| The Quillan Games | |
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First edition cover |
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| Author(s) | D. J. MacHale |
| Cover artist | Victor Lee |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Pendragon |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy novel |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
| Publication date | May 16, 2006 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 486 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 978-1-4169-1423-5 (first edition, hardback) |
| OCLC Number | 62492955 |
| LC Classification | PZ7.M177535 Qui 2006 |
| Preceded by | The Rivers of Zadaa |
| Followed by | The Pilgrims of Rayne |
The Quillan Games is the seventh book in D.J. Machale's Pendragon book series. The book takes place after The Rivers of Zadaa and was released on May 16, 2006 in Canada and the US. It was released on November 16, 2006 in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and in other countries.
Contents |
In the new installment, Pendragon Book Seven: The Quillan Games, Bobby visits Quillan, a territory of games where to lose is to die. Quillan is a territory on the verge of destruction. The people have lost control of their own future. The only chance they have of finding a better life is by playing the Quillan Games -- games in which game masters Veego and LaBerge use the people of Quillan as pawns in competitions that range from physical battles to impossible obstacle courses to computer-driven tests of agility. To triumph in the games is to live the life of a king. To lose is to die. Bobby quickly realizes that the only way to save this troubled territory is to beat Veego and LaBerge at their own games and dismantle their horrible fun house. But there is more at stake for Bobby. The prize for winning the Quillan Games may be discovering the truth of what it really means to be a Traveler.
The story takes place in a territory called Quillan, in the city of Rune. According to Saint Dane, Quillan once was much like Earth, but now most of the citizens of Quillan live dreary lives in drab, gray cities. Many people bet on the games for hopes of a better life; however if they lose the bet they might lose their lives, so this is very dangerous. These few famous players who play the games are called challengers, and they live in a cartoon like castle while they are playing; however they almost always die playing the dangerous games before they can enjoy living in the castle for very long.
Like the other Pendragon books, the plot of The Quillan Games is two subplots: One featuring Bobby's adventures on Quillan, the other featuring Mark and Courtney's adventures as they read Bobby's journals and occasionally battle Saint Dane from their homes on Second Earth.
The story begins when Bobby arrives on Quillan in the flume, straight from Zadaa where in the sixth book, he helped Loor save Zadaa and mysteriously raised her from the dead. Bobby appears in a huge empty warehouse and is promptly attacked by quigs, Saint Dane's assassins, which on Quillan turn out to be giant spiders the size of kittens. After killing a quig, he finds that it's a robot.
Upon escaping the quigs, he finds his way out of the warehouse and discovers a huge arcade filled with games. He soon learns that games of Quillan are much more serious than on Second Earth, because the losers are often killed. He also puts on a silver bracelet called a loop, which he soon finds out is a tracking device that is nearly impossible to slip off. After being chased by, and escaping from robot policemen called dados, he finds himself in the middle of a city he later finds out to be called Rune. He notices that the word BLOK seems to be posted everywhere, but he has no idea what the word means. While he is trying to be inconspicuous and escape from the dados, he notices a strange incident; a man is running away from two dados (apparently he has lost a game) and a woman crashes her "scoot", which is a Quillan-ized motor scooter, into the dado. Then, a man shows up to save her from being taken by the dados. Then the two people grab their left biceps as a strange gesture.
However, he is soon distracted by a game being played on the big screens; he sees two challengers playing a game called Tato together; he notices that one of the challengers is wearing a Traveler ring. Unfortunately, the Traveler loses and dies, which makes Bobby angry and determined to avenge this death.
However, Bobby is soon captured by the android dados, who drive him to a castle. Bobby soon realizes that the bright red shirt he is wearing sets him apart as a challenger, a contestant of the games. Bobby is greeted by the siblings LaBerge and Veego, who are very hospitable to Bobby. Bobby, however is not friendly to them, and spends his first evening in his new room in the castle writing his journals and reflecting on how he doesn't have any idea what's wrong with Quillan and how Saint Dane fits into the mix.
