The Merchant of Death
The Pendragon series, Book 1
D. J. MacHale
Aladdin Fantasy
Fiction, MG Fantasy
Themes: Portal Adventures, Religious Themes
**
Description
Bobby Pendragon's life was pretty normal. He had a good family, a dog, and a nice suburban home. He was the star player on the junior high basketball
team. He had a best friend, Mark, and a crush on the beautiful Courtney - who, he just learned, also had a crush on him! Yes, Bobby's life was going
along fine... and then, just before the semi-final game for his team, his strange Uncle Press turns up on his doorstep.
Uncle Press has always been peculiar, showing up at odd times with odd companions and bearing odd gifts. This time, Press asks Bobby to help him with a
little problem, and Bobby can hardly refuse. His uncle neglects to mention that the problem is in another "territory" - another world, for all intents and
purposes, just a quick wormhole-ride away. Nor does he mention that their enemy is Saint Dane, an evil man with great powers of deception. Bobby didn't ask
to be a hero, but it looks like he doesn't have a choice anymore. Indeed, he may never have had a choice. To fail the people of Denduron is to fail the
Halla that is all worlds and times, and to forfeit his own life to Saint Dane's quest for eternal chaos.
Review
It's a bad sign when you're reading a book and keep checking to be sure pages are actually being turned. MacHale's writing style severely cripples what story he has. He insists on writing Bobby's first-person narrative with annoying, excessive slang. People may talk like that, but, in the situations Bobby finds himself in, I was hard-pressed to believe he'd write like that - perpetually. He even imposes his slang on other characters. It was tiring, especially in a book this long. I expect that many kids who have the attention span and reading comprehension to tackle a 374-page book will be a bit beyond the constant crutch of dudes and whoa!s, which work better in moderation (and in shorter volumes.) With the name Pendragon on the cover, I had been expecting another take on the age-old King Arthur legends, but if there was any similarity between those stories and this I was unable to find it. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but when you invoke a name like Pendragon, not unlike the name Merlin, you really ought to have a story worthy of it; otherwise, you come across as a hack trying to ride someone else's coattails. The heavy-handed symbolism - the chaos-hungry evil Saint Dane (a.k.a. Satan) versus the peace and order of the all-present, in-all-things and in-all-worlds Halla (Allah, a.k.a. God, perhaps?) - grew very old very fast. I give MacHale a little credit for having one cliché attempt (the old "modern kid dazzles rustic people with modern stuff" bit) backfire terribly when it turns out that the natives of Denduron aren't the mindless primitives Bobby thinks they are. That - and not much else - spared this from a rock-bottom rating. Needless to say, I won't be picking up Pendragon's next adventure anytime soon.