Into the Book

3

The Battle for Skandia - John Flanagan

Recommended
As the book starts, Will, a young teen wintering in a hunting cabin near Skandia is finally released from the clutches of an addicting drug, warmweed. His travelling companion, Evanlyn, is struggling to provide for them while Will regains his strength. One day, Evanlyn is out checking traps they had set the day before when a mysterious character appears behind her and drags her away from the trap and takes her back to his camp, where there are several other of his type. They are from a tribe of people called the Temujai, who are for some untold reason scouting through the area.

When Will catches up to her captor, he sees a man approaching Evanlyn and realizes that if he doesn’t do something it would be the end of Evanlyn. Thinking quickly, Will fires an arrow at the man’s hand, causing him to lose grip on the sword. Now, though, he has a trio advancing up the hill with swords drawn at him. He realizes that perhaps this is where his end is to come.

Suddenly, from the trees closer to the road, help arrives and everyone is safe. The newcomers are Halt, Will's master, and Horace, a battle school apprentice who joined halt in his expedition to rescue Will. But there is still one problem. What are the Temujai up to? With a small troop of Skandians (people from the land of Skandia, which is where they are), they are able to gather enough information to find out that the Temujai are planning to attack Skandia. The party must go advise Ragnak, the Oberjarl, or leader of the nation. The Skandians, however aren’t exactly famous for planning out wars well, mostly they just run straight into battle. Ragnak knows of the Temujai’s great war strategies, so he asks Halt to help him plan the best way to proceed. Almost too soon, the Temujai arrive.

As I said before, the idea, the plot, the characters are all very well developed, and as far as that goes, there isn’t anything at all wrong with it that I can pick out. He has wonderful imagination, great writing skills, and his books are very well done. I was extremely disappointed when I was reading and I came across the first curse word. To me, it doesn’t even help develop the characters. There is also a considerable amount of violence, but that can be expected from a book entitled The BATTLE for Skandia.

I think I'm going to recommend this book, rate it five stars, and march through the city with a ‘Rangers Apprentice’ flag (not really, but almost).

Caleb Joyce

3 comments:

  1. "There is also a considerable amount of violence, but that can be expected from a book entitled The BATTLE for Skandia."

    Haha! I like that. :)

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  2. In Australia it's called "Oakleaf Bearers". ;)

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  3. I read the first three in the series along with my brother a few years ago, we haven't picked up this one yet. Regrettably the others had a fair amount of language in them as well.

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