The Pendragon Series: Book One, The Merchant of Death
Recently I've started reading the Pendragon series of books by D.J. MacHale. There are a 10 books in the series (I think), and I'm currently on book 3, the Never War.
The books are about a teenage kid named Bobby Pendragon (though most everyone calls him Pendragon) who is dragged into an adventure he doesn't want.
In the course of the first book (called The Merchant of Death), the kid is dragged through a Flume (something similar to a Stargate, I think, but it doesn't always just take you through space, it takes you through time as well), into a world called Denduron, which apparently is going through a crisis, and Bobby has to help point the people of the world through the crisis in the right direction. To make things even harder, Bobby has an enemy, a man(?) by the name of Saint Dane, who wants to throw the worlds into chaos by taking advantage of the crisis to send the world in the wrong direction. After messing up about 20 times, Bobby actually manages to pull off saving the world (or territory, as they call them).
Overall, the book was pretty good, but I did have some problems with it. First of all, the book (actually the entire series) is set up in the style of what they call Journals, but you and I would call letters. And it falls into all the typical failures of such a style. First of all, to write these, Bobby would have to be in a safe place for long enough to write them, so when you realize that, it takes all the suspense out of it. For another, Bobby can apparently remember everything anyone says to him ever, as he can write out entire conversations. Also, they way he writes his journals just doesn't make sense; if I was writing about important events, I would keep it short and too the point, and there is no way it would be in chronological order- everything would be written about in order of importance.
Another thing I had a problem with was the beginning of the book, where Bobby spent about ten pages describing a kiss he had with a girl. It was kind of boring, and a struggle to get through.
At other points in the book, I had problems with how much Bobby could screw things up. Also, I disagreed with the way he took the blame for somethings that I did not see as his fault.
All in all, the books are good enough for me to continue reading the series (for now, at least, once Pendragon starts failing, I'm pretty sure I'm out of here), but they aren't good enough for me to buy them to do so.
If you feel like reading this, I'm sure you could find it at your local bookstore or library.