Finished the Percy Jackson Series? Here's what to read next.

It can be disorienting to suddenly finish a series of books and have no idea what to do—for me it feels like I’m a trapeze artist, letting go of a run and sailing into thin air, is there anything there and what will it be?

So today I’m going to give my humble suggestion for what to read if you find yourself casting about after making your way through Rick Riordan’s award-winning Percy Jackson series from the Lightning Thief to The Last Olympian, and the many Legacy series.

And no...! I don’t mean you should read my own Young Captain Nemo. Because it’s not even out yet. (Although if you liked Percy's adventures, you will probably like Young Captain Nemo's as well.)

No: what you need to be checking out is the Garza Twins series from David Bowles. It’s not my first time recommending this—I’m quoted on the cover of the middle book, a A Kingdom Beneath the Waves, as saying, “if you’re looking for the LatinX Percy Jackson, this is it.”

It's so true! Who are the Garza Twins? They’re a brother-sister pair in South Texas who discover they have inherited magical shapeshifting powers. T

he books are amazing because they bring you all new mythology readers might be unfamiliar with, doing for Mexican lore what Percy Jackson did for Greece. I’m always amazed at David Bowles’s cleverness with plot, action and language.

Want to find them? Here are the details.

Once a millennium, twins are born with the ability to shapeshift and to wield the might of savage magic. When Carol and Johnny Garza discover their powers, they find themselves fighting to save their family...and the world itself. Book 1: The Smoking Mirror. Carol and Johnny Garza are 12-year-old twins whose lives in a small Texas town are forever changed by their mother’s unexplained disappearance. Shipped off to relatives in Mexico by their grieving father, the twins soon learn that their mother is a nagual, a shapeshifter, and that they have inherited her powers. In order to rescue her, they will have to descend into the Aztec underworld and face the dangers that await them.

Book 2: The Kingdom Beneath the Waves. The Garza family’s Christmas vacation in Mexico is cut short by the appearance of Pingo, one of the elfish tzapame. The news is grim: a rogue prince from an ancient undersea kingdom is seeking the Shadow Stone, a device he will use to flood the world and wipe out humanity. Now Carol and Johnny must join a group of merfolk and travel into the deepest chasms of the Pacific Ocean to stop the prince and his monstrous army with their savage magic.

Book 3: The Hidden City. When Carol and Johnny learn of the Ollamat—an ancient stone that can channel savage magic—they convince their parents to take them to the cloud forests of Oaxaca. With Pingo’s help, they search for the legendary city where it has protected for a thousand years. But the twins aren’t the only ones hunting for the Ollamat. After it is stolen, they must travel through an emerald mirror into the beautiful yet dangerous Tlalocan: the paradise of the rain god. To retrieve the stone, they have to face talking apes and forest elementals, rock wyrms and vicious elves, demons of lighting and something even more unexpected: the souls of people they have watched die. As always, they are aided by allies old and new, though nothing can quite prepare them for the biggest foe of all—a member of their very family.

Check out this “LatinX Percy Jackson!”

And, of course, you can pre-order Young Captain Nemo! And you should, especially if you or someone you love liked the Percy Jackson series. Keep the adventure going!

"Armed with his wits, his friends, and his Nemotech submarine, a twelve-year-old descendant of Jules Verne’s famous antihero is determined to help make the ocean a safer place one adventure at a time in Jason Henderson's Young Captain Nemo, first in a new middle-grade series."