The Golden Orrery, Part 1: A tale of two brothers (The Underground Chronicles)

What do you do when your skin starts misbehaving?

The Golden Orrery is a tale of two half brothers swapped at birth, one taken as hostage to ensure the safety of the other. But the kidnapper is kidnapped, the hostage lost, and things become suitably sad. In fact, they stay pretty sad for a while.

Ten years later, Wednesday is bent on avenging the death of his family until he is befriended by a mysterious refugee named Crank. The tiny creature tells him of his home world, a paradise that lies just beyond the Orrery gates. But these gates aren’t exactly open to the public.

The Dark Orrery gates destroys the memory of all who try to return and the Golden Orrery gates require a living Key—another refugee who's gone into hiding. Wednesday is lured into collecting refugees for Crank but slowly realizes that his friend might be eating the refugees and stripping them of their memory. When Crank targets a human boy as his next sacrifice, Wednesday must decide how to rid himself of his hungry friend. But is he in too deep?

Pomfrey, meanwhile, has lived fifteen quiet years in coastal Sancibi as an ordinary human boy with an unusually grumpy mother and first time moving blues. When they reach Tellfort, he realizes he’s got bigger problems. Enormous creatures blot out the sky, sucking up all the town’s electricity and then his mother vanishes, leaving a trail of oddly cheerful sticky notes. Bumps appear along his fingers and arms and he's soon got writhing chest hair on his arm. His ordinary voice starts breaking extraordinary things. He even finds a rather gruff neighbor girl crawling beneath his kitchen floor. The two find that the tunnels beneath their houses are a subterranean labyrinth that spans the entire city. And the tunnels are filled with terrified off world refugees, who, like Crank, want to go home. They’re being wiped out by tentacled catchers that circulate soundlessly at night. When Pomfrey traces the cabs back to his mother's company, he decides he must infiltrate the headquarters but a game of cat and mouse ensues when Crank decides that Pomfrey is the Key.

It seems everyone wants a piece of Pomfrey. And not necessarily alive.

Only the real Key knows that a Key doesn’t open the Orrery: the Key turns the Golden Orrery like a merry go round.

But, to open it, one needs a sacrifice: a mule, a creature of both worlds.
And while the Pomfrey isn’t the Key, she wants to make darn sure he doesn’t end up being the sacrifice.

Hannibal Crumb weaves a tale of cunning, slightly dastardly behavior, bad candy, soul searching and a fair dose of adventure as the two brothers realize that, in Tellfort Town, nothing is ever quite what it appears to be.

Love Part 1? Please, please write me a review then!
Disgruntled? Keep mum.
Want to read more adventures of the terrible three?
Here's Part 2 of the Golden Orrery!
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MI5747C