Francisca's Reviews > Gregor the Overlander

I’m a fan of the Hunger Games, so when I shifted from reading tons of YA to reading MG it came just as a no-brainer to read Gregor the Overlander, the first book in Collins’s first published book series. I was happy to discover I did right, these books are tons of fun and packed with emotions.

Gregor is an eleven-years-old with real world problems. But his problems are not glamorous. No, they are very everyday and quite unappealing, even sad. After two years of his father disappearing, leaving him, his mother, his grandma and his two sisters with terrible questions and very little money, Gregor is now responsible for way too much. And he has been pushed to make some hard choices, like not going to summer camp to stay home and help take care of Boots (his two-year-old sister) and Grandma, who is not doing so well in the memory and walking department, while his mother goes to work.

Not going to camp is already bad enough, but having to do laundry while keeping an eye on Boots in a basement laundry room that is all but child safe, it’s misery incarnated. And that's before Boots, running after her ball, finds a trapdoor, falling down, and down into the Underland. Of course, as the good big brother he is, Gregor follows after her in an attempt to rescue her, only to fall as she did.

The Underland is a place of wonder, inhabited by humans who are nearly transparent, hyper intelligent bats, friendly cockroaches, and truly menacing rats. Most significantly, soon enough Gregor learns that his father didn’t abandon them. He also fell through the trap and has been a prisoner of the Rats for the past two years.

What follows is the quest to rescue Gregor’s dad. And it is a proper quest, with its own prophecy and search party, and with lots of danger, some scary encounters and lots of unexpected moments, showing the reader that what you see first may not be what really is, and that you should not discount anyone as useless, not even tantrum-prone two-year-olds.

I tip my hat to Collins, because it takes talent to make an adult woman care about the fate of two cockroaches, or start liking rats. It did amaze me how quickly I engage with the characters, a testament to Collins ability to find which makes us tick on an emotional level.

This is an adventure-filled story and yet there is some focus on the emotional side of it, most of which is cleverly disguised so that the pace never slows. A quick read that is worth the time, but not a recommended read if you (as my niece) can’t even think of spiders without feeling nauseated.