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Less than a week to save the world ... will they succeed?

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Six Days
By Philip Webb
Published by Chicken House/Scholastic
ISBN 97819064277

The sci-fi novel in which creatures from another planet visiting Earth is not very popular at the moment in the world of youth fiction best-sellers. Vampires and werewolves have overtaken aliens.

But it's more than possible, that with Philip Webb's Six Days, the extra-terrestrial will be making a welcome reappearance on the pages of teen novels.

Webb's debut is imaginative and great fun to read, with a seamless mix of genres. Teenager Cass and her young brother Wilbur, helped by two teenage humanoids from somewhere out in deep space, have six days to save Earth from being obliterated. Their mission is all set against the backdrop of a dystopian London that has been ruined by biological warfare.

A century ago, London was attacked by Russian armies: the buildings were left standing, but most of the humans were wiped out. The few people still living in the city are forced to work as scavengers, or 'scavs', and search the ruins to find what they can to survive.

The enemy Russians, known as Vlads, have been running what was left of London, and they have taken it upon themselves to organise the gangs of scavs into units. These units have one main goal: to find a powerful, mysterious object called 'the artefact'.

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