This review is for Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane, Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods, and Gregor and the Marks of Secret (Underland Chronicles, #2-4). And even in my thirties, this is pretty good fun. It's not going to blow any adult readers away, but the heartfelt and exciting adventures of Gregor in the hidden underground world of sentient giant pests is the kind of thing I'd love to have read when I was eleven. I don't expect a children's story to put one over on me, but this book did. While it's easy to safely conclude that it won't mean what it seems to mean, even as an adult reader, I didn't see the exact twist coming until it was nearly there, which is, in my opinion, very skillfully done by the author. In the second outing, the new prophecy plaguing Gregor is nicely clever - while the first book's central prophecy was too vague for the reader to predict, this one is oddly specific.
Gregor is old beyond his years due to trying family circumstances, kind and responsible, and yet still very much an eleven year old kid, and that, through all his fantastic experiences, is what makes the books worth reading. But with the Outlander series, Collins has managed this.
It is frustratingly rare (and thus very gratifying) to find a story told from the perspective of a sole child (or teen) protagonist who doesn't feel whiny, self-absorbed, hopelessly naïve or otherwise a bit grating.
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