Title: The Outcasts Author: John Flanagan # of Pages: 434 (hardback) Genre: YA, Fantasy, Adventure Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ Synopsis:They are outcasts. Hal, Stig, and the others - they are the boys the others want no part of. Skandians, as any reader of Ranger's Apprentice could tell you, are known for their size and strength. Not these boys. Yet that doesn't mean they don't have skills. And courage - which they will need every ounce of to do battle at sea against the other bands, the Wolves and the Sharks, in the ultimate race. The icy waters make for a treacherous playing field . . . especially when not everyone thinks of it as playing. John Flanagan, author of the international phenomenon Ranger's Apprentice, creates a new cast of characters to populate his world of Skandians and Araluens, a world millions of young readers around the world have come to know and admire. Full of seafaring adventures and epic battles, Book 1 of The Brotherband Chronicles is sure to thrill readers of Ranger's Apprentice while enticing a whole new generation just now discovering the books. Review: This book was such a disappointment.
I am a huge fan of The Ranger's Apprentice series and was highly anticipating the wonderful story he would right in the Brotherband Chronicles. However, I found that The Outcasts was poorly written and, to be frank, boring. Was The Ranger's Apprentice series written like this? I can't even remember.
Below are the notes I have taken while reading The Outcasts:
- The time skips seem unnecessary as do the extensive background of Thorn.
-Who is the main character? Is it Hal or Thorn? This isn't made clear in the first 50 pages.
-The development of the story and the characters overall is poor.
-The feelings of the characters are told to the reader rather than shown through actions or dialogue, therefore making the writing style come off as childish.
-At first, the twins, Ulf and Wulf, came off as annoying because they were always fighting, and they didn't have very distinct personalities as individuals. However, their mischievous nature is portrayed when they comment that Hal is smart, but, "not as smart as us, though" as Wulf gives his identification cord to Ulf (155). They reminds me of the Hitachi twins (from the anime Ouran High School Host Club), who I like very much.
-I get that Hal is a nature leader, but he's stuck with a brotherband of rejects (with lack of a better term) that have never all worked together as a team. If you include the fact that they're short two members, it seems a little unbelievable that Hal's brotherband was THAT successful in their first assignment. I would have thought that at least one of the other brotherbands would have came relatively close. It would have introduced a little more conflict into the story and made it more interesting.
-It's displeasing how the Sharks are portrayed as the stereotypical bullies. Sure, maybe Tursgud is mean, but it's hard for me to believe that all of those who are in his brotherband are the same way.
-So far, Tursgud seems like Horace, Hal like Will, Thorn like Halt, and Erak like Baron Arnold. Not exactly an original story.
-Is this book suppose to be teaching me that cheating is okay as long as I'm not caught? Because cheating is cheating, no matter what. The Herons cannot honestly say that game of tug-of-war.
-The wording is so childish!
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