Soon, Bobby learns of how much Challengers are forced to play games; he immediately has to beat a game called Hook just to get to dinner and then promptly afterwards he is rushed into another game called Tock to prove his competitiveness and worth. After he managed to win the game, he meets Nevva Winter, a Blok assistant. Later he is introduced to Nevva and learns she is really the Traveler from Quillan, while the Traveller who died playing Tato was named Remudi, and was the Traveler from the territory of Ibara. Unfortunately, before Nevva can explain more, she has to leave Bobby stranded in the strange territory, trapped with LaBerge and Veego in the challenger's castle with no idea what to do next.
Bobby spends a few weeks at the castle, and learns a lot about challengers and games; unfortunately he still doesn't come close to finding Saint Dane as he does not learn anything more about the rest of Quillan. Finally, after a long time at the castle, Nevva takes Bobby to a meeting outside of the castle in the Blok office. There Bobby learns how Blok is a corporation that, over many generations, has gradually taken over Quillan and forced people to live a harsh life. He also finds out that Saint Dane has been pretending to be one of the ten leaders of Blok, called Mr. Kayto. There Saint Dane makes an offer to Bobby; he says that if Bobby will compete in the Grand X, an upcoming series of games, then he will tell Bobby the most hidden secret of the Travellers's true nature. Though Saint Dane's offer is tempting, Bobby decides not to risk his life in any more games and refuses it.
When Bobby is driving back to the castle, he is kidnapped by some mysterious people wearing black and is taken to an underground hideout. He finds out that they are a secret group called the revivers, and that their goal is to save Quillan from the control of Blok and make it a free territory again. Nevva is one of them. They want Bobby to compete in the Grand X, in order to stir the majority of the people into a revolt against Blok. To help convince Bobby to make this choice, they show him to a top-secret hidden library they call Mr. Pop, which contains the history of Quillan. Bobby finally agrees and is sure that his decision will be the turning point for Quillan and will save the territory.
Bobby turns himself in to LaBerge and Veego, then immediately starts competing in the Grand X, against a champion called Challenger Green, the challenger who killed Remudi in the Tato match. During the game, Bobby learns some astonishing secrets; he learns that LaBerge and Veego are from the territory of Veelox, but were taken here by Saint Dane. He also learns that Saint Dane has taken them to many different territories, including Cloral, Eelong, and Zadaa, and got the ideas for some of their games from those territories.
In the end, Bobby wins, not only the game, but also the hearts of the people, and they start revolting against Blok, just like Bobby and the revivers wanted. However, just when he thinks the territory of Quillan is saved, he is captured by Saint Dane and finds out that Nevva had been with Saint Dane all along. He then learns that, though both of them were blindfolded, Nevva gave away the location of the huge library since she carried a loop to "Mr. Pop" which allowed Blok to discover the location of Mr. Pop. The dados would later incinerate it, causing the people of Quillan to lose hope return to betting on the Quillan Games as the only way of life. This causes Bobby to lose the territory of Quillan to Saint Dane. He also learns that Challenger Green was really Saint Dane in disguise. Saint Dane also mentions something called the Convergence, which he believes is inevitable. Nevva reveals that she is on Saint Dane's side, and says that she thinks she will take the Traveler from Ibara's place because he is dead.
Nevva and Saint Dane escape, and it is revealed that Saint Dane has taught Nevva how to transform; they both turn into giant birds and fly away after hypnotising some revivers into jumping out of a window. The journal ends with Bobby telling Mark and Courtney that before he goes off to fight Saint Dane again, he will return to Second Earth, to take a break, but also to find out what has been happening there. Just before Bobby leaves for the flume, he talks to a woman named Elli Winter, who is Nevva's mother. Elli tells Bobby how his Uncle Press told her she was supposed to be the Traveller from Quillan until Nevva was ready, but was dealing with the loss of her husband, and didn't want the added responsibility. Uncle Press told her that he would make Nevva the traveller then, but to keep the traveller ring he had given her. Now she feels she is ready to take on the responsibility of being the travaller for Quillan. As on Veelox, the territory has a last vestige of hope. It does not seem likely though, that Quillan will resurrect itself.
