Amulet by Kazu Kibuishi is a series of comics aimed at a middle grade audience, following Emily and Navin on their adventures through a portal to another world. They meet a ton of great characters (lots of awesome robots) and join forces with an vast array of really interesting people from different factions to combat an existential shadow threat that's trying to take over everyone's minds.
There are a lot of twists and turns across the nine books in the series, with some epic action, tons of great emotional arcs, a lot of unexpected choices (particularly relating to layers and complexity for the various antagonists), and considerable amounts of darkness along the way.
One thing I wasn't keen on was the pretty extensive body count - especially since it mostly involves bit-part characters whose deaths aren't really acknowledged, which feels a bit callous for middle grade.
But overall, I absolutely loved this from start to finish (though volume two was by far my favourite)!
There are a lot of twists and turns across the nine books in the series, with some epic action, tons of great emotional arcs, a lot of unexpected choices (particularly relating to layers and complexity for the various antagonists), and considerable amounts of darkness along the way.
One thing I wasn't keen on was the pretty extensive body count - especially since it mostly involves bit-part characters whose deaths aren't really acknowledged, which feels a bit callous for middle grade.
But overall, I absolutely loved this from start to finish (though volume two was by far my favourite)!