Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins - Series Complete

To follow up on yesterday's post, I finished the last book in the Underland Chronicles. My overall impression of the series is to call it solid reading material for the middle school set. After finishing the fourth book Gregor and the Marks of Secret, I really couldn't stop myself from plowing on through the last book, Gregor and the Code of Claw.

As I said yesterday, I was very concerned that Collins was going to kill the end of the this series the same way she did the Hunger Games trilogy. Well, she didn't do that. In fact, in most respects she did a good job tying up most of the loose ends. Really, all of the loose ends except one. Unfortunately it was a pretty significant loose end. If her intention is to continue the series, I can forgive her, but if this is really it, it's kind of a lame resolution.

However, when it comes to death and character arcs, she did a great job. The characters who died, had meaningful deaths.  I do have a lingering question about the character Solivet. In the first book she appears friendly and gracious, but she quickly becomes stern and quite frankly scary starting around the end of the third book. I have to wonder if Collins's idea of the character shifted because she needed a different type of antagonist to drive the story.

If I ever meet Suzanne Collins, I guess I'll ask.