the foundry or the mines. And if they work in the mines, well, they’re so far underground that the children never come out, but live and work there until they die. There are bunks for them to sleep on, but if you don’t get there in time to nab a bunk, you have to sleep on the floor that is inches deep in slushie cold mud.
In this horrible place, Is runs into yet more unsuspected Twites: her great-grandfather and her Aunt Ishie, who are both basically good people (except when Grandpa has been drinking at which point he becomes a monster), and her uncle who is Gold Kingy, the leader of this horrible place. When the Twites go to the bad they don’t do it halfway.
Aiken’s work is full of bad things happening to children (see above the bone porridge), but in sheer density of misery, this book is far and away darker than the others. The town has been moved underground, when Is is above ground it appears to be perpetually gray and rainy, the old post office and library are in ruins (and the library shelves are apparently airtight and can be pushed together to make prison cells! Who designed this library?), and of course you’ve got the mines and the foundries and the stream of horribly injured children who get tipped into the ocean the moment they die.
Also Is turns out to have a telepathic connection with the other children in the mines, as one does. She tells them the fairy tales that her half sister Penny made up and this is the one spot of brightness in the literal darkness of the mines.
However, we persevered! We finished! Gold Kingy kicks it at the end, thank god. And we’re heading onward with Cold Shoulder Road.
littlerhymes and I have read through The Wolves of Willoughby Chase series, various people have informed us that they dropped out partway through the series because it got too dark. As no one told us which particular book broke them, we’ve been amusing ourselves by trying to decide what drove people away. Is it the porridge made of children’s bones? The child who gets killed at the climax? The bit where Mr. Twite walks away whistling from a burning building with a cellar full of children? We just finished Is (a.k.a. Is Underground in the US, which I think is a rare case where the US title is actually an improvement), and have unanimously agreed that this is the book.
In Dido and Pa, Dido met a miserable neglected servant child called Is, who lived in a cold wet closet in a cellar. In Is Underground, we learn that Is is Dido’s half-sister (one feels this should have been established in Dido and Pa but let’s just go with it) when Is’s hitherto unsuspected uncle shows up at the door after being chased by wolves. He gasps out that he’s been searching for his son Arun who ran away to London and then dies.
A side note: I found Is almost indistinguishable from Dido, to the point that I repeatedly typed Dido while discussing this book with
littlerhymes. As I love Dido, this is not exactly a bad thing, but it does make the change in heroine puzzling, especially given that Dido would have the exact same family relationships that are so important to the plot in this book. Is decides she can’t refuse a request from a dying man, so it’s off to London she goes! But in searching for her cousin, she discovers that children are disappearing all over London. Then she receives an invitation written in icing on a delicious pancake: come to the station at Euston to take the express to Playland!
This pancake sounds amazing and I am truly so impressed with Is for not eating it. Also, the aroma of this delicious and uneaten pancake is nearly the last good thing that happens to anyone in this book.
Because adults in the Aikenverse are invariably useless, it doesn’t occur to anyone that they might, let’s say, send in the guards to check out the secret train station that is spiriting children away. No, the only possible solution is for Is to take the train herself! Which she does, and she discovers that it is not going to Playland at all, but to a land in the north of England where all children over the age of five are legally required to work, usually in either the foundry or the mines. And if they work in the mines, well, they’re so far underground that the children never come out, but live and work there until they die. There are bunks for them to sleep on, but if you don’t get there in time to nab a bunk, you have to sleep on the floor that is inches deep in slushie cold mud.
In this horrible place, Is runs into yet more unsuspected Twites: her great-grandfather and her Aunt Ishie, who are both basically good people (except when Grandpa has been drinking at which point he becomes a monster), and her uncle who is Gold Kingy, the leader of this horrible place. When the Twites go to the bad they don’t do it halfway.
Aiken’s work is full of bad things happening to children (see above the bone porridge), but in sheer density of misery, this book is far and away darker than the others. The town has been moved underground, when Is is above ground it appears to be perpetually gray and rainy, the old post office and library are in ruins (and the library shelves are apparently airtight and can be pushed together to make prison cells! Who designed this library?), and of course you’ve got the mines and the foundries and the stream of horribly injured children who get tipped into the ocean the moment they die.
Also Is turns out to have a telepathic connection with the other children in the mines, as one does. She tells them the fairy tales that her half sister Penny made up and this is the one spot of brightness in the literal darkness of the mines.
However, we persevered! We finished! Gold Kingy kicks it at the end, thank god. And we’re heading onward with Cold Shoulder Road.
