Book Review: Pendragon Book 1: The Merchant of Death

Well, this book has been finished, so a review is in order. Let us continue.

Pendragon
Book 1
The Merchant of Death
D.J. MacHale
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi

Summary:

 Bobby Pendragon is a seemingly normal fourteen-year-old boy. He has a family, a home, and even Marley, his beloved dog. But there is something very special about Bobby.
He is going to save the world.
And not just Earth as we know it. Bobby is slowly starting to realize that life in the cosmos isn't quite what he thought it was. And before he can object, he is swept off to an alternate dimension known as Denduron, a territory inhabited by strange beings, ruled by a magical tyrant, and plagued by dangerous revolution.
If Bobby wants to see his family again, he's going to have to accept his role as savior, and accept it wholeheartedly. Because, as he is about to discover, Denduron is only the beginning....

Thoughts:

Erm...yeah. The summary is lame. "He is going to save the world" is pretty much the most cliche way to run a book. That little bit made me almost put it back on the shelf without another glance, but the thing that caught my eye was "alternate dimension". Normally this would make me huff wearily and shove it back on the shelf as well, but for some odd reason, my brain was screaming, "Read it! Read it! Read it! It's got your favorite things: Pens and dragons!" So I told my brain, fine, I'll read it, but no promises that I will like it.

Turns out, my brain is completely stupid. I should never have trusted it. Remember that, folks. Your brain is rather deceiving.

First of all, the beginning of the book stank. I mean, not just like "Oops, I must've walked in cow poop" stink, it was "Oops, I must've walked in cow poop, rolled around in a swamp, gotten sprayed by a skunk (twice), and not bathed for years" stink. It was dreadful. As many of you know, the first sentence of a book is essential. Often it will turn away a reader or it will hook them in. This book's first sentence?

"I hope you're reading this, Mark."

Gee...not exactly exciting, no? Despite that roadkill of a sentence, I bravely forged onward, only to be met with useless rubbish, boring descriptions, and a main character who won't shut up about his kiss with some girl he likes, and how he wishes he had not done this, done that, etc, etc, so that he wouldn't have to save the world. Oh, it was dreadful to have to wade through that for many pages.

From just that bit of a beginning, you learn that Bobby is a conceited pig (not literally, although that would be cool) who cares about only himself and has a weird uncle. Other than that, there's not much to know about the boy who will save the world. Even his so-called friends are rather lame. Courtney is an all-star at sports, is super popular, has really long brown hair, and is pretty much Barbie in a book. Mark is a geek who eats too much carrots, lets his mom pick his clothes, and is generally beat up by all of Bobby's sport buddies. These characters are rather flat, and not all that exciting. They don't play much of a role in the first book either except to sit around wondering what happened? Where is Bobby? Why did he have to do this? Where is Bobby? Does Bobby like Loor? (That last one coming from Bobby's girlfriend back home. Pah.)

The plot was...fair. I'd say that as you went along it got more tolerable, when the author added some new characters such as Loor, Osa, and Saint Dane. There was a time where the author tried to get you more immersed in the story, only to fail miserably when the MC's narration flopped. The author tried again later, when he killed off a character and had everyone all sad and depressed. The narration for that part was better, but still not enough to make me jump up and down going, "I love this book! Hee hee!" (Because really, I don't giggle like that.) Towards the end of the book there were a few new twists, what with the chubby ruler and the exploding tak and all (tak being something special to the book), but you could always figure that the MC was going to survive. Well duh, the whole book is made up of Bobby's journals, and if he's writing them, he's obviously still alive. Even I could figure that one out.

The problem with the journals was that since he was remembering what he did through those past days, you were not right in the action hoping that the hero would live, you were just wondering how he lived. It wasn't heart-racing adventure, it was probably just a step up from reading someone's diary.

 Now the title of the book is The Merchant of Death, but they only reference that someone is the said merchant but once in the book when they learn about an explosive object that some guy is selling. You don't learn that much about him, but at the end of the book the real villain shows himself and then escapes, forcing the MC and co. to follow. And as there are at least eight books in this series, you realize that the MC will follow the villain through all of those books, so you probably could just skip to the last book and figure out the characters then. That's how simple they are.

The humor levels in the book were not very high. Sometimes the MC would attempt to be funny, but it was like those jokes you read on popsicle sticks. Rather odd, and one of those things that you just go, "Oh..." to.

So with all of the above, the star rating is going to be fairly low. I had to take off points for a plot that was not well narrated, characters who could've passed for mannequins, humor that was flat and dull, and things that were cliche to other books. I kept some points there because I liked the idea of alternate times and dimensions, and some of the descriptions were nicely executed to give you a feel for some of the areas. But, sadly, the bad overrode the good, and the score was rather low. See for yourself.

Well, if you'd like to read this book, be my guest, but don't expect too much from it, because it won't give you that much.

Star Rating: 2.4

Looking back on this review about a minute after I finished it, I realized that it was probably one of the longest I've done so far. Well, huzzah for new records I suppose...

<3 Seana