#123
Title: The Reality Bug (Pendragon Book 4)
Author: D. J. MacHale
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Year: 2003
Genre: young adult, fantasy & science fiction
375 pages
It's heartening that this series is improving over its run. This book borrows from some of the traditions of cyberpunk, though there's a countdown at the end that makes one wonder why the Veeloxians don't compute in binary. Ah, well. Maybe it's hexadecimal. Bobby steps more clearly into his role as lead traveler and Mark and Courtney play a bigger role in the narrative as we learn more about the acolytes who support the travelers.
There are still some internal consistency problems. For example, Bobby's journal is presented through a holographic technology that doesn't exist on Earth Two, which is forbidden. Mark frets about this for a few sentences, then, without resolving the problem, ignores it. There are, as always, other large continuity/consistency problems. At the end of the book, an enormous number of earlier-threatened deaths are made no mention of. Amusingly, a large portion of the book takes place in a virtual reality where internal consistency matters and is discussed by the characters.
Saint Dane suffers from complex villain syndrome; his plans to kill Bobby and destroy territories are needlessly byzantine. Near the end, we learn that there are 10 territories, making me wonder why Earth is three of them (Earths One, Two, and Three). Ten seems lonely in the vastness of time and space, but perhaps we will learn more about this seemingly low number as the series progresses.
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