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(More customer reviews)I've always enjoyed the "Ranger's Apprentice" series. While there isn't really anything new or inspired about them, they've proven popular with my students and quick, enjoyable reads.
The series centers around Will, a young Ranger, who is your typical hero in these sorts of stories: expert in woodsmanship, personal concealment, tracking, archery, being mistaken for a sorceror, that sort of thing. Naturally, he's an orphan, and naturally, "great things are expected of him in the years to come" which doesn't surpise us, given that he is "highly thought of, though of course he didn't know it."
I say this not to be disparaging, but with amusement. Will is exactly who we expect him to be. Simple and good.
But this latest installment into the series fails to impress me, and that for one simple reason: it isn't an installment into the series. The book doesn't end. It merely runs out of pages. The term "cliffhanger" seems inadequate to describe the final pages of this book.
I understand that this is a series, and that the overall story will be told over the corse of several books. Books in a series often end in cliffhangers. Flanagan has done this before - at then end of the series' second and third installments - but in this case it is far more jarring. Those books had a clear climax, the major conflict established in the early pages of the book were resolved. And while they certainly ended with a clear cliffhanger, the overall story had advanced. Not so, with "Sorceror of the North."
Again, I understand that this is a series, but in any series, each book should be able to stand on its own, even if greatly diminished. Each entry needs its own plot and conflict, even if subordinate to the overall story.
"Sorceror of the North" book lacks that internal plot. The story begins with a completely irrelevant visit to Will's fief. The area he is responcible for watching. But he has only enough time to unpack his bags and flirt once or twice with his maid's daughter before being whisked away to the north. His fief, his responcibilities, the girl -- never mentioned again. And there isn't a single thing that happens during this visit that is necessary to the story. You could start reading the book a third of the way in and not become the least bit confused.
Eventually, will is told to do that which probably should have just been his first assignment: he is told to act the part of a travelling minstrel, while seeking to determine the cause of a mysterious sickness that is afflicting the lord of a small but important fief in the north.
Once there, he finds things are not well as a power struggle is in place between Orman - the bookish and unliked son of the stricken lord - and Keren - the popular illegitimate cousin-soldier. Will must decide which of the two he must trust. Meanwhile, there's a pesky sorceror out in the haunted woods (favored lair of evildoers in these sorts of stories) that Will must find and deal with.
These are the conflicts that are introduced. All of them are compelling, interesting, and do well to draw you into the story.
And then the book simply stops.
Not a single conflict is resolved. Will no sooner discovers who the real enemy is and vows to defeat him "even if I have to tear down the castle stone by stone" than we turn the page only to find the rear flap of the dust jacket telling us how Flanagan grew up in Sydney and so on and so forth...
The book is well written, as is the series on the whole: if not truly inspired. I recommend the series as a light read for a rainy weekend. But as a stand alone, it fails to satisfy. There isn't anything here.
Hold off on buying this one until book six rolls around. You'll want to read the two of them together. Until then, there just isn't any point.
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Ranger's Apprentice, Book 5: The Sorcerer of the North
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