Sunday, November 20, 2011

30 Days of Book Discussion: Day 3

Your favorite series

Well that's a tricky one.  There's always Harry Potter, which is kind of like the ultimate series.  There's The Hunger Games which I loved except for the third book (yes, I fell into the 50% that didn't like the finale).  There's the Mistborn series, but I will have more opportunity to talk about that later.

I think the series that has captivated me the most recently is The Books of Pellinor, starting with The Naming, by Alison Croggon.  This is a lesser-known series that I discovered when I randomly pulled The Naming off of the shelf one day, and I ended up giving all four books in the series 5 star reviews on Goodreads.  That is the only series that has gotten 5 star reviews from me on every book.  I loved it.

I've described it as sort of the innocence of Harry Potter meets the epic world and back-story of Lord of the Rings.  Remember how Tolkein wrote whole books on the ancient history of Middle Earth and even invented his own language for the Elves?  I mean, if that's not back-story I don't know what is.  The amount of effort Croggon has put into her world-building reminds me of Tolkein: there are whole societies and cultures and peoples for whom she has back story that may or may not really even come up, but it's there!  You get hints and snatches of it throughout the books but never a full view.

Anyway, Harry Potter (sort of) meets Lord of the Rings.  It's about a young girl who is rescued from a prison and in her subsequent travels realizes that she has vast abilities that could possibly have catastrophic consequences if she doesn't control them well enough.  Yeah, she's badass.

Basically, if you like fantasy for Young Adults, chances are you will love this series.

Has anyone else heard of this series? What's your favorite series?

4 comments:

Hugs from mom said...

You know I love the Mistborn series. For some of the same reasons too. When I noticed there was a minor character who ends up describing almost five hundred different religions in the course of the three books I was like "who does that"? It blew my mind. Brandon Sanderson is amazing. His characters are full of depth and personality. His worlds are rich and diverse with histories, cultures, and as mentioned vibrant religions. Crazy. And on top of it all, it's a really good story.

Erika said...

Well, there aren't many women out there who love assassin thrillers like I do, but Daniel Silva's Gabriel Allon series is my all time favorite series. There's 8 or 9 books in the series and they deal with modern terrorism, dealings of secret service agencies, and some holocaust retribution issues.

amy jo said...

Since I already mentioned the Hunger Games I will have to say my favorite series growing up. As a child I LOVED the Boxcar Children. Then as a teenager I also loved the Prydian Series by Lloyd Alexander.

Hannah said...

I love the Betsy and Tacy books, starting with Heaven to Betsy when they start high school.