Pendragon by Julia Golding is the second in the Young Knights adventure series, the first of which, Young Knights of the Round Table, I reviewed here last week. Pendragon was sent to me by the Amazon Vine review programme in exchange for my honest opinion.
If you love the first of these books then you will be delighted with the second. It carries on exactly where the first book left off, although, like the first book, it also ends on a kind of cliff hanger, so you will have to keep reading in order to find out what happens next. It is full of high octane magical adventures, jousts, battles, and events which means that the chapters speed by unrelentingly, carrying you along on a tumbling tide of action packed adventure.
As with the first book, my own problems reading it stem from plot holes and a lack of background continuity issues that continue to niggle at me. The foundations of events are glossed over in favour of action, which I am sure will work for most readers the books are aimed at, but continued to leave me rather frustrated.
In this book, Rick and Roxy are the main focus of our attention, having been split up from their companions, Tiago and Linette at the end of the last book. Rick and Roxy are in Avalon, and their very existence is under threat from King Oberon who has decided once and for all that he will subjugate humans and bring earth under his command. Rick and Roxy need to find a way to free King Arthur, if indeed he still exists, and try to thwart Oberon’s plans.
The best moments of the book for me, were the chapters in which the author focuses on the animals in the plot. Julia Golding has a lovely way of bringing all the animals to life, in fact, sometimes more successfully than she does the humans in my opinion. The dragon related sections of the book were really great, and the encounters with the various magical horses, dogs, snakes and even a puffin, were handled really beautifully.
A cracking adventure story for older readers, boys and girls, aged 8-12.
