Ranger's Apprentice Book One - The Ruins of Gorlan
When I saw Ranger's Apprentice Book One - The Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan I knew I had to buy it. I grew up absolutely adoring Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. This ranger was always my ideal. While this Ranger book was aged at young boys in middle school, any book about rangers was definitely high on my reading list. I was sure I could deal with it being "gentle" in nature without sex or violence. If anything, that was a point in its favor.It's really odd, since I love Aragorn, but I was disappointed that this was TOO much like Lord of the Rings. I like reading a fresh story to get a fresh take on things. I don't want to read Lord of the Rings plagiarized. Yet right from the start I was seeing names like Morgarath and Wargals. It seemed very much like the author had studied Lord of the Rings and taken all of the naming conventions and then written a fan fic sort of story.
Halt - the main "ranger teacher" in the story - moves and acts exactly like Aragorn. I was almost laughing out loud at the introductory scene, as it is almost identical to how Aragorn is introduced in Lord of the Rings.
The story has teenager Will along with a few of his friends (very stereotyped, the "studious" one, the "fighter" one, the "gentle" girl, the "elegant" girl) all going off to their adult lives. All of them are orphans. Will goes to be a ranger, against his will because rangers are thought to be mysterious strangers that people don't trust (sound familiar?) but of course over time he grows to love it.
Especially since this book is aimed at young people, there are many issues in here that trouble me greatly. There are numerous lines tossed out like "most boys can't cook". What?? Are we just encouraging people to believe idiotic things like this? I know many awesome male cooks.
The book is set in a medieval fantasy world but then has situations which are patently unauthentic. Serving cold milk to non-babies? That would never happen. He learns to ride in under 10 seconds? That just isn't believable and doesn't give a nice "growth of the character".
The book is deliberately being held back and marketed to a US audience, and yet they leave in kilometers and meters as the units of measurement - an easy enough change which would help make the book more understandable.
There are rather large plot holes. One involves a core tenet of the story so I won't mention it, but it was very disappointing when it became clear.
Finally, I realize that books aimed towards a teen audience shouldn't be paragons of writing - but surely we want young adults (and other readers!) to learn and enjoy quality writing. There were phrases in here that you had to read multiple times to realize who they were talking about, because they were so vaguely worded. Numerous paragraphs had the same adjectives re-used. It was of the variety of "He looked out over the room with a sad heart. 'I miss her,' he said sadly. He glanced out the window with a sad gaze." Yes, I get it, He was sad. Surely a wider range of adjectives could be used that the audience could understand and enjoy.
I realize there's a huge fan base for this series, and on a base level I can understand why. Again, I love rangers. I love the atmosphere, their way of life. This is in essence an Aragorn fan story. I guess what bothers me is if someone was going to write an Aragorn fan story that it could have been SO great, unique, and a story I could read and re-read. This is certainly an *OK* story and obviously fills the desires of many people who also love Aragorn-type stories. I just feel, with all the issues I found, that it could have been much better.
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