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So I just finished the five books of the Underland Chronicles fantasy series by Suzanne Collins. Unlike her more famous Hunger Games series, these earlier books are for younger, middle-grade readers with our heroic protagonists being 11 and 12 year olds doing stuff no 11 or 12 year old should be able to get away with.
The five books are:
Gregor the Overlander,
Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane,
Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods,
Gregor and the Marks of Secret,
Gregor and the Code of Claw.
And they were all great fun. Relatively short and easy reads. Lots of action and adventure, with our 11yo Gregor playing hero in an underground world far beneath New York (riding on giant bats, befriended by giant cockroachs, fighting giant rats). BUT he has to take his 2yo sister along with him! And in the third book his mother goes down too. I really liked this mix of fantasy with reality, all wrapped in wholesome doses of morality without feeling excessively preachy. Some great characters and entertaining plots.
The series needs to be read in order, but the first three are otherwise complete stories. The fourth and fifth book are really a single tale. The last book offers an excellent conclusion that actually surprised me for the way it chose to close off. An easy 4/5 for the lot, and tempted to go 5/5 for the last one.
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