If you’re chasing that post-Harry Potter feeling, three series still stand out: Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl, Jessica Townsend’s Nevermoor, and Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson books. They all deliver hidden worlds, friendship, hard choices, and real emotional pull, without feeling like a Rowling copy.
Harry Potter still towers over the field, with 600 million copies worldwide and 120 million for book one alone. But Colfer’s 2001 Artemis Fowl shows there’s another way to build a young fantasy lead. Artemis is a 12-year-old criminal mastermind, not a chosen one, and he kicks the story off by kidnapping fairy officer Holly Short for ransom. From there, he collides with a tech-heavy civilization in a mash-up of fantasy, sci-fi, and spy thriller, all built around control, conscience, and what happens when a boy who thinks he can outsmart everyone meets a world just as dangerous as he is. Widely reported sales figures put Artemis Fowl at 25 million, and it’s reportedly headed for a Disney+ animated version after the badly received 2020 film.
Then there’s Jessica Townsend’s 2017 Nevermoor. Morrigan Crow has spent her life getting blamed for everything, and she’s expecting to die on her eleventh birthday when Jupiter North sweeps her away and takes her into a competition for a place in the Wundrous Society. The book is whimsical and inventive, but there’s real weight under all that strangeness: self-worth, prejudice, belonging. It went Book of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards, and a fifth book is on the way.
Rick Riordan’s 2005 The Lightning Thief, the first Percy Jackson novel, brings something else again. You get Percy’s skeptical, funny, permanently exasperated voice right from the start as Percy Jackson, Grover Underwood, and Annabeth Chase go after Zeus’s stolen bolt. The whole thing moves with a sharper rhythm than British boarding-school magic.
If fresh magical worlds are what you want, Artemis Fowl, Nevermoor, and Percy Jackson are easy books to reach for. You can get them now from booksellers.
Author: Emmanuel Pina
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"en-US": "Emmanuel Pina covers entertainment at Softonic: film, television series and the tangle of platforms you have to search through to find them. He is as interested in the premiere as in the fine print: where something is available, until when, and why it vanishes from a catalogue without warning. He is part of Softonic's editorial team and works daily with AI tools applied to content production.",
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"fr-FR": "Emmanuel Pina couvre le divertissement chez Softonic : cinéma, séries et l'enchevêtrement de plateformes où il faut aller les chercher. La sortie l'intéresse autant que les petites lignes : où se trouve un titre, jusqu'à quand, et pourquoi il disparaît d'un catalogue sans prévenir. Il fait partie de l'équipe éditoriale de Softonic et travaille au quotidien avec des outils d'IA appliqués à la production de contenu.",
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"pl-PL": "Emmanuel Pina zajmuje się rozrywką w Softonicu: kinem, serialami i gąszczem platform, w których trzeba ich szukać. Interesuje go zarówno premiera, jak i to, co zapisano drobnym drukiem: gdzie dany tytuł jest dostępny, do kiedy i dlaczego znika z katalogu bez ostrzeżenia. Należy do zespołu redakcyjnego Softonica i codziennie korzysta z narzędzi AI w produkcji treści.",
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