Book Recommendation: The Ranger’s Apprentice by John Flanagan

Recently I’ve discovered and started reading John Flanagan’s Ranger’s Apprentice Series. Initially I did not like the series as it seemed to me to be sort of plagiarizing off of Raymond Feist’s Magician’s Apprentice Series. In fact it seems fairly obvious that Flanagan used Feist’s books as a template for his own, at least in their initial stages.

The Magician books focus on two young orphan boys being raised as wards of a back-country lord. The custom in the area is for all children in the area to spend time working for all of the various craftmaster’s in the keep so that they may be evaluated and chosen into an apprenticeship that is suitable for them. In the Magician one boy has no problem becoming a warrior apprentice but the other isn’t chosen by any of the craftmasters and so is looking forward to a life of exile. At the last moment the Lord’s magician surprises everyone by stepping forward and taking the boy as an apprentice, something that the magician has never done before. The boy has always dreamed of being a warrior and so is uncertain and scared of the life this promises him.

The Ranger books does the same thing, although I don’t think quite as well. Only orphans are faced with needing a craftmaster to choose them to be an apprentice, otherwise they become common field hands. And there is no period of the children working under the craftmasters to be evaluated, it is much more of a… ‘yah, they look like they could do it’ kind of selection. But like the Magician books one of the boys is immediately selected for warrior training and the other is left standing alone and scared with nobody asking for his service… until the Lord’s mysterious ranger does so, something he’s never done before.

The Lost City of Gold

The Lost City of Gold - A movie rough

 

Characters

 

Good Guys

• Carl and Jane, husband and wife archaeologists
• Michael, archeology graduate student, and our stories main protagonist
• Jessica, anthropology graduate student, Michael’s girlfriend
• Daniel, male athlete, Michael’s brother, handsome, smart, and talented but a bit lazy
• Lora, Daniel’s girlfriend, beautiful but vapid
• Tori, organizes and leads expeditions for Carl and Jane, expert outdoor woman
• Terrance and Paul, Tori’s assistants. Terrance is in love with Tori which she is aware of but she doesn’t feel the same way because Tori is secretly attracted to Paul but hasn’t acted upon it because of her job supervising him and the friendship between Terrance and Paul. Unknown to either Terrance or Tori is that Paul is in the closet and in love with Terrance.
• Ryan, brilliant but socially awkward university student who is really good at putting the clues together but not with dealing with his crush on Jessica.
• The good guys also have several other minor members, such as several local Central American guys who have been part of previous expeditions are join the group when they reach Central America.

Bad Guys

• Aaron, archaeologist, competitor with Carl and Jane but unethical
• Mr. Gravis, billionaire businessman and artifact collector, often secretly fund’s Aaron’s expeditions
• Franco, Mr. Gravis’ head of security, enforcer. Secretly worships Pauline
• Jessica, our hero Michael’s girlfriend is unfortunately also Aaron’s lover, although she doesn’t realize how unethical he really is or about his secret backers and how bad they are.
• Pauline, Mr. Gravis’ personal assistant. Beautiful and an expert at manipulating men (and women) with her looks. Also very smart and organized, and not afraid to get her own hands dirty although she prefers to trick others into doing her dirty work.
• The Bad guys also have several other lesser characters for muscle: Gravis/Franco security employees, Aaron’s disreputable Central American contacts, people drawn in by Pauline, etc.