From Amazon.com
In
Pendragon: The Merchant of Death, D.J. MacHale, the creator of several popular television series and Afterschool Specials, transplants the Pendragon name from Arthurian legend to modern-day junior high school. Fourteen- year-old Bobby Pendragon has it all; he's smart, popular, and a star basketball player in quiet Stony Brook, Connecticut. But a visit from Uncle Press soon topples all of that as Bobby learns that he is a Traveler, someone who can ride "flumes" through time and space. Bobby lands in Denduron, a medieval world where the gentle Milago are enslaved by the Bedoowan, and it's Bobby's job to free them. He reluctantly teams up with Loor--a girl his age from the warrior-territory of Zadaa--and other Travelers, recounting his adventures in journals that are magically transported back to his friends Mark and Courtney in Stony Brook. These first-person journals at times feel contrived--they're riddled with terms like "coolio" and "bizarro" and gnarly descriptions of vile sights and smells--but the book's thumping story soon scrubs away all such concern.
The Merchant of Death keeps the pages flipping with steady action and near-constant mortal peril for its heroes, promising that both this and future volumes in the Pendragon series should be eagerly devoured. (Ages 10 and older)
--D.J. Morel
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
From School Library Journal
Grade 5-8-In this hefty first episode of a projected quartet, suburban jock Bobby Pendragon discovers parallel universes and gets hero training while helping to resolve a civil war. Shooting Bobby through an inter-dimensional "flume" from an abandoned South Bronx subway station to three-sunned Denduron, MacHale (creator of Nickelodeon's "Are You Afraid of the Dark" series) proceeds to build his tale from prefabricated elements. Wise mentors utter a few obscure warnings before being whisked away; an evil shape changer works behind the scenes to grab ultimate power; two beautiful, well-muscled young women do Bobby's fighting; and there's even the hackneyed "fighting monsters in an arena" scene. Cryptic, arbitrary "rules," typecast characters with clear-cut roles, and frequent set-piece fights give Bobby's passage from scared, confused teen to scared, confused, and determined teen the distinct air of a computer game. Though Bobby does crack an occasional joke, and his lack of martial skills forces him to rely on wits to get out of various pickles, even veteran readers of doorstopper fantasy aren't likely to regard three more equally predictable, drawn-out episodes with much anticipation.
John Peters, New York Public LibraryCopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.