Jack Zulu Books in Order

Jack Zulu is a portal fantasy with one foot in small-town West Virginia and the other in a much stranger place. The series starts in the 1980s with Jack, a half-Appalachian, half-African boy who feels boxed in by his town, his circumstances, and the story he thinks life has handed him. Then a hidden gate opens the world sideways. Suddenly Jack is dealing with a city between twelve realms, old secrets, and the possibility that his life is bigger than he thought.

The West Virginia setting matters because it gives the books real ground under their feet before anything magical arrives. Myrtle is fictional, but it is built from scraps of small towns in southern West Virginia, and that local texture gives Jack's restlessness a shape. He is not just looking for adventure in the abstract. He wants out, wants answers, and wants a place where he fits.

Then the door opens.

In Jack Zulu and the Waylander's Key, the fun comes from discovery. Jack is learning the rules of a hidden world while also trying to figure out who to trust and what kind of person he wants to be. The second book, Jack Zulu and the Girl with Golden Wings, widens the story beyond Earth, sending Jack into another realm where the stakes are no longer personal only. He is pushed to search for answers about his fallen father's story and to risk himself for a cause tied to a lost city of gold.

These books have more portals, realm-hopping, and cross-world mystery than the Green Ember stories, but they keep some of the same heartbeat. Jack is not a chosen one who glides through everything untouched. He is a kid under pressure, and the books are interested in friendship, gratitude, courage, temptation, and the hard work of becoming dependable. Jack also has to lean on guides, friends, and strange new allies, which keeps the series from feeling like a solo quest.

It moves fast.

If you want S.D. Smith outside rabbit country, this is the obvious place to go. Jack Zulu keeps the sense of adventure and moral seriousness that Green Ember readers often like, but it swaps swords and citadels for gates, realms, and a boy trying to find out where he belongs. The father-son writing team behind the books also gives the series a personal, home-built feel that fits the story well.