APRIL 2015 - AudioFile
Narrator Andrew Bates employs a conversational tone and conveys the intensity of highly charged situations without overwhelming the storytelling. Finally reaching Portland, Maine, after a terrifying escape from their home on Pemberwick Island, 14-year-old Tucker Pierce and his friends are in for a shock: No one is there! They also make the astonishing discovery that SYLO, a division of the U.S. Navy, seems to be battling none other than the U.S. Air Force. Following a clue broadcast on radio, the group travels to Nevada, experiencing a host of harrowing incidents along the way. Those who listened to SYLO will be eager to continue the adventure and to find out whether the conflict ends with the third book, STRIKE. S.G. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
Tucker, Tori, Kent, and Olivia have escaped from Maine's war-torn Pemberwick Island, but their arrival in nearby Portland brings them no solace. The town is both damaged and almost deserted; and the city's few survivors seem as hopelessly uninformed as Tucker and his friends. Radio messages about a gathering resistance give them new hope, but also provoke disagreements in the group. Should they join the fight or simply run for their lives? The second installment of a hit dystopian series.
School Library Journal
04/01/2014
Gr 7–10—MacHale's explosive second book in the series follows 14-year-old Tucker Pierce and company on a road trip across the country as they seek both answers and vengeance. The book begins moments after the end of SYLO, with Tucker and friends Tori, Kent, and Olivia having barely escaped from Penderwick Island only to find Portland, Maine emptied of people. They know that SYLO is a unit of the U.S. Navy and they've just discovered that the mysterious planes fighting SYLO are from the U.S. Air Force. At a hospital, the quartet meet a doctor who is able to treat Tori's gunshot wound and Jon, a young man in the transportation department. Jon has been monitoring a radio broadcast inviting survivors to a location in the Nevada desert. He joins the other four as they journey first to Boston, then to Fort Knox, and eventually to Las Vegas. Along the way, the group encounters other pockets of survivors and also meet two people that they were certain had died. Tucker learns that SYLO believes that it is fighting the Retros from the Air Force for the survival of mankind. Tucker doesn't know who to believe and even begins to suspect other members of his party. MacHale keeps readers' hearts pumping with a near-constant barrage of fight or flight scenarios and the additional anxiety of a possible traitor in the midst of the friends. Action and dystopia fans will be delighted.—Eric Norton, McMillan Memorial Lib. Wisconsin Rapids
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2013-12-11
In series opener Sylo (2013), war came to Tucker Pierce on Pemberwick Island off the coast of Maine; this middle volume picks up where the first left off. Tucker and his friends Tori, Kent and Olivia escaped from Pemberwick Island and the air-and-sea battle that raged around it to land in Portland. But it's not the historic old harbor town they remember. No one is on the streets, and while most buildings remain, some have completely disintegrated. It's clear that the battle they witnessed wasn't just for possession of their home island--it was for the entire area. But they still don't know exactly who is fighting whom, or why, or how far the battlefield extends. Taking refuge in a hospital, the teens find a few other survivors but not a lot of additional information. A looping radio transmission encourages survivors to go west, where a force is gathering to fight back. Division threatens, as the teens argue about what to do: join this resistance or find refuge. Tucker just wants some payback for the death of his best friend in the previous book. Tucker's search for the moral right leads to the concept of the "lesser evil" in ways he could never have anticipated and keeps readers completely involved every step of the way. Reminiscent of Stephen King's masterwork The Stand, this book's pace never slackens. There is no middle-volume sag in this pulse-pounding thriller. (Adventure. 10-16)
