The Lost City of Faar: An underwater adventure for Bobby Pendragon

The Lost City of Faar by D.J. MacHale

Note: The first paragraph of this review contains minor spoilers for The Merchant of Death.

The Lost City of Faar is the second novel in D.J. MacHale’s popular 10-book PENDRAGON series for teens. In the first book, The Merchant of Death, 14-year old Bobby Pendragon discovered that he is a Traveler — a person who represents a planet and is able to travel through space and time to visit other worlds. The Travelers are trying to stop an evil shapeshifter named Saint Dane from creating chaos in Halla, which consists of everything that exists in all times and places. In that first book, Bobby saved a world called Denduron. When he arrived back on Earth, he found that his family had ceased to exist. His Uncle Press, who is also a Traveler, promised that someday Bobby would see them again. Bobby is sharing his adventure with his best friend Mark, a geek, and Courtney, the girl he’s had a crush on for years. He has a magic ring which allows him to send journals back to Earth. It’s these journal entries that we’re reading.

After Bobby foiled Saint Dane’s plans in Denduron, the villain went to a world called Cloral, so now Bobby and Uncle Press are following him there. Cloral is a beautiful planet of water. Everyone lives in cities that have been built on floating barges. Bobby loves Cloral and thinks it seems like an ideal society — everyone is happy there and Bobby finally feels safe. But not for long. Saint Dane is planning to throw this world into chaos, too. Bobby and Press will get help from a local named Spader, who doesn’t yet know that he is also a Traveler. Their adventure will involve sharks, speedboats, scuba diving, genetically engineered crops, and a legendary city that supposedly sunk below the ocean generations ago. The climactic scene is spectacular, but Bobby suffers a huge loss.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Mark is dealing with a bully named Andy Mitchell who found out about Bobby’s journals and is blackmailing Mark. The police are wondering what happened to Bobby and these journals could get Mark and Courtney in trouble because they haven’t turned them over. Mark doesn’t want to admit to Courtney that he let Andy find out about the journals. Can Mark outwit the bully without Courtney’s help?

Like the first book, The Lost City of Faar is mostly a fun teenage adventure, but D.J. MacHale takes the opportunity to do a little bit of teaching about scuba diving (explaining the gear and the bends, for example), to offer gentle warnings about the dangers of genetic engineering, to point out that even boring work can be very important, and to subtly highlight the types of personality characteristics and behaviors that successful and popular people display (e.g., working hard, saying nice things about others, etc.) This never feels teachy.

There are a few minor issues that didn’t detract much from my enjoyment of The Lost City of Faar. As I mentioned in my review of The Merchant of Death, the villain is laughably over-the-top, the plot is not water-tight, and things often happen too conveniently for Bobby. For example, when Bobby wonders why there is always a pile of perfectly fitting clothes and gear when they arrive on a new world, Uncle Press explains that there are unseen acolytes who provide what they need. Some action scenes go on too long with too much explanation of exactly what Bobby did to, say, get the boat going, but teens are less likely to find these moments as dull as I did. And, of course, there’s the problem of knowing that Bobby has survived the dire straits he’s in because he lived to write the journal that we’re reading. You could argue that since there are ten books in this series about Bobby Pendragon, we kind of knew he’d survive anyway, but somehow knowing that we’re reading a journal entry diminishes the tension more than usual.

Just one more thing. There are far too many exclamations such as “Amazing!” and “I couldn’t believe it!” which are a little annoying, but this seems to be toned down in the next book, The Never War, which I have already read and enjoyed even more than this book.

None of these little issues are likely to bother the target audience at all. My son flew through these books when he was 13 and I can see why. They’re fun and exciting with likeable characters. I’m listening to William Dufris narrate the audio versions. Dufris gives Bobby’s voice the enthusiasm that the author intended. The Lost City of Faar is just over 12 hours long.