The Rivers of Zadaa ended with Courtney beginning recovery from her car accident when Saint Dane tried to kill her in the form of Whitney Wilcox. Courtney continues to recover, but it takes her all fall to recover physically. Meanwhile, Mark studies science with Andy Mitchell, a former bully but now Mark's friend. By Thanksgiving in November, she is ready to begin school again. Mark and Andy show Courtney their new invention: A cube shaped device called Forge that can transform its shape when the user talks to it as demonstrated when Andy turned it into a sphere and a pyramid. Andy and Mark say that it is still in its prototype stages and has only assumed three different shapes.
While Courtney is enjoying her first days at school since the accident, Mark finds out he can go to Orlando, Florida to enter his invention in a contest; however, because of an accident with Mitchell's flower shop, Mark's parents end up taking one plane flight to Florida while Mark is scheduled to take a different one. Later, Courtney discovers that the flight that Mark's parents had taken had disappeared over the ocean while going out to sea to dump some fuel because of engine trouble.The reason of this is unknown; all passengers have disappeared. Courtney goes to the flume entrance, and there discovers that Mark had gone into the flume to another territory. There, Saint Dane comes out of the flume. She also discovers that Andy Mitchell had been Saint Dane all along, even since her childhood. She also realizes that she was a pawn in Saint Dane's plan to gain Mark's trust as Andy Mitchell, as saving Courtney formed a bond between the two. Saint Dane mysteriously takes Courtney through the flume right back to Second Earth.
Courtney soon finds that although most of her home is still intact, there are some strange new technologies which were not there when Courtney had left such as a life like cat robot, and a high tech computer. When Bobby comes back to Second Earth, he and Courtney discover that these technologies were made by a company called Dimond Alpha Digital Organization. They suspect that it may have something to do with Mark, whose last name is Dimond, and they also realize that the initials spell the word DADO, the name of the robot police from Quillan. Bobby and Courtney decide the next step is to find out how this has changed the Earth territories' history, so the story ends with Bobby and Courtney going into the flume for Third Earth together.
Forge is a fictional technology created by D.A.D.O. It is a shapeshifting technology first seen in book seven, The Quillan Games. Forge was first introduced by Mark Dimond and Andy Mitchell as a science fair project. It is made of a rubbery skin that can expand and contract easily so that the mechanical parts inside can change into simple shapes.
In The Quillan Games, Mark 'turns on' the forge by saying "activate". After that, it can transform into a handful of basic shapes using voice control, which are pyramid, cube, and sphere. Mark and Saint Dane have big dreams for it, as it would jump-start technology's evolution by about 50 years, especially since the introduction of it would be taking place in 1937. They fantasize about how you could use this technology. e.g. needing only one wrench that changes sizes, having only one eating utensil that changes between fork and spoon, etc.
Because of this enormous jump-start to technology, in the present time (approx. 2006), there are robots, called dados, that do all our work, and they all look suspiciously like Mark. However, Bobby, Mark's friend, knows that the fact that the dados are there is a horrible problem, and is now setting out to fix it with Mark and Courtney.
After being taken to First Earth by Saint Dane, Mark is convinced by Courtney to destroy it, and Mark crushes it under his shoe.
In a Quillan Games podcast interview, it was mentioned that Blok may be a rather dramatized version of a real company. Although it remains unclear exactly which company Blok mirrors, some has hypothesized that this company is no other than Wal-Mart because Bobby mentions that one logo was a yellow smiley face--the Rollback logo of Wal-Mart. In the Quillan Games the society resembles a totalitarian society except that everything is controlled by a company rather than a government.
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