Friday, July 13, 2007

The Pilgrims of Rayne (Pendragon) by D. J. MacHale

In this book, Bobby Pendragon uses the flume to travel to 1st Earth with Courtney. When they get there, they go to the Manhattan Tower. Bobby leaves Courtney with Dodger so that they can search for Mark, and he leaves for the territory of Ibara. When Bobby gets to Ibara, he is attacked by bees and becomes unconscious for several days. When he regains consciousness, he is arrested for being an outsider and is taken to see the Tribunal. He is released and told to hang out with Siry, the Traveler of Ibara. Siry takes him into the jungle and introduces him to the Jakills, a bunch of rebel teenagers. The Jakills have plans to escape from the island, and they expect Bobby to help them steal a boat to do so. They successfully steal the ship, and they travel to the city of Rubity. There they are ambushed by Flighters. Siry and Bobby believe that they are the only two to survive the attack. They go back to the island to warn the Tribunal of an attack from Saint Dane, the ultimate bad guy. Bobby decides to throw out the rules, and starts mixing the territories. He comes back with a few things from three different territories. Alder comes back with him, and they start thinking about how to beat Saint Dane. They come up with a plan, and defeat Saint Dane and his army. Afterwards, Bobby sends Siry and Alder away, and then blows up the flume, trapping Saint Dane and himself on Ibara. While all this is happening on Ibara, Courtney and Dodger are searching for Mark on 1st Earth. They discover that Mark boards the Queen Mary and is killed. They arrive on the Queen Mary as stowaways and begin searching for Mark. They find him and convince him that he needs to return to 2nd Earth with Courtney.

First off, this book was so good, I stayed up REALLY late to finish it. One of my favorite characters was Courtney, because she was always ready with some sassy comeback or retort. I was very sad about the ending, but I still liked it because Bobby wasn’t thinking about just himself, and he finally realized that he could be defeated. This book was just as good as, maybe even better than, the rest of the series. I learned that no matter who you are, you can still be defeated, so you shouldn’t get really full of yourself. The vocabulary and content used was appropriate for teenagers. This author is a superb writer, and I love his style. He regularly uses plenty of detail. I don’t see any way the author could improve this book.

Rating (0 - 10 scale): 10

Reviewer Age: 15
Reviewer City, State and Country: Highland, MI USA