Book Seven in the Pendragon Series: The Quillan Games
Written: Jun 01 '06
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good action sequences, nicely disguised plot twists, and good clues about the series.
Cons: The first twenty pages, and it’s sometimes difficult to root for Quillanites.
The Bottom Line: A fun summertime read for grades 5 through 9, Quillan Games will please D. J. MacHale’s fans and entice new readers into the Pendragon multiverse.
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| davke's Full Review: Pendragon : The Quillan Games Books |
Young Bobby Pendragon, who travels between worlds and times, resurrects dead friends, and every summer opposes the mega-tyrant Saint Dane, is afraid of clowns. Yet his task at the moment is to run through a forest, collecting flags faster than his opponent can while avoiding gun-toting, biting, robotic little clown dolls. It’s turning out to be a long day for Our Hero – and it’d be even worse if he knew who was making those clown dolls. Nobody ever said leading a revolution would be easy, Bobby Pendragon!
Another year, another installment in D.J. MacHale’s Pendragon series. The Quillan Games is the seventh of the projected ten books in the increasingly popular series that features the adventures of Bobby Pendragon. As a Connecticut junior high student, Bobby had found out in rapid succession that Courtney Chetwynde had a crush on him, and that he and his uncle were capable of moving between worlds via “flumes,” the name of the traveling device in this series. That capability means that Bobby is a Traveler. As the Arthurian Pendragon name would suggest, Bobby is destined to save the worlds, or “Territories” (including ours) from tyranny, or at least boredom, and he’s been doing so since The Merchant of Death when his uncle revealed Bobby’s secret identity.
The series, which roughly falls into the 10-14 year-old reader range, has since taken its increasing audience from water-covered Cloral in The Lost City of Faar to desert-covered Zadaa in The Rivers of Zadaa, with jungles, virtual reality, and 1930s New York City serving as other settings. And its readers have taken the Pendragon series from good bookstore placement, to New York Times Bestseller List mention, to Amazon.com #1 in teen fiction.
The series has some interesting devices to attract and keep young readers. First, there is Bobby who, like his audience, is changing… altering… morphing… into something… else; something or someone probably destined for greatness, but only if he can overcome the evil Saint Dane. Young audiences can likely empathize, going through their own changes and facing daily temptations and dangers. Second, Bobby has two friends from school, Courtney Chetwynde and Mark Dimond, who are in on his secrets and share in his adventures, usually through reading and discussing them. This plot device brings readers directly into the story since they can readily associate with fellow readers Courtney and Mark. Third, Bobby’s adventures on other worlds are written in the first-person, supposedly in the style of journal entries. Mark and Courtney’s activities on Second Earth (here and now) are written in the third person, using different font types. Among other things, this device breaks the routine, changes the narrative points, and makes a 300- to 500-page book seem a quicker read. Bobby’s journal entries do not stand much scrutiny – it’s within Bobby’s entries that many of MacHale’s plot twists are executed, for instance, though Bobby is theoretically writing of past events, which he often does in the subjunctive; who regularly tries to establish narrative tension and surprise endings in their journals? Otherwise, these books are solid and entertaining.
And Quillan Games is among the best in the Pendragon series. Quillan is the name of the Territory, and it’s a very interesting Territory indeed. Imagine a world run by Wal-Mart gone exponentially evil, with a decidedly Big Brother-like attitude toward individual freedoms. The corporation in this case is Blok, and through low, low prices it has destroyed all competition and corrupted all governments, allowing it complete control of Quillan. All cultural expressions are Blok-approved (no need to create art that won’t sell, after all), all employment, all income, all nutrition is Blok-supplied – or not. Blok is a bleak, gray-toned corporation driven by the bottom line, having made its profits on quantity not style. The cities and citizens of Quillan reflect Blok’s values, and stay indebted to the corporation. Quillan has been controlled by Blok for so long that people remember no lifestyle other than total corporate control. Their favorite outlet for entertainment is gambling – also controlled by Blok – and they’re willing to gamble anything, including their few remaining freedoms and even their deaths for a chance at some improvement. Corporate-owned, robotic police execute company policy and keep the population in fear.
Into this world steps Bobby Pendragon.
Pendragon plots usually have some straightforward concepts in them. Saint Dane is an evil demon trying to push a Territory into chaos so he can gain control. Bobby and at least one Traveler (each Territory has one native Traveler, and Bobby is their leader – though he admittedly is as ignorant as they to the greater answers) must figure out Saint Dane’s plan and stop him from executing it. Pretty simple. Saint Dane has some skills, including the ability to disguise himself. Bobby and the Travelers (and the readers) are often tricked by the disguises and the decoys, or else mistake Saint Dane’s true intentions. MacHale’s plot twists are generally pretty effective; just to make sure he’s fooled his readers, MacHale will usually offer several plot twists and surprise endings in every book. That is certainly the case in Quillan Games, where all the basic plot concepts are in place, but none play out as they should – from what Saint Dane is up to, to who Quillan’s Traveler is, to what Mark’s science project really is, reader’s will find at least one surprise (“Mr. Pop” got me).
But Pendragon books are also about the action and adventure, and Quillan Games has that, too. Bobby arrives to find that his role on Quillan is as a Challenger, or a participant in the games, with people betting on him. The games can be deadly for the participants and the betting spectators, leading to several fighting and chase scenes that are, as usual, well handled by MacHale. With Saint Dane goading him, Bobby decides to use the games as a means to unite the people against Blok, to use his star status to start a revolution. Whether or not his pride goeth before his fall, with another Saint Dane victory following, is up to the reader to decide. But it doesn’t look good. Meanwhile, on Second Earth, Courtney and Mark are also pulled into the action, furthering the probability that they’re not merely Bobby’s support group but actually central to the overarching Pendragon plot.
Quillan Games certainly has its weaknesses. It’s difficult for such a drab world to introduce colorful characters. The two most entertaining, the game show hosts, are psychopaths. Of the two kindest characters on Quillan, one is a robot servant, the other a librarian, and both have minor roles. Nevva Winter, the Quillan Traveler, completely lacks charisma (something Travelers are supposed to have in abundance). So the Quillan narrative is all about Bobby. And Bobby is sometimes… ridiculous. The opening twenty pages of the book is a numbing recap, with Bobby offering idiotic, introspective passages. MacHale indicates the ability to work such backgrounding into the narrative, and these blatant recaps are tedious, especially in the opening pages. And then MacHale/Bobby says one of the stupidest things I’ve seen in print in a while: “How would you explain to somebody what a year is? Or a month? That’s a tough one” (315). Um… Mr. MacHale? You see, the earth rotates around the sun….
Those gripes are relatively minor, however, and Quillan Games is in most other ways a superior read, especially in the genre of juvenile science fiction. The series is 70% through now, and some threads are just coming together – especially with Saint Dane’s introduction of “the Convergence,” apparently a specific event that Bobby must stop or at least understand. The Convergence gives the Pendragon series a clear finish line, and events in Quillan Games push the characters closer to that finish.
After two subpar publications (an uninformative guide to the series and Zadaa), it's good to see MacHale's Pendragon series again realizing its potential to provide a few days of fun summer reading.
My Pendragon Reviews:
Book One:Merchant of Death
Book Two:Lost City of Faar
Book Three:The Never War
Book Four:The Reality Bug
Book Five:Black Water
Guide to the Territories of Halla
Book Six:The Rivers of Zadaa
Recommended:
Yes
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davke
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Member: David
Location: Greene Co., Tennessee
Reviews written: 51
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