My Mom brought me the last book from Poland and I just read it today. It's pretty good.

Unfortunately, the second movie is a lot worse than the first one -- it starts off as a reasonable adaptation of the last part of the first book (IIRC), and then it takes a left turn, accelerates and plunges off the deep end. I have no idea what they're going to do for the third movie; it looks like they've quite thoroughly painted themselves into a corner.