Pendragon Book One: The Merchant of Death by D.J. MacHale

The Pendragon series is within the YA (Young Adult) genre, and Merchant of Death is the first book in a very successful series. After I finished listening to the audio book, I went to the Pendragon website and saw the immense reader reaction on the author's message boards. The nature of the series, fantasy/paranormal within YA, is very rich, and Machale's reader's have a sounding board for their opinions. One of the first threads I saw had over 33,000 threads. With that said, because I listened to the book rather than reading it, I apologize in advance if I misspell any of the words MacHale creates for his territories.

The Pendragon series follows Bobby, the protagonist, and his Uncle Press as they go through a floom to a territory. At first, I thought Pendragon and these territories were very similar to Stephan King and the Territories used in The Talisman. I found myself flipping back and forth between how King uses the Territories and comparing them to the Territories Bobby Pendragon finds himself in such as Second Earth and Denduron.

The farther into The Merchant of Death I read, the less similiar the Territories were to those King used in The Talisman. There are very different ways the characters go back and forth between the two realms. One other large difference is that King's character never meets a good guide character who is an adult. Bobby Pendragon has Uncle Press to explain and Osa to explain various properties of his new world of Denduron.

Overall, I give The Merchant of Death 4 stars ****. I don't read much YA fiction, but what struck me immediately was the clear voice of Bobby Pendragon vs. his friend Mark vs. the other characters within Denduron. I always knew exactly who was speaking and the character's points of view. The Merchand of Death was an enjoyable book for an adult, though I won't be reading the others in the series since YA isn't my favorite genre.

What kept me from giving it 5 stars was that Uncle Press had a lot of information that he withheld from Bobby Pendragon for apparently no reason. I couldn't quite reconcile the reasoning for why he showed up in the story and suddenly dragged Bobby into Denduron without any forewarning of how the whole process of being a traveler worked. Bobby makes a lot of mistakes that could have been avoided had Uncle Press been upfront with him in the beginning. It gave me the feeling that the adults were just being mean by withholding the information.