Just Finished Reading Gregor and the Code of Claw by Suzanne Collins

Gregor and the Code of Claw, published in 2007, is the fifth and final volume in Suzanne Collins' children's fantasy series The Underland Chronicles: beware, I'm bound to throw in some plot spoilers here. Gregor, the title character, is a twelve year old boy living in New York City with his mother, father, and two sisters.  He and his family have a secret: there is, deep beneath the ground, another world where descendants of human settlers from centuries past interact...sometimes in friendship and sometimes in war...with the native creatures there, all human-size, intelligent, and speaking versions of our rats, bats, cockroaches, mice, spiders, fireflies, ants, and so forth.  The series, like way too many in the fantasy genre, has devolved into a dire winner-take-all war between the opposing camps of the humans with their allies (the bats, cockroaches and mice) and the rats.  The final battle has the rats...led by the now-insane, giant albino Bane...invading the final human stronghold "down under", as Gregor...stuck down there with his mother and eventually both sisters...discovers that the prophecy in question has him, the so-called "Warrior", dying before it is all over.  He finds himself falling in love with the human princess Luxa while trying to save their home territory from the invaders.  He also finds himself pitted against the manipulative human military commander Solovet, Luxa's grandmother and a forerunner (in my opinion) of the author's later Hunger Games character of Alma Coin from District 13.  Part of the final conflict revolves around breaking the rats' special code of communication: the Code of Claw.  The most compelling character in this book...and the series as a whole...is Ripred, the tough, colorful rat who is the humans' greatest ally.   I found this concluding book a little tedious, knowing pretty much what to expect: like I said before, there is the typical (yawn) epic final battle, along with the attempt on the part of the author to tie up the loose ends of the series.  When it does get to the end, I was pleased to discover that it is Ripred who not only, by revealing his attitude about those aforementioned prophecies, enlightens young Gregor, but also with Gregor and Luxa presents a reasonable resolution to the conflict.  Still, it wasn't close to being my favorite fantasy series...but hey, it's for kids anyway and I enjoyed it on that level, having once been one myself...