D.J. MacHale: The Quillan Games

• ISBN-13: 9780689869136
• Publisher: Aladdin
• Publication date: 12/26/2007
• Edition description: Reprint
• Pages: 512

 Let the games begin...
 The people of Quillan have lost control of their own future. Hosted by a strange pair of game masters, Veego and LaBerge, the Quillan Games are a mix of spot and combat. To triumph in the games is to live the life of a king. To lose is to die.
 Bobby Pendragon realized he must beat Veego and LaBerge at their own games. But the prize for winning the Quillan Games may be discovering the truth of what it really means to be a Traveler. 

 Oh, Bobby. Bobby, Bobby, Bobby. Booby. Oops.
 Pendragon is on a new territory while things are recovering from going horribly wrong on Second Earth. Courtney's not dead (not sure how I feel about that) and Saint Dane is a bastard, which we knew. Weirdly, whereas before we had a problem with Bobby constantly worrying that he wasn't adequate enough to save all the worlds (and who wouldn't?), we now apparently have the opposite problem - Bobby's getting cocky. Honestly, I don't see much of that happening, but maybe my perception of cocky is off. I don't know.
 The games on Quillan are sort of like short little Hunger Games. You win, you live to fight another day. You lose, you die. Bobby manages to squeeze by most of the time, due largely to his training with Loor in the last novel. Also, Saint Dane is noticeably absent for a large portion of the novel, but don't be surprised when he actually does pop up. Quite frankly, I find it ridiculous that Bobby is still incapable of realizing that even if he can't tell if Saint Dane is around, that doesn't mean he's not. Also, you can almost tell at this point which character is secretly Saint Dane. And if you can't...you're probably not the brightest bulb in the box. And Bobby, for all his praiseworthy attributes, apparently isn't either.
 We also have a true disaster for the first time - the worlds are colliding. I'm not going to tell you how, I'll just say that certain things from one territory are showing up on another, and so on and so forth. Bobby was warned about this by Press. The question now is, what is he going to do about it? It's not like he can reverse the damage Saint Dane has done. That's what really got me in this novel - what is the point of it all? Where is it all heading? Pendragon is also pondering this question. 
 Character wise, the most interesting development was the introduction of the Dados, specifically Bobby's personal Dado. While a robot, he at least has some feelings for Bobby and Bobby's plight. I thought that was pretty cool. Also, Courtney has become far less obnoxious than in the last book. She took her knocks like a woman and came out fighting, and has realized that her inability to cope with not being the best at everything put her in some pretty dire straits. And she's adapting. It's a beautiful thing to see. One of the other disappointments of this installment was a distinct lack of Mark Dimmond-y goodness. He's often the only one that has any common sense, and I missed his presence. He's there, don't get me wrong. But this was definitely a Courtney-focused novel. Other than these main characters, we had some interesting minor ones that were pretty well-fleshed out with the limited space they were allotted.
 Overall: B
 Definitely not my favorite Pendragon novel. I'm kind of getting annoyed with Bobby, to be quite frank. A person can only take so much waffling and lack of lesson-learning.