Home | Crime & Thrillers | Fantasy & SF | Popular | Historical | Non Fiction | Children's | Comics & Nostalgia

Try to think of a natural successor to EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS, the grandfather of fantasy-adventure, and you'll maybe come up with a dozen names. Try to think of fantasy-adventure authors who admit to having been influenced by the great ERB and you'll come up with hundreds of names. But there has been no natural successor - till now. D J MacHale's Pendragon serieshas many parallels with ERB but is totally, wholly original, and utterly brilliant.

The appeal to young teens is achieved by using the language of young teens, and the characters are good enough to want to identify with, and they experience the same adolescent growing pains we've all gone through - first kiss, first love, desire, etc., etc. PENDRAGON has a worldwide following and runs to seven books so far, plus there's a guide to Halla (of which more later) and a graphic novel on the way. In the UK Pendragon is published by Simon and Shuster and such is their faith in the series, they've just started to reissue the whole lot in a brand new design. Bobby Pendragon thinks he's a normal young American teenager, and has just had his first real kiss with Courtney Chetwynde, the coolest, most fabulous chick in his school. Then his Uncle Press calmly reveals to him that he's no ordinary boy at all, but someone with a role to play in the universe, a role that will take him to strange worlds, including Earth from the past and thousands of years into the future. There are a series of portals linking Bobby's Earth to these other worlds, all of which are junder threat from the demon Saint Dane, whose sworn mission is to bring down these linked worlds, which together make up Halla - the civilised universe in which Bobby must play his part.

I'm not going to spoil it for you by telling you what the stories are about - read them and find out for yourself. Or scroll down and see what Wikipedia has to say about the series. What I am going to concentrate on here is an overview of the publishing history and how D J MacHale has taken on that mantle of being ERB's natural successor. I know ERB wrote primarily for adults and Machale writes for children. But I'm an OAP and I just read the first seven books in quicki succession and wouldn't read anything else until I'd finished the seventh, THE QUILLAN GAMES. I'm a dedicated advocate of ERB, always have been, and always will be. His mastery of cliffhanger chapter endings was innovative and legendary and not only inspired generations of fantasy-adventure writers, but also inspired the whole genre of pulp fiction and the Saturday morning cinema.

I guess the Pendragon series reminds me most of ERB's Martian series, a film of which now rests in the capable hands of the PIXAR corporation and may materialise in 2010/2011. It's not just the cliffhnger endings, which D J Machale has perfected, and which serve to keep the hundreds of thousands of fans hooked. It's the concept of being able to be transported to other worlds through portals - John Carter of Mars through the Arizona cave to Mars, Bobby Pendragon via Flumes to various wonderful but dangerous other worlds and two other periods of Earth's history. And book seven has unmistakable parallels with ERB's CHESSMEN OF MARS, where Carter has tp play a game of "human" chess in order to save his life, the lives of his allies and the entire Martian civilisation.

The Pendragon Adventure is a young adult fiction book series of fantasy novels by D. J. MacHale. They follow the chronicles of Bobby Pendragon, a teenager who discovers that he, as well as his two best friends, Mark Dimond and Courtney Chetwynde, must try to save the universe. Each book switches from a first-person perspective of Bobby's journals to a third-person narrative of other prominent characters.

The first book, The Merchant of Death, was originally published in 2002 by Aladdin Paperbacks. The series has nine books thus far: The Merchant of Death, The Lost City of Faar, The Never War, The Reality Bug , Black Water, The Rivers of Zadaa, The Quillan Games, The Pilgrims of Rayne, and Raven Rise.

On his official site, MacHale stated that he had finished the first draft of the last book, and said it would be a killer ending. He plans for it to come out May 12th, 2009. He also announced that the first graphic novel, based on the Pendragon series, would be released around the time of the 9th book, and that a short series of books meant to be companions to the series will be released, the first of the companions to be released before the release of book ten.

In the first book of the series, The Merchant of Death, Bobby Pendragon is leading a normal life in Stony Brook, Connecticut, where he is the star of Stony Brook Middle School's basketball team. When he is fourteen, his uncle Press Tilton takes him to an abandoned train station where he and Bobby travel through a portal through space and time called a flume. Bobby soon finds himself in a different territory — possibly a different version of history or a different world entirely — called Denduron, where two important tribes are on the brink of a civil war because one tribe is forcing the other to work in mines. There Bobby discovers he was chosen to be a 'Traveler' between territories in order to defeat Saint Dane, an evil figure who wishes to tip all of Halla (the entirety of everything that exists, has existed, or will exist, including persons, time, and space) into chaos so that he can remake it according to his desire. To save it, Bobby must rescue ten territories from destruction.

Each territory has its own "turning point", which is a critical point in a territory's history in which the people must make an important decision. Saint Dane is trying to manipulate the people into making poor decisions, which would create chaos, while the Travelers are trying to help people make the right decision, which would create peace.

In the ninth book, Saitn Dane appears to have succeeded in his objective; however, Bobby and his fellow Travelers, including Press, are preparing to reconquer Halla.

Travelers

In context, a Traveler is an individual originating from one territory who is chosen to try to save his or her territory when something goes wrong. They are the only ones who know of the existence of flumes, other than their aides, who are called "acolytes". Only a Traveler may use a flume, or else the flume will deteriorate and eventually collapse. It is unknown who chooses whom to become a Traveler, and so far it has only been determined that they are born and raised for the purpose thereof. The Traveler before the individual who is chosen to be the next Traveler trains and introduces the successor to his or her new life. When a person is told that it is are a Traveler, all traces of that person's existence disappear, including families, except in the memories of those who knew that family or person. It is unknown as of yet where the families of travelers go, but the Travelers are reassured by their trainers that they remain alive.

There is one Traveler from each territory; at the time when there are two Travelers, the elder of the two will soon die. The previous Traveler, however, is allowed a certain amount of time in which to train the new Traveler in ways of judgment and responsibility. The purpose of the Travelers is to save Halla, a depiction of the universe, by pushing all "turning points", or historical moments that determine the territory's future, toward prosperity.

Every Traveler has special abilities. Many of the Travelers have demonstrated some of the following abilities at some time in the novels:

• Influence people's thinking through simple persuasion;
• Hear all speech (and see all writing) as their own tongue, although words that describe things individual to one territory do not change (Omnilinguality);
• Recover from injuries that would kill any normal person;
• Heal another Traveler or bring them back to life through sheer force of will.

Travelers are also able to shapeshift into animals or other humans, though only Saint Dane and Nevva Winter are shown to be so. In Raven Rise, Alexander Naymeer has the ability to activate the flume at any place and allow ordinary people to travel between territories. He can also project images of Halla from his ring. It is also revealed that the flumes are made of dark matter.

In The Quillan Games, Saint Dane claims that all travelers are illusions, explaining how they are able to use their "powers", how Saint Dane and Nevva Winter are able to change form, and how the travelers are able to use the flumes.