The Short:
The Outcasts
Brotherband
Chronicles, Book 1
By: John Flanagan
5/5 Stars
What: In a harsh society, a group of misfit boys find
themselves tossed together as a group to be trained as warriors.
Recommended to those who like: Clean, sailing, fantasy,
middle grade fiction. (Companion series to The
Ranger’s Apprentice).
The Long:
I’m a huge Ranger’s
Apprentice fan, so I was pretty excited when this series came out a while
ago. I’ve been a little behind in getting around to reading it, but I really
enjoyed this first book.
Hal is a fatherless young man who finds himself on the
fringe of Skandian society, which resembles the Vikings. When the time comes
for Brotherband training, he knows his chances are slim to be picked in the winning
group. Can he pull together a group of misfits so that they’re no longer the
outcasts?
This is definitely a book for a younger audience, but I
still enjoyed it. There’s some good, snappy dialogue and the action kept me
hanging on throughout the whole story. The characters are memorable and
colorful.
The book takes a rather serious turn at the end and the
second one is calling to me from my bookshelf. I think that, with the higher
stakes set up at the end of this book, the next books will be really good. I'm looking forward to how the will characters develop in the coming books.
Thoughts? Has anyone read these or The Ranger's Apprentice?
I've actually never read The Ranger's Apprentice. I've been meaning to tackle that series for forever, and I've never gotten around to it. I may see if my library has it, but I'll probably just have to bite the bullet and buy it at some point. :P
ReplyDeleteThere's a good chance your library has it. I'd definitely recommend the first four books (they're one cohesive story). After that, only continue on with the books if you really enjoyed the first four (the books from there on out are mostly single stories or two-book stories).
DeleteThis series is definitely good, too, so check to see if your library has them!
Thanks for the comment!
I've read the first three books in this series and it was really good. (I did struggle with the telling vs showing, which annoyed me, but beyond that it was good.) Does it have Christian elements to it, though? I didn't think there was, but it was good anyways.
ReplyDeleteThe telling vs. showing is an issue.
DeleteIt doesn't have Christian elements to it, but I occasionally like to take an excursion into non-Christian things for variety/just because of what I have available on the book shelf. (I tag those books as "clean" rather than as "Christian").
Ideally, I'd like to get to where I'm only reviewing Christian books. However, with the limited time I have and the amount of books I would like to read, I sometimes have to throw in a non-Christian book just for some "filler".
Thanks for the comment!