July 6th, 2011 
glam The Underland Chronicles is a 5-part series written by the same author as The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins. Whereas that series was written for a generally older audience, I’d put the target audience of this series somewhere in the middle school range.
The book is about a world beneath our world, the Underland, and revolves around a city called called Regalia. In Book 1, a kid called Gregor falls through a grate in his laundry room and into this Underland. Here, he begins his adventures and in each adventure, or book, he is to fulfill a prophecy. In the first prophecy, he is to become a warrior.
In this world, there are giant creatures that can speak. Some are friends, and some are foe. The rats are known as the gnawers, the roaches are known as the crawlers, the bats are the flyers, and there are others as well. Because these creatures can speak, they are given a personality and character in such a way that I actually empathized with them. The next time I saw a spider, I hesitated to kill it.
The books are a pretty quick read. I found some parts of it to a little bit predictable, though, but that may just be the way the book is written. Since each book contains a prophecy, the reader is also given the guess how the prophecy will unfold as the characters themselves decipher it and try to see it through. I found the baby quite annoying as she didn’t add anything to the story except maybe humor. I also didn’t see why Gregor kept bringing her into battle with him because she just got in the way. These things would probably be overlooked if I were younger.
In the end, though, after joining the characters on their many adventures together, it is always a little saddening to flip that last page and see them all go. If you’re into fantasy, I’d give these books a shot.
