The Underland Chronicles, by Suzanne Collins

These have been my main reads during the last two quarters, and can I just say how much I adore these books? So far, the series is comprised of three books:

1. Gregor the Overlander
2. Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane
3. Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods

Seriously, these books are the height of young adult fantasy/fiction, and in my opinion exactly what this genre should consist of. They're about 300 pages, which a decent amount of print on the page (not the tiny print adult books that you can't read), and are very plot driven. Suzanne Collins knows how to write for young adults. She also is an excellent world builder - the Underland is just a mysterious place that keeps the reader wanting to come back. I should explain breifly, I guess - the basic premise is that Gregor, an 11 year old boy who lives in New York City, suddenly finds himself falling, with his 2 year old sister Boots, into the Underland through his laundry room. This is one of the two New York City entrances, and as soon as you fall down there, you find yourself in a whole other world with, apparently, light-skinned violet eyed people (enough difference to get stares in the Overland.) Here animals talk, and we have the "good" ones - for the most part, these are the bats, mice, cockroaches, humans, and the rats as "bad." (The spiders or "spinners" are a breed unto themselves.)

But there are exceptions, and that is a huge premise of the book. Yes, the humans and rats are enemies for the most part, but does that make one or the other "bad"? And then there are the exceptions, the rats, such as Ripred and Twitchtip (Twitchtip is officially the coolest character ever), that are on the humans' side, for the most part. And the humans themselves, the Underlanders for the most part, have ingrained prejudices that Collins addresses - mainly, quite frankly, their disregard for rat life compared to human life. I hate good and evil as a dichotomy, and Collins challenges this, because as soon as you've figured out how you think things are down here, you run into something you totally didn't expect, that throws your assumptions out the window. A good example is what happens once Gregor finds the Bane, but I won't go into too much detail so as not to spoil.

These books are endlessly creative - when was the last time you used root beer as a weapon? Collins puts a lot of little stuff like this in the books, that really makes me grin. Whatever Gregor ends up taking in his pack, he'll end up using in some creative way, and the books all have a sort of "twist" ending that keeps you constantly guessing, although you usually don't end up guessing right. Although, and I am proud of myself, I totally predicted part of the ending of Gregor and the Prophecy of the Warmbloods. I was reading the prophecy going hmm, you know, I wonder.... and I was so right. Not with the details, but with how the quest would end.

Okay, a couple more things:
1. Collins does not shy away from certain topics, despite these being books for younger readers. The Underland judicial system is worse than ours - if they find a slight bit of evidence against you, it's the death penalty. Characters die in these books, characters you like too. Now, Gregor and Boots are never going to die, but the others? It's up in arms.

2. The plague in the third book - I wonder if Collins was going for an AIDS similarity? I mean, you even get purple boils on your skin before you die. Now, obviously it's not sexually transmitted (it's vector-ly transmitted, ie by bugs. Ginny forgets the proper scientific term), but the symptoms, the fear, is similar - even though it is short-lived and a cure is found, which is hardly true for the AIDS epidemic.

3. It took me until the second book to realize this, but these books are really a shorter, more concise, probably better written type of Redwall. They're very similar indeed - in Redwall it's the mice against the rats, in the Underland it's the humans (and others, maybe) against the rats. But the Underland is more complicated, less dichotomous. Redwall, if I remember correctly, was still doing the all-rats-are-bad thing.

4. Prediction: Gregor/Luxa. They are the same age, and there is so subtext on this. But they're still young and whatnot. But for the future, I have great plot bunny: see, Luxa's going to be queen when she's 16, so hey maybe Gregor falls in love with her and then has to make the painful choice of whether to stay in Overland or Underland. Or the worlds could be closing up, and he has to choose. Like, you know what happened to Lyra and Will at the end of the Amber Spyglass? Something like that.

5. I wish there were a fandom for this, cause Hamnet/Mareth would be a great slash pairing. Not because there was any particular subtext in the sense that we never actually see them hold a conversation in the books, but because they have such a Remus/Sirius dynamic. They start out as best friends (or more, lol) fighting in a war, Hamnet unleashes this mass of destruction he never intended, and so goes off to live on his own in the woods, sort of like Sirius going to Azkaban for 12 years. All of Regalia (the human city in undeland), including Mareth, think him dead. Then he is about to return to Regalia - and to Mareth, maybe - but yep, kicks the bucket (apolizes for spoiling you, but you'll half expect this anyway.)

So you see, I wish these books had a fandom. I love them so.