A review by ruthannejoy
Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods by Suzanne Collins

5.0

This book dealt a lot more with grief and real loss than the previous two. The description of Lapblood's loss and of Gregor's kinship with her as a child fighting for his mother next to a mother fighting for her children was really touching. This also really person-ized the rats and highlighted the depths of injustice in how the underland humans treat the rats. I felt like the series has done a really good job of slowly walking children through stages of empathy, 1) with individuals being person-ized first, paving the way for systemic issues to be brought to light and for the entire rat species to be person-ized, and 2) with little bits of loss and grief coming in earlier books in ways that didn't overwhelm readers and then the stakes gradually getting higher and the descriptions of loss leading the reader to empathize deeper with others' grief. This book also seems to lay good ground for further explorations of how to help overcome systematic injustice. Gregor starts to grasp how complex the history of the relations between rats and humans is and how much time and effort it will take to unravel the mess.