Pendragon: Before the War #2, by Walter Sorrells

Facts: I read this book in just one day. I think that's awesome because that's 1 day faster than I read the first book in this series. It was a super fun read. What else can you expect from a Pendragon novel? Even if D.J. MacHale didn't write it himself? Like the book before, it was just published this year. I consider myself very fortunate to have read this so recently after it came out. The only thing different about this book is that it's 230 pages-- 10 shorter than the first one. Maybe that's because this didn't have any sneak preview for book #3 at the end. Too bad. ~,~

The people you see on the front here are three more Travellers from the world of Halla. The first story in the sequence was Aja Killian's, the girl in the center with blond hair and tinted glasses. She looks so cool. Exactly as I had imagined her in the other Pendragon novels. The second story was about Elli Winter, the woman on the right. Then there was the one about Alder, the awkward looking guy on the left. I don't know about his looks. I already got a picture of him from reading the Pendragon graphic novel, and he doesn't look much like that here. But his story was still great.

My opinions: This Pendragon prequel makes me even more anxious to get back into the real story, the one where Bobby and all his friends left off. I have to wait a couple more agonizing months! It's unbearable!!! (Well, I guess I'm being a bit dramatic. It's only unbearable when Pendragon is on my mind, but when I'm not thinking about it, you can say it's bearable.) I hope that since reading my first review of the Pendragon series, some people have picked it up. That means you too, my curly friend between letters P and R. (She hasn't read any Pendragon. Can you believe it?) (Hehe, sorry about that, Curly.)

What was really cool about this collection of stories is that Press and Saint Dane have much more of a role in all of these travellers' adventures. Bobby's uncle appears directly in every tale, and Saint Dane is in disguise in two of them. You can tell quite clearly who he really is in both, though. Just look for the guy with pale, cold eyes in each story. Even if the main characters can't tell it's him, I sure could.

Aja's world is amazing. The one where people can go into a virtual reality? I'd love to be there. And Aja is so super smart. I like her. She can memorize and calculate mathamatical programs like no one's business. I could've used her to tutor me in SAT math! Press is quite helpful to her in the "game" she gets into and she learns that logic alone doesn't always solve problems. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut feeling...

Elli Winter seems like a nice, polite middle-aged woman. When Press meets up with her, she doesn't exactly feel like she's the Traveller type. But after reading about what she does on Qullian, I think she was wrong. I especially think she didn't make a good choice with letting her daughter Nevva become Traveller instead of her. Us fans know how that turned out in the end...

Alder, the Bedoowan knight, makes quite the transformation in his journey to knighthood. I was pretty amazed at how far he went in such a short time. I'm not sure how to talk about it anymore so I don't reveal anything, but in this story you can really tell which character Saint Dane is. It sure is funny knowing something that Alder plainly doesn't. But he finds out soon enough, when Bobby comes around...

Haha. I ended each segment about the Travellers with an elipse... Thanks for teaching me that word. Before then, all I used to call them was dot-dot-dot. Elipse sounds a lot fancier.

I really feel sorry for all the Travellers in this book. The ones from Book 1 had it a lot better than these guys. I mean, you can tell that the territories of Veelox and Quillian are already doomed, with the direction you know they're going in, and the situation on Denduron sure didn't sound good. But, when I remember that these are only fictional worlds, I feel a lot better. This book (and the author who wrote it) did the job it was meant to do. It entertained me. And made me wish I had the next adventure in my hands right away.