The Nine Jewels Books in Order

The Nine Jewels grows out of the world of The Oath, but it shifts the focus from rescue-driven YA fantasy to treasure-hunt adventure. The series follows Gideon Hithersby and Ashton as a modern problem opens into a search tied to the missing jewels of Mughal Akbar's court. Unicorns are still part of the picture, but the bigger pull here is the chase itself, clues, old wrongs, and the sense that history has reached forward to grab the present.

The story starts in New Delhi, where Gideon arrives expecting to catch up with his parents and instead finds that his mother is missing. Ashton is in India too, and the coincidence quickly stops looking accidental. From there the books mix kidnapping, strange creatures, magical interference, and a growing web of questions about who can be trusted. India matters a lot to the feel of the series. It is not just scenery, it helps shape the whole adventure.

Then the hunt gets bigger.

In Akbar's Diamond, Gideon is the unicorns' historian, and responsibility for the vanished jewels lands hard on him. Ashton refuses to stay safe on the sidelines, which gives the series a useful balance. Gideon tends to think, research, and connect dots. Ashton tends to push forward, speak up, and act when something feels wrong. Their search brings in jinn, hidden agendas, and side characters whose motives are never completely easy to read, including the mysterious Finder and a pale diplomat in spectacles.

By Lost Treasure, the quest has widened into a dangerous chase across countries and through layers of buried history. One of the fun things about this series is that the jewels are rooted in real historical objects, so the fantasy has a firm grip on the past. Badaracco clearly enjoys research, and you can feel it in the way the books move through places, stories, and bits of folklore without turning into homework. The facts are there to give the treasure hunt weight.

It is fantasy with passport stamps.

The tone is brisk, curious, and travel-minded. There are monsters and magic, but there is also the pleasure of tunnels, negotiations, maps, folklore, and clues snapping into place a moment before disaster. If The Oath is about sworn protection, The Nine Jewels is more about pursuit, discovery, and the pressure of finishing a job that started long before Gideon and Ashton were born. Readers who like connected quests and younger heroes who have to learn on the move will probably want to read this series in order.