When I was in my early teens, I came across a series called The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness by Michelle Paver. The first book in the chronicles was entitled Wolf Brother. Since my last name used to be Wolfe and wolves happen to be my favorite animals, I picked it up off the shelf in a now deceased Borders book store and started to read. With her very first line, she had me hooked. It read "Torak woke with a jolt from a sleep he'd never meant to have." That was a very clever way to get a reader to care about the main character right away. It takes place in a fantasy world greatly inspired by Native American culture and, to this day has been my favorite off the radar series. Her titles are also amazing and I appreciate the fact that she never puts "The" at the front of the titles. The books following Wolf Brother are: Spirit Walker, Soul Eater, Outcast, Oath Breaker, and Ghost Hunter. In each of her books, the chapters consistently end in cliff hangers and once the rest of the characters come in, she'll follow 2 or 3 for a chapter, leave you hanging, then pick up the next chapter with a different set of characters so the next thing you know, you have two cliff hangers to demystify and you eventually feel as though you might just have to finish the book in one sitting. Paver successfully made her story into a vivid dream as Anne Lamott mentions as a goal to have when starting your book.
The author Alison Croggon also has written a great series called Pellinor, but since I've only read that once, all I can say is that I really appreciate her unique take on a magical world and the fact that the heroine is able to fight the evil that threatens the land because the antagonists had assumed that her brother would be the powerful magician that might destroy them. I love when assumptions made based on gender are proven wrong.
Of course, as I'm sure you've been waiting to read, I also love J. K. Rowling's amazing series immensely and I think she definitely wrote the best double agent character story ever by getting the readers to trust Harry's instincts about Professor Snape. I love that she wrote such a complex story line that she had to write some story-line out of order.
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