Ten Of The Best... Book Series

I'm going to work my way through Rhona's suggestions (and any others), and since I'm running late with this blog, I'm starting with the one I'd have to think less about. Because who likes thinking?

This list is going to show my immaturity when it comes to books. Because yes, I admit it, I would much rather read a book series about a teenager with super powers or cool abilities saving the world than a book about some middle aged detective solving a crime. I mean I do like reading series like the Alex Cross series by James Patterson, which is exactly about about a middle aged detective solving murders, but I just don't get the same enjoyment and "oh my god I must read this again" feeling that I do from the previously mentioned 'kiddie' book series.

So in no particular order; my Ten Of The Best... Book Series

Harry Potter- JK Rowling (like bowling)

Yes, yes I can almost hear you shouting 'duh!' at your computer screens. This series appears on practically every 'favourite book series' list so I'm not going to talk about it too much, and there's no point describing the storyline as I think practically every person who has ever read a book or visited a library/cinema knows what Harry Potter is about.

All I'm going to say is why this book series is here. My aunt worked for the publishers, so I got the first four books for Christmas in 1999 (the set wasn't released until 2000, yay for family). Although I was already a fan of reading at that age, Harry Potter really showed me just how insanely enjoyable books were, and really opened my eyes to how they created new worlds. The first four books are the only books I own which aren't in great condition, purely because a five year old isn't that great at keeping books perfect, and they're the only books that I will never replace purely because they carry such sentimental value for me with the fact that they essentially made me into a complete bookworm.

Also, say "Rowling like bowling" out loud. It's great to say and I'm not sure why.

Percy Jackson- Both series, Rick Riordan

I haven't really been reading these books for long, I think I only started reading them around 2009 because Asda were running a promotion for the Demigods and Monsters companion books to the series. And by Zeus do I wish I'd gotten into the series earlier. The worst thing about this blog is that I like most of these book series for the same reasons; good characters, engaging plots; so finding things to differentiate between them is going to be hard.

I think the reason I love Percy Jackson so much is that it's just different. No one has ever written kids books (that I'm aware of) about the Greek Gods. And the fact that the books adhere so much to the mythology of Olympus just makes them that much better. Rick Riordan just has a way of telling a story that draws you in from the beginning; you never know what's going to happen next. A definite must-read.

H.I.V.E.- Mark Walden

This is another book series I got into fairly recently, probably about 4 or 5 years ago. The books follow Otto Malpense, a 13 year old genuis, who is recruited (rather forcibly) into the Higher Institute Of Villainous Education: a school for the villains of the future. The series (the 8th book comes out in a few weeks) basically tells the story of all the crazy shit that goes down during Otto's school career, and trust me there's a lot of crazy shit. But it's awesome.

This is genuinely a book series where you never know what's going to happen. Without spoiling it if any of you guys want to read it, I basically put down book 2 near the end for a few minutes to recover from shock. The plot twists and turns so much that it's almost as dangerous for your health as the 'Road Of Death' from Ratho to The Gyle. Book 7 (Aftershock) probably threw one of the biggest shocks after book 2, and although you can normally tell roughly what way a book is going to from the blurb, I genuinely have absolutely no idea. Which is what you want from a good book: unpredictability. 

Read them!

The Inheritance Cycle- Christopher Paolini

Yay my copy of Eragon is signed to me :D

Anyway, book series!
Eragon follows the story of the eponymous farm boy who finds a dragon egg in the woods before all kinds of wacky stuff happens. Wacky stuff is also a common feature to my favourite book serieseseses. I don't know how to spell the plural of 'series'....

Seriously though, so much stuff happens in each book, yet it never feels boring or unnecessary. I don't really know what to talk about with these books as I can never make them sound good, but the characters are just so well developed and rounded and non-faultless, yet faultlessly written. Basically, if you like good books with an intricate plot and great characters, you've found your books series!

PS I totally met the author and got my book signed ;)

Not that I'm still happy about it or anything...

The Chronicles Of Ancient Darkness- Michelle Paver

Despite the rather evil sounding title of the series, these books are stunningly good. Michelle Paver does so much research on every aspect on living conditions, the forests, the animals, on everything about the time period the books are written in (super pre-history), that the books just feel so real and effortless. The plot is new, exciting, twisty, just plain excellent. The characters are all different, well defined and their reactions feel realistic to their personalities and their situations. Heck, on the necklace/carpet thread with 3 pendants that I wear everyday I have a wee round one with a wolf and some trees drawn in the style of the book covers with the phrase 'may the wolf run with you', basically 'good luck' in book-speak. The series is just so great that I can't really stress it enough except to say READ IT and I have them all (shocker) if you want to borrow them ;)

Plus, and this is something I rarely say about books, the ending was actually good. I mean yeah I would like the author to continue with the series as I do with all authors of good series, but everything is wrapped up, all questions are answered and the series just ends well. It's open enough that you can imagine what happened to the characters, but closed enough that you're not in a "damn you Michelle Paver for ruining everything and not really ending anything!" mood that you'd get it the series had a cliffhanger *cough* THE SHAPESHIFTER.

