Halt's Peril

To start off this blog, I would like to say that this is my second blog, if you want to see my first, go here. (That one was made several years ago, keep in mind.) So I have a little blogging experience.

But moving on, this will, as the title implies, be a look at books. More specifically, a reviewing blog of the various books I read. So as my first review, I am going to review the wonderful fantasy, Halt’s Peril. Halt’s Peril is the ninth installment in the series called Ranger’s Apprentice, about a boy named will who is too small to become a knight, but Halt, a Ranger, agrees to take him in and trains him in the ways of the Arualen Ranger. By this book, however, Will is in his early twenties, and legally no longer a ‘ranger’s apprentice’.

This series is a series in which the author, John Flannagan, uses multiple books to tell the same substory, splitting the books somewhere in the story. This can be slightly annoying, but in its own way has a good effect. But this book itself is the second part in the story about Will, Halt, and their friend and knight, Horace, investigating and attempting to stop a religious deceiver named Tennyson, who uses the idea of a fake god to trick people into giving him money. But the main plot of this book is that a Hibernian assassin hits Halt with a poison bolt, and he is for a long time very near death.

The writing is well done in my opinion, and Flannagan is very skilled in using clever forms of sentences, as well as giving the characters wonderful lines, and distinctive idiolects for them. The plot progresses not too evenly, but it balances out. I especially like the plot twists and sudden unexpected changes. I see Flannagan’s writing improve over the course of this series, but something I don’t see change too much, is he uses more sophisticated words without totally knowing how to use them well. All in all, though, this book was very good.

One major thing this book was missing was romance. Not once did Will even think about his ‘love’, Alyss. And Halt’s wife, Lady Pauline, was rarely mentioned. This may be a side-effect of using two books for one story, but I’m sure Flannagan could have incorporated romance in some way if he tried. And as intriguing as this story was, I wish there had been more characters included. This was not really a problem in past books, mostly because many characters lived in the castle Redmont, Will’s home. But as in this book they are away chasing Tennyson, they lack any contact with people from home.

Despite this, Flannagan makes each character very distinct in personality, something many authors have a hard time doing. There are many characters in stories that are simply boring, but the latter is not true of this book. Another thing this book slightly lacks is the ability to make readers, or at least me, not be entirely engrossed in the book. This has been achieved by other books, but not this one. Even past Ranger’s Apprentice books have this, but, well you get the point.

And to continue the path of criticism, I was not impressed by the main plot of this book. It was basically: Halt, Will, and Horace are chasing after Tennyson, when a Hibernian assassin comes and barely skims Halt with a poison bolt, which results in the need to stop to take care of Halt. Will then retrieves Malcolm, a skilled doctor, and more worrying ensues, also decisions, emotions, all that. Well, you know some of that from earlier, but whatever. Not too creative, in my opinion, But Flannagan sort of makes up for it with the use of his characters and the suspense to make it more interesting. Now let’s talk about the ending.

For those of you who haven’t read the book, I am not going to spoil the ending for you, so the below text will be unreadable unless you highlight it.

It ended with Halt getting back to normal (of course), the Hibernian dying, and the good guys having a confrontation with Tennyson. (If you’re reading this, you have read the book, so you know the details.) I actually very much enjoyed that scene where the Hibernian tries to escape and ends up confronting Will, and then in an act of anger, Will simply throws a knife in to his back and kills him, ending the chapter by saying, “I don’t need you alive anymore.” Great effect. It gives the reader a sense of contentment and relief, as well as a sort of apprehension because it seems like a slightly viscous deed. And it did mostly end the substory, but it left a small gap of seemingly unfinished plot, probably because of the lack of Alyss. At least we know there will be a tenth book.

Back to complimentary points. In this book, as I was reading, I got a very vivid picture of what was going on. This may be because I am an experienced reader, but I experienced this vivid visual more than in some other books. Also, Halt’s Peril was a fairly smooth read. What I mean by that is there was never really a time when I had to go back and reread to understand something. Or when i had to explain something to myself to make it make sense.And the pages just simply flowed well. I don’t know how else to describe it.

But I’ll wrap this up now by saying that I give this book:

7/10 stars.