Think of the best three-part series in the world and you’ll immediately be drawn to The Lord of the Rings, The Bourne Trilogy and The Hunger Games as some of the most popular ones. A trilogy is just the right kind of storytelling that readers crave for it is not too short that you’re left wanting more or too long that you lose concentration. Trilogies often bring you through the characters’ development and the changing complexities of the world it’s based on while encouraging you to put into imagination the kind of creativity that comes from the pages. Three is the magic number if we’re to say so ourselves from this reading list:
The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin
Combining fantasy and science fiction, this series talks about the dangers of marginalisation and oppression. It follows a minority group in the Stillness called orogenes, who are born with an innate ability to control catastrophic events with their telekinetic powers. However, their abilities are so terrifying that they’re drowned at birth – those who survived are trained to be of service to the state. When the continent experiences its worst geological disaster yet, a young mother Essun returns home to find that her husband has murdered their young son and kidnapped their daughter for they too are orogenes. She must then go in search of her husband and avenge her child.
The MaddAddam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood
Leave it to Atwood to suck us in to her science fiction novels. The trilogy starts with Oryx and Crake – a story that involves Snowman, a rare human in a world populated by synthetic creatures, his online friend called Crake and a child pornography victim called Oryx. The series then continues with The Year of the Flood where earth is obliterated of most human life due to a waterless flood. In the last book, MaddAddam, a small group of survivors from the previous two stories must band together to rebuild civilisation.
Shatter Me trilogy by Tahereh Mafi
This young adult dystopian thriller is narrated by Juliette, a 17-year-old with the lethal touch. Anyone that comes into contact with her will die. We see her locked up in an asylum by the Reestablishment following the death of a small boy whom she had accidentally touched. With no one to talk to, she writes in a small scrap of notebook but soon, she gets a cellmate, Adam Kent. The Reestablishment one day comes for her and she has to decide whether to be a weapon or a warrior with her special abilities. There are two more books lined-up in this series.
The Bill Hodges Trilogy by Stephen King
Though not his first, this trilogy showcases the author’s love for crime fiction. In Mr Mercedes we find a lunatic driving into a crowd of people waiting in line at a job fair. Mr Mercedes aka the killer driver then taunts the police by sending out a letter with information only the former and latter know. Intrigued, a retired detective, Bill Hodges is tasked to track him down. The detective continues to be the main star of the next two books – Finders Keepers, where the team is on the hunt of a killer who is obsessed with the notebooks stolen from a reclusive writer; and End of Watch, where Mr Mercedes reappears, now with psychic powers and a revenge plan.
The Magicians trilogy by Lev Grossman
Categorised as an adult fantasy, this series is about a high school student, Quentin Coldwater who discovers and then attends a college for magic. His best friend, Julia fails the entrance exam to the said school and therefore, had her memory wiped out. But only to find that a portion of her memory remains and she finds it hard to return to her normal life. As both navigate through the complex world of spells and misspells, they have to come to terms with being ‘special’, trials, mishaps, adulthood and more.
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