The Shapeshifter- Ali Sparkes

Which brings us nicely onto the next series. I adore this series. Absolutely adore it. I got the first book pretty immediately after it came out, and have read the series at least once every 2 months since then. Although being a pretty standard 'kid discovers he has powers' plot, the series quickly manages to shake off any sense of predictability and become so different that it deserved waay more recognition than it got. At first glance the characters scream of cliches, but each has their own defining traits and personalities that make them so much deeper than just a stereotype. The storylines are genuinely interesting, Sparkes makes you root for the characters and just really makes you invest in them emotionally. The reveals in the fifth book are just so unexpected, yet make perfect sense in hindsight. Without spoiling anything, if the reveal was shown in any other book series by any other author it would seem like a ridiculous cop-out, and just seem completely absurd, yet here it completely works. And better yet, you believe it. And that takes real skill; which Sparkes has plenty of.

And then we get to the last chapter of the last book. Where a major character is revealed to be alive instead of dead and goes 'hey, I'm going to live in Spain, come if you ever need help'. AND THEN IT ENDS. Like that. And I so desperately wanted to know what happened, if the characters ever did go to Spain. So imagine my excitement when a follow up series was announced. However, where the series excelled in getting all it's characters to work together as equals the follow up series (2 books so far) has consisted of 'hey, all the characters are in pairs on holiday and stuff just happens to them! weird huh?'. And it just seems too contrived. The stuff that went down in the first series went down because the group were together, and either someone within the government was trying to use them, or someone was trying to expose them etc. But having things just happening to the characters, or trying to make us believe that outside baddies managed to find out about the character's holidays is maybe pushing the boundaries of believability just that wee bit too far. Although I've still got my fingers crossed that it sorts itself out and includes the main character in one of the books.

So yeah, I would recommend The Shapeshifter, and again can lend out the books, but I won't recommend the follow up until I can judge the next few books that are released.

Power of Five/Alex Rider Series- Anthony Horowitz

Okay, I'm putting these two series in joint place because the reasons I like them so much are pretty much the same for both. This is probably because they've got the same author. And yes, they're both about teenagers saving the world, but wheest I like them and they're awesome! Okay, the obligatory synopsis: Alex Rider centers on the eponymous (i like that word if you hadn't already guessed) 14 year old Alex who is forcibly recruited into the British Secret Service after his uncle and adopted parent, who was an agent and had been training Alex for years, was assassinated. Basically the books each center around another mission, but here's the part that bugs me. Alex is recruited when he's fourteen. He is then sent off to be trained for an unspecified amount of time. 8 of the books take place while he's fourteen, yet some of the missions say that they take at least a month or two. Hell, between 2 of the books he's recovering from being shot about 

an inch above his heart. So how on earth did all this happen in less than a year?! But apart from this logical fault, the series is pretty damn awesome. Until the last book, Scorpia Rising. Too far Horowitz, too far.

Power of Five. The first book tells the story of Matt, a young (I think he's fourteen too) delinquent who is sent off on a new government programme to some remote village and discovers it was all a trick to get him there as he is 'One of the Five' and all the villagers want to kill him. Just a normal government programme then. The next 3 books all centre on one of the five (book 3 has twins), and how they meet the others. Although all the books are amazing, especially the ones that centre on/feature Matt heavily (Team Matt for life), the fifth and last book is truly epic. It takes the mission of the first four books, to get the five together, and goes "fuck that let's fling them all over the world again". Normally this would suck, but Horowitz just does it so well. Until the end of the book. Where he does the exact same thing he does in Scorpia Rising. He screws with my emotions like they're nothing. Too far again Horowitz. It's sad to say, but I cried at Scorpia Rising, and I cried long and hard at the ending in this too. Damn you Anthony.

Although I hate certain main developments at the end of the last book in each series, the serieseses as a whole are brilliant. Each features great characters *cough* Matt, each has an intriguing plot, each is genuinely exciting. I mean, the Alex Rider series is probably the reason that most of the teen spy series were published; it's certainly been listed as an influence for both the Jimmy Coates series and the CHERUB series, both of which are coming up.

Jimmy Coates- Joe Craig

Okay come on now, stop laughing. I'm serious.

