An adventure like no other

Title: Pendragon: The Merchant of Death
Author: D. J. MacHale
Cover artist: Victor Lee
ISBN: ISBN 0-7434-3731-4

I like the cover. The synopsis behind the book was quite interesting. And the price is cheap. So I thought I should give it a try and bought it. But did I like it?

Pendragon: The Merchant of Death is the first book in the Pendragon series that contains 10 books and several other companion books. I was first interested in it when I was looking for an adventure book to read in a bookstore. I did not know that there were more than half a dozen of books already in the series at that time, and so I bought it and start to read it without any expectation. Boy was I surprised. It was a great book, filled with action, adventure, humor and imagination.

The book is about a young boy named Bobby Pendragon who was taken by his uncle, Uncle Press, to another world (or territory as they called it in the book) named Denduron. He was forced to accept the fact that he was a Traveler, chosen to fight against Saint Dane who planned to bring every territory into destruction. While he was in Denduron, he learned more about the culture and life in that territory, and the conflict that the people on Denduron was facing. In the end, it was up to him, Loor (a traveler from the territory Zadaa), and Alder (a traveler from Denduron) to save Uncle Press who had been captured, and also Denduron from major chaos in the hands of Saint Dane. While on Second Earth (which is the territory that Bobby came from, the present Earth), Mark Dimond and Courtney Chetwynde, Bobby's best friends, were trying to cope with the disappearance of Booby and learning the new life that Bobby was living through a series of journals that Bobby sent them through a portal.

While the story was good, I was particularly interested in the book narrative which keeps on switching between first-person perspective and third-person perspective. The third-person perspective was when the story focus on Mark and Courtney on Second Earth while the first-person perspective was when the story focus on Bobby through his journals. It was an interesting read. D. J. MacHale had also created the territory of Denduron realistically unique. I was even amazed at how closer I felt the conflict was to home although it was happening on Denduron.

Overall, it's a fun book to read and have good moral values in it too. I was looking forward for the second book in the series. Hopefully it will be as good as this one.