The Books of Pellinor

For the past couple weeks I have been hooked on a four book series called The Books of Pellinor by Alison Croggon.  I like to call it an Eragon-Lord of the Rings-Harry Potter mix.  The author created her own world, Edil-Amarandh, set in medieval-type times.  There are not quite the variety of characters, as in Lord of the Rings, but there are some interesting ones.  The main characters are Bards, humans who can do magic.  There are Hulls, who are Bards on the dark side, Wers, like werewolves, Elementals, which are earth creatures like trees and mountains that take on human-like semblances, and regular humans.  There are also other non-human creatures developed by "The Nameless One" who is the dark lord of the story.

The four books are, The Naming, The Riddle, The Crow, and The Singing.  The story revolves around Maerad, a young girl found in slavery who knew nothing of her Bardic powers.  She is rescued by Cadvan and brought to a school for Bards.  They soon learn she has interesting powers and will play a large role in taking down The Nameless One, who is the dark power trying to take over the world.  Having read all four books, I don't want to give away too many details because I will probably ruin surprises at least in the first book for those who want to read them. 

I call it the Eragon-Lord of the Rings-Harry Potter mix because those are my three favorite series and I can see elements of each one in these books.  This has easily become a part of my top five series (throwing The Hunger Games in to make five).  There is the strange, fantasy world with different creatures like Eragon and LotR.  There is good versus evil and a young "chosen one" character like all three.  The main characters are teens, which fills my love of young adult lit, and is much like Eragon and Harry.  I also really enjoyed that there was not really any romance.  I'm always glad to recommend books like this to young teens to read because I know their parents won't have to worry about any star-crossed lovers.  There is a ton of adventure, surprises around every corner, mystery in wondering how the characters will ever accomplish their goals, friendship, sorrow and death, joy, and growing up.  The characters really came to life for me and I couldn't wait to read on and on. 

If you enjoyed any of the series I mentioned above, I'm sure you would enjoy this, too.  I am thankful for Amazon's Daily Deals for having The Naming for $0.99 one day, otherwise I never would have known about them.  If you have a Kindle, I can loan them to you because they are a must read!