Ugh I kind of hate myself for having this on my list, but I just had to. I first read these books in first year, because I was bored and it looked rather cool. And it was. I can't really find a good summary of the books so I'm going to do my best but fair warning; they'll sound awful. Okay, in the first book Jimmy Coates, 11, discovers he was genetically modified to be the ultimate assassin. (quit laughing). He's only 38% human and he's now being tracked by NJ7, the top secret branch of the British Secret Service that created him, who originally want him captured. By the later books they just want him dead. The strange thing about this series is that 2 books were getting published every year, when the seventh book was delayed randomly. It was supposed to come out in early 2009, but is only getting released in a few weeks, which is quite a long gap. Especially since Power ended on a huge cliffhanger. If you read this book, which you probaby won't, Killer is the first one, yet is definitely not the best. There's a huge improvement in the second book which continues onto all the later books. Also if you ever want to buy them, my dad bought me two copies of the third book. From the same website, during the same week. I have no idea how he managed it either.

The story is good, it's different, the characters are all different and interesting and the books are just really good. Please trust me on this one.

CHERUB & Henderson's Boys- Robert Muchamore

This does also include the second CHERUB series, but I couldn't find a picture of the covers together.

CHERUB is a super secret division of the BSS (common theme here), which is made up of kids aged 11-18, on the basis that a criminal would be suspicious of an adult, but wouldn't be suspicious of a kid who was friends with their own kids or anything. It's actually quite a clever premise, and removes all the moral arguments in the Alex Rider series of MI6 using Alex against his will: here the kids all volunteer. It's also damn good. The first CHERUB series features James Adams who becomes a CHERUB agent after his mum dies. The books then follow him (and his younger sister and friends) until he is too old to be a CHERUB agent. The second series then focuses on Ryan Sharma who goes on a routine first mission which turns into one of the biggest ever attempted in CHERUB history. Henderson's Boys is set during WW2 and is a prequel, detailing CHERUB's (revealed to be Charles Henderson's Espionage Research Unit B) set up and early missions against the Nazis. It too, is damn good.

All the characters over the three series are extremely well developed, the plots are intriguing and interesting. They're just plain awesome. Although warning for swearing and some sex in the later books. 

This is another series where I can only say: read them, I have all except the last book in each series.

Artemis Fowl

I got the first book in 2001 from my aunt, and I have loved this series ever since. I've got most of the books, but I haven't even dared to read the second one. This is my strange attempt to hold on to some of the things from my childhood, as everything else seems to be ending. 

Artemis Fowl II is a 12 year old criminal mastermind who tries to rebuild the family fortune 2 years after the disappearance of his father by kidnapping a fairy for a ransom of fairy gold. It sounds ridiculous, and it is. Ridiculously great! (You saw that coming, didn't you?) The rest of the books follow Artemis and the People (what the fairies and goblins etc call themselves) as he gets dragged time and time again into helping them, until he ends up doing it voluntarily. 

The character development in Artemis alone is a amazing. It feels natural and unforced, and progresses throughout all the books without ever feeling boring. The progression of the fairy police characters who interact with Artemis and their gradual acceptance of him is equally well done. The stories are all completely different and plot points never feel rehashed. Every book features things that you would never expect to happen, yet when they do happen it never feels stupid or forced. In short, this series is epic, from the first book to the second last. And hopefully, the last book is even better. From what I've heard, it's a great ending.

Extremely Special Mentions:

The Wardstone Chronicles- Joseph Delaney

The Hunger Games- Suzanne Collins

Lord of The Rings- J.R.R. Tolkein

Septimus Heap- Angie Sage

Cirque Du Freak- Darren Shan

Time Riders- Alex Scarrow

Changeling- Steve Feasly

(Plus any book series I've read really.)

After looking back over this list, it's struck me how sad it really is. All these books are about teenagers doing stuff to save their wolds (except Lord Of The Rings. But seriously every other series)
I do own adult books, but I just don't get the same enjoyment from them as I do from Young Adult books, heck most of the books on this list are found in the 9-12 section of Waterstones.

I find the stories are more fantastical and epic than in adult books which follow detectives or crimes etc. Very few adult books (that I've seen anyway) feature magic or time travel, or fairys or kid-spies or evil schools or Greek Gods or dragon riders or spirits or anything that all the stories I love seem to feature. 

I don't see this love for books aimed at readers younger than I am as immature, I just prefer more epic stories. I always have done. I've always loved reading and I always will. One day I'll probably get more into adult books, but until that day the vast majority of my book collection will remain composed of teen/kid's books.

And considering at last count I personally owned over 220 books, there's a lot of YA and kids books in there.

Caitlin.

The dedication of this blog is split twelve ways.

To Harry Potter

To Percy Jackson

To Otto Malpense

To Jimmy Coates

To James Adams

To Artemis Fowl

To Alex Rider

To Matthew Freeman

To Dax Jones

To Eragon

To Torak

And to you, if you have stuck with this blog until the very end.
(I'm sorry, but I had to)