Rats
The Zone Unknown, Book 4
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Sarah and her brother live next to the world’s largest garbage dump on Staten Island in New York City. Thousands of rats at the dump have mutated into gruesome killers, and one of the workers there has just been mauled. Without mercy, the rats wreak havoc on the once-peaceful neighborhood, entering homes through kitchen sinks and toilets. Now the entire city stands on the brink of total infestation. Can the kids save millions of innocent people from a grisly death?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Zindel (Reef of Death) churns out another variation of his teen versus man-eating beast theme. Again, he relies heavily on horror, gore and gimmicks. The first scene graphically depicts a man being devoured by a mob of vicious rats, and the rest of this nightmarish thriller follows suit, as billions of rodents invade New York City after their feeding ground (a garbage dump in Staten Island) is buried under asphalt. Enter Sarah, the 15-year-old daughter of the landfill supervisor; like many of Zindel's recent heroes and heroines, Sarah possesses the courage, intelligence and creativity needed to take charge of a life-threatening situation and bring order out of chaos. Unfortunately, her scheme to "hypnotize" the rats has less narrative oomph than the string of grizzly deaths occurring before the story's climax. The book does contain a somewhat watered-down message about environmentalism, but readers caught up in the fast-paced, blood-spewing action may not take time to ponder the moral. Ages 10-14.
