Author: John Flanagan
# of Pages: 435 (hardback)
Genre: YA, Fantasy, Adventure
Rating:★★★★☆
Synopsis: In his brief time as an Araluen warrior, Horace has traveled the known world and fought countless bloody battles. All for his country, his king, and his friends. For all that is right.
When Horace travels to the exotic land of Nihon-Ja to study the Senshi fighting technique, it isn't long before he finds himself pulled into a battle that is not his - but one he knows in his heart he must wage. The Nihon-Ja emperor, a defender of the common man, has been forcibly dethroned, and only Horace, Will, and their Araluen friends, along with a group of untrained woodcutters and farmers, can restore the emperor to the throne.
In this final battle in the worldwide phenomenon that is Ranger's Apprentice, a kingdom teeters on the edge of chaos, victory lies in the hands of an inexperienced group of fighters, and it's anybody's guess who will make the journey home to Araluen.
Review: It's funny; I don't think John Flanagan was planning on writing twelve books. He wrote this one (with a little circle that says "The Final Battle" in the center, if you look on the cover. Doesn't that mean that it's suppose to be the last book?) and the Lost Stories, which is, I guess, the "eleventh" book. But it's not REALLY the eleventh book; my copy doesn't have "eleven" written anywhere on it. Then again, maybe he DID know he was going to write twelve books. After all, he didn't write much of an epilogue.
As always, I'm going to start with the cover. It's pretty awesome looking with the lighting and the detail. But that crazy guy that's about to cut someones head off is a little...scary. If you get my meaning.
I was surprise of the amount of fighting in this book (even though Flanagan made it pretty clear by the cover). He tosses you in the thick of everything, and there's all kinds of action right off the bat. If you've read any of my previous reviews, you'll know that me + detailed action scenes = madness.
And when I say detail action scenes, I mean DETAILED action scenes. No, not the graphic blood and gore type of detail, more like battle arrangement detail. The characters are traveling all over the place to the point where I can't quite keep up with the scenery. And in the big finally ending, all I can remember is that the good guys won.
This was not my favorite Ranger's Apprentice book. Actually, it's far from it. I wanted to see more of Will and Halt. I know, I know, they made A LOT of appearances in the book, but I wanted to see them fighting! Not instructing others to fight. Y'know, more bow action! And I missed Tug.
The princess (I can't even remember her name...that Cassandra person) annoys the heck out of me. I feel like I should like her more than Alyssa, but I don't. Maybe it's because she's the princess or because I keep picturing her as some squat little munchkin from the Wizard of Oz. I don't know.
Well, since I didn't love, love, love this book, I'm going to nock off a star. Four stars is pretty good, right?
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