The Pendragon Adventure Book 5: Black Water Discussion [Summer Reading Challenge]

Hey, y'all! I'm here with another summer reading challenge post! I'm continuing on with my July challenge: The Pendragon Adventure!

Series Info

Since this series is a little less well-known than the other series in my Summer Reading Challenge, I decided to discuss the premise of the series as a whole. The Pendragon Adventure is a 10 book series centered around our main character, Bobby, and his adventures through multiple dimensions (or territories, as they're called in the books). The books are told from a dual perspective. Our main perspective is of Bobby, told in first-person through journals which he sends to his best friend to keep a record of what is happening. The secondary perspective is of Bobby's best friend, Mark, and pseudo-girlfriend, Courtney, who receive the journals and go through their own problems on Earth. The majority of the books focus on a single territory each, as Bobby travels there to thwart the evil Saint Dane.

Book Summary
As always, remember not to read this if you haven't read the previous books in the series, because this summary will probably spoil you for any books that came before this one!

After Saint Dane's first victory on the territory of Veelox, Bobby follows him and Gunny to the territory of Eelong. On Eelong, the jungle cats called klees are intelligent and treat the humans, called gars, like slaves. The tension is mounting between the klees and the gars, and the only way to save the territory may be to break the rules.

Overall Thoughts

Non-spoiler section!

You're probably surprised this is going up so soon after my post for The Reality Bug. Honestly, I kinda am too. These late-night BookTubeAThon Twitter sprints are really helping me get through books. I finished up The Reality Bug during Monday's sprints, and got 325 pages into Black Water during Tuesday night's sprints! Then today (Wednesday!) I pushed through the last 100 pages. And when I finish this post, I'll be starting Twitter sprints again. Whew. It really is a reading marathon!

Anyway, on to the actual book. I liked it more than I remembered liking it. I've never been a huge fan of Eelong, and at best, I'm indifferent about Kasha, the traveler from Eelong. As I've said many times, I tend to prefer the books that take place on the territories I like the best. That may be why my memory was a bit cloudy as to how good this book is. The plot is excellent. The end of Reality Bug/ beginning of Black Water is kinda the turning point of the series. Things start to get more confusing, the plots get more intricate, and it becomes harder to figure out what exactly Saint Dane is really up to. I like that because the series really ages as the characters do.

As I said, I'm not a fan of Eelong. Since I can't remember a ton about some of the other territories that the series hasn't touched on yet, but I can tentatively say that this is my least favorite territory. If it's not my absolute least favorite, then it's at least in the bottom three. It's dangerous to even walk around on solid Earth and humans are treated like animals. No thanks!

Also, I forgot how exciting Mark and Courtney's plot-line is in this book! I totally forgot about what they had going on in this book and the part that they played in everything! I think that's what helps the plot out. Not only is Bobby's plot really interesting, but Mark and Courtney get an even more interesting plot than they got last time.

As far as rating, I'm going to give it around a 4.5. It may vary a bit in the end, but I'm going to go with 4.5 for now.

Spoilery Discussion!

First of all, the ending. THAT ENDING. I remembered that it happened, but it's just... whoa. As if Kasha dying wasn't bad enough, Spader and Gunny got trapped on Eelong. Honestly, I just feel bad for them. Of all the territories to get trapped on, they're stuck on EELONG. That just sucks. And Spader finally had his head on straight and was going to be a great asset to Bobby, which is such a bummer. At least Bobby's continuing on to Zadaa, where he has his best asset- Loor. But the loss of Spader and Gunny is damaging. Also, does anyone else picture Morgan Freeman as Gunny? Just me?

I love that Courtney and Mark jump into the action. I was yelling at them the entire time for using the flumes even though they could tell things were going wrong, but I knew that was what they needed to do because they had no other way of helping Bobby out. They couldn't get in touch with the real acolyte on Eelong. I guess they could've gone to the guy who was the previous acolyte on Second Earth and asked him for some names, but he's pretty grumpy and not helpful. Either way, I loved getting one long narrative with everyone attempting to save Eelong. It made the book super action-packed. Plus, we got to see Cloral again, which is always great.

Honestly... I don't have a ton more to say about the book. It's not my absolute favorite in the series, but I do think it has a really great plot. And I love that all of the characters band together to save Eelong. I hate that this spoilery discussion is so short, but that was really all I had to say about the book.

Favorite Quotes

Page 58: "Tell you what," I said. "I'm going back home, to Second Earth, where humans are humans and cats pee in a litter box. If this Seegen character wants my help, he can find me there. Let's see how he likes dealing with a world where he belongs in a zoo."

Page 125: Truth was, Mark was a terrible swimmer. But he put his faith in the fact that using the air globes was as easy as Bobby described. he wasn't going to let something silly like an irrational fear of a horrific death by drowning stop him from seeing Cloral.

Page 144: "I need something to write with," I said. I figured it was time to catch up with my journals. 
Kasha looked at me like I had just announced I was going to grow a second head.
"You can write?" she asked, not hiding her surprise.
"Amazing, but true," I answered snottily. "And I can count too. Want to hear?"

Page 174: There was nothing else to think about. I had already counted the stones in the walls (8,462), done every math problem i could think of, and even came up with my own lyrics to that old song "Smells Like Teen Spirit," since I never understood the real lyrics anyway. Tell me that's not desperate.

Page 259: The town was a strange oasis tucked into the mountains of nowhere. The only thing that would have made it more surprising was if there had been snow and a guy with a red suit who made toys and drove a sleigh.

Page 316: Boon added, "And we're not there yet."
"Hobey!" Spader exclaimed. "Let's be positive."
"Okay," Boon said. "I'm positive we're not there yet."
Spader laughed and said to Boon, "I like you, mate. When this is over I want to show you Cloral."
"You sure about that?" Courtney asked. "Can klees swim?"
"No, we can't," Boon answered. "Would I have to swim if I went to Cloral?"
Courtney, Mark, and Spader exchanged glances, and burst out laughing.

Page 259: "The sprinklers!" Bobby exclaimed. "On the light posts."
"They have sprinklers on light posts?" Courtney asked.
"What's a sprinkler?" Spader asked.



So, there you go, that's all for this summer reading post! Have you read the Pendragon series? What do you think of the series? Let me know in the comments!

I've also created a Facebook page for my blog, so if you want to check that out and like it, you can click HERE. I'll try to keep that pretty up-to-date with new posts and such.

Thanks for reading this! If you like my posts, don't forget to subscribe/follow, since it lets me know that you're enjoying what I'm doing. See y'all soon!