Warning: Book series contains giant bugs!
Famous author Suzanne Collins wrote a fun adventure series before Katniss Everdeen and her Hunger Games. The Underland Chronicles chronicles an 11-year-old boy from a working-class family named Gregor. His journey starts when he falls through a laundry chute into another world—a world beneath his own, known to those who live there as the Underland.
The overarching plot of the five books follows the hero's journey trope, finding Gregor fulfilling a prophesied role as a warrior destined to fight in a world war for the humans. Each book has its own quest, Gregor must journey through. Each quest brings in new landscapes and new characters Gregor loves, loathes, finds, and loses.
The landscape world-building Gregor travels through across all five books brings to mind an expanded version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. All territories of the treacherous geography are inhabited by oversized counterparts of our own familiar “overland” creatures.
It is almost impossible not to fall in love with the cast. Gregor’s Overland family (Boots, Lizzie, his parents, and his grandmother) and his Overlander neighbor, Mrs. Cormaci, all tether his roots and ground his reality. His Underland family: Queen Luxa,Vikus, Princess Nerissa, Hazard, Howard, Ares, Ripred, and Temp are the lure of escape and adventure.
Humans, with their pale translucent skin and violet eyes (adapted from living in a place with no natural sunlight), are actually a minority species in this world.They are the descendants of a cult-like group of Overlanders led by a self-styled prophet named Bartholomew of Sandwich. He claimed and was convinced that the Overland world was coming to an end, and fled underground. True to human history, they immediately colonized a section of the caves, establishing a feudal monarchy with a militaristic flair. This particular region, which readers now know as Regalia, is carved directly into massive cavern walls and fortified cliffsides. It is specifically designed for human defense and the humans share the land with the Fliers.
Outer settlements, like The Fount, are strategically connected to massive freshwater waterways that the humans use and cultivate.
The humans' greatest allies are the Fliers (bats), with whom they share a lifelong partnership of mutualism ("The Bond"). Underlanders typically only have one bond.
Their enemies? Gnawers (rats), who are bent on world domination that stems from a bitter resentment of human Underlander’s colonization. The rat territories are defined by dark, tight rock tunnels—most notably what is known as The Labyrinth-and freezing, barren wastelands.They do and will expand into the Firelands (a volcanic land with lava rivers and magma/ash pits) and the dangerous outskirts of the bordered land between them and the humans.
Other major allies to the humans include the Crawlers (cockroaches), Nibblers (mice), Spinners (spiders), and Shiners (fireflies). The landscapes Gregor travels through to acquire these allies are similar to what one might think of in their Overland counterparts but with an expanded, subterranean twist: tight dirt tunnels and massive trash heaps for the Crawlers, dark volcanic cavern pockets for the Shiners, towering stone columns strung with complex web ecosystems for the Spinners, and garden-like field tunnels for the Nibblers.
With every book there are many other creatures Gregor encounters or learns about in the series, including Hissers (lizards), Cutters (red ants), Diggers (moles), Mites, Giant Squid, Flutterers (moths), Stingers (scorpions), Pinchers (lobsters), Slimers (snails), Twisters (snakes), Serpents (prehistoric plesiosaurs), and Buzzers (wasps). Attached to these creatures, the reader journeys through diverse landscapes such as underground seas, barren deserts, open wastelands, carnivorous jungles, and wild gardens.Gregor and the readers also get to have fun trekking for lost people and lost cures, puzzles, and codes.
Suzanne Collins follows in the footsteps of the great children's book authors before her and doesn’t shy away from nuanced topics such as: moral decision-making, the weight of responsibility, war, genocide, social class, trauma, and PTSD, forcing both her characters and her readers explore the heavy judgment of each.
The Verdict: The Underland Chronicles is a fantasy whirlwind of giant animals, engaging humans and the psychological examination of a hero’s journey narrated by an 11-year-old nobody turned warrior-hero!
