Skip to the content Skip to the main menu
MuggleNet Book Trolley
  • Home
  • Book Reviews
  • Blog Tour
  • Giveaways
  • Interviews
  • MuggleNet
  • Bookshop.org Shop
  • Amazon Shop
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Bookshop.org Shop
  • Amazon Shop
  • Home
  • Book Reviews
  • Blog Tour
  • Giveaways
  • Interviews
  • MuggleNet
  • Bookshop.org Shop
  • Amazon Shop
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Bookshop.org Shop
  • Amazon Shop

Book Review: Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins

 

[button color=”black” size=”big” link=”http://affiliates.abebooks.com/c/99844/77798/2029?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.abebooks.com%2Fservlet%2FSearchResults%3Fisbn%3D9780439678131″ target=”blank” ]Purchase here[/button]

Gregor the Overlander
by Suzanne Collins

In Scholastic’s “About the Author” blurb, Suzanne Collins explains her first novel as a 21st-century, New York City version of “Alice in Wonderland” – in the sense that instead of a rabbit hole, you might fall down a manhole – and what you would find at the bottom would be quite different too. What 11-year-old Gregor finds is an underground kingdom populated by purple-eyed people who live in harmony with giant bats (“fliers”). Their uneasy allies include giant spiders (called “spinners”) and giant cockroaches (“crawlers”). And their chief enemy is a race of man-sized, man-eating rats (“gnawers”).

Gregor lives in New York City with his demented grandmother, his emotionally wounded mother, and two younger sisters. Gregor has to be the man of the house. While his sister Lizzie goes to summer camp and his mother to work, Gregor takes care of Grandma and the youngest child in the family, a two-year-old girl nicknamed Boots who was born after their father disappeared. One day Gregor and Boots inadvertently find out where their father disappeared to when they are sucked down an air shaft into the Underland.

At first, all Gregor wants to do is get home to comfort his worried mother. But soon, he finds out that his father has been taken prisoner by the rats. And everyone thinks that a vague, centuries-old prophecy means that Gregor will be the warrior who saves the underland city of Regalia from the warlike rats. Soon, Gregor is on a quest of twelve companions, four of whom (according to the Prophecy of Grey) will not survive the journey. Even though he is only a child and knows nothing about war or the ways of the Underland, Gregor must find it in himself to bring peace to Regalia, and to bring his father home.

This is the first book in a proposed series of five called “The Underland Chronicles,” though at the time of this writing, there is only one other book in the series —Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane. Once you start reading this book, you will be sucked in for good. Hooray! Yet another series in progress, for which you can wait impatiently for the next book to come out!

  • Post date
    August 16, 2005
  • Posted by
    Robbie
  • Posted in Book Reviews
Previous post: Book Review: The Thief and the Beanstalk by P. W. Catanese Next post: Book Review: Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane by Suzanne Collins

Related Posts

Book Review: Bedknob and Broomstick by Mary Norton

  • Post date
    January 1, 2013

Book Review: The Bagpiper’s Ghost by Jane Yolen

  • Post date
    January 1, 2013

Book Review: “Rosemarked” by Livia Blackburne

  • Post date
    November 19, 2017

Book Review: “Last Leaves Falling” by Fox Benwell

  • Post date
    July 13, 2016

Theme by Anders Norén