Book series entertains and teaches

What would you do if you found out that you were part of one of the most powerful families in human history, that your ancestors were behind every major invention and event in human history for the past millennia? This is exactly what happens in the book series, The 39 Clues, to Dan and Amy Cahill a pair of orphans who are brought suddenly on the adventure of a lifetime when their grandmother, Grace Cahill dies.

At Grace’s funeral the will is read and it is revealed that she wished to give her grandchildren as well as other attendees an opportunity; she sets up a race to get the serum, an ancient formula that grants its user superhuman strength intellect and creativity, this is made up of 39 Clues.

This starts a race to get the serum, the contestants slowly build the formula by finding out the ingredients in the form of “clues”. This contest leads Amy and Dan all around the globe in search of these clues.

Off the bat this may look like a kid’s story and in many ways it is geared towards a younger audience. However, it is written in such a way that it holds the interest of older people as well. While the plot many seem rather cliche at times I found that the authors still managed to put some good twists and turns in the plot that kept me guessing.
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The authorship itself was split among a variety of excellent writers such as Rick Riordan, writer of the popular Percy Jackson series. Each book in the series is filled with historical information; it is a great way to learn facts about different time periods without much effort on the part of the reader. It is similar to what Riordan did with Greek and Roman mythology in his Percy Jackson books.

Another favorable facet of this series is the number of books in it. The first series of the 39 Clues alone has ten books which allows the reader to have a large amount of reading material. Thanks to the different authors the books do not suffer from a decrease in quality, as has been seen in many long book series.

Overall, despite some of the cliche aspects, I thoroughly enjoyed these books and highly recommend them. This series would appeal to someone who enjoys action and historical fiction books.     

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The first installment in this series is Maze of Bones; it is available either on Amazon or at your local library.

This writer can be reached via twitter @MatthewSue1 and via email Matthew Sue.