The Underland Chronicles

About The Underland Chronicles

Before The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins wrote this five-book middle-grade series about Gregor, an eleven-year-old New Yorker who falls through a grate in his apartment building's laundry room and lands in the Underland -- a vast subterranean world beneath New York City populated by humans who have adapted to life underground, along with giant, sentient versions of bats, rats, cockroaches, and spiders, all bound by a fragile web of alliances and old grudges. Gregor arrives clutching his baby sister Boots and is quickly told he's the subject of an ancient prophecy that casts him as a reluctant warrior in a coming war between the Underlanders and the rat-like gnawers. Over five books he's pulled deeper into Underland politics and repeatedly forced back down to fulfill one grim prophecy after another, all while trying to keep his little sister safe and figure out what happened to his father, who vanished into the Underland years earlier.

Written for a younger readership than The Hunger Games, the series is nonetheless recognizably Collins's work in its concerns: the real costs and moral compromises of war, the manipulation of children into fulfilling roles chosen for them by adults, and a refusal to let its young hero emerge from violence unscathed. It builds toward Gregor and the Code of Claw, which ends the series on a note as somber as it is conclusive.