The Tournament At Gorlan
We pre-ordered the book and it arrived on its release date! My sister read it that same day and I read it the next day. It was pretty much as I expected. Adventure, laughter, escapes, fighting with all kinds of weapons, well known characters and new ones, it is a great prequel to the Rangers Apprentice series.
This is prequel number one of the Rangers Apprentice series by John Flanagan..... these books down below here. Though I must admit the books pictures belong to my sister, not me and are in the English edition not the Australian one.
I would recommend reading the RA series before this book, but it is not essential, still this book contains BIG spoilers for RA books 8 The Kings of Clonmel and 9 Halt's Peril.
These are not the back of Jane's books... because the English edition only says completely useless things on the back..... and it talks to Will the MC.... as if he was going to read the back of the book.... to find out the future....
You should also read RA book 11 The Lost Stories, because one of the short stories it contains has the events of the day before 'The Tournament At Gorlan' starts. I had kinda hoped they would include that as the first chapter or prologue.... but they didn't.
Notice something about the photos of the books? Yes well I do own some of the series and they are in the Australian edition, which is by far the best one. See, my books.
Back to the point. In The Tournament At Gorlan we get to hear exactly how the Ranger corps was reformed, some rangers getting rather wet at multiple times during the process. This is not about Halt and Crowley's training though, it does not go back that far.... maybe they need a prequel prequel.... 'the Earlier Years' for that.
I felt that the very beginning of The Tournament at Gorlan was a bit slow, but the pace gathers quickly. As I said, I almost thought they may have inserted that short story from RA book 11 as a chapter in the front of this book, it would have made it start faster too, but they didn't, although there are always future editions... This book is full of even more terrible jokes and such than the RA series, I don't think I laughed out loud very many times, but I definitely had a lot of snorting fits.. And the humour is all clean humour, which is always nice.
I did occasionally feel like some parts of scenes were replays of other bits in the RA books, but then there is only a number of ways that you can describe a ranger moving, with all awesomeness! (and other such things). But really I like these books.... I mean I sat down to read this book in one day. It was rather cool, getting to see slightly younger versions of many of the older characters from the RA books that I like. And just rangers..... I want to time travel and read the series again for the first time..... It is interesting though, already knowing many of the things that will happen. And that some people can't possibly die yet because they are in the first RA book...
Because we pre-ordered our edition, and pre-ordered it early, someone scribbled in it... which is pretty cool!
If you like fun fantasy books, with great... Australian humour... which at times is truly terrible, this is the book for you. Also they have maps. Books with maps are on a higher level than others.... as long as you can understand the maps.... and the RA ones are quite understandable.
Though if the person reading this is young and impressionable, they will probably become obsessed with bows arrows and swords and such.... sadly I was a bit to old when I first came across these books. So I just imagine, but my little sister is as I said, obsessed with weapons, the sharper the better.
All my John Flanagan books, notice the Brotherband one on the end, if you have not read that series you need to. I only own the first book... but again my sister owns all of them, and is waiting for the next one to come out.
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2 comments
Great pictures! I've only read the first four, but my younger brother has read all of them (he's working on getting the whole set). The spines of the UK version are lovely! I didn't care for the US covers initially, but they've grown on me ... Need to actually catch up with the series soon. =)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment, you should read the rest they are so well done and great stories.
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