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The Icebound Land: Book Three |  |
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The Icebound Land: Book Three | |
Expelled from the Rangers he has served so loyally, Halt is joined by Will's friend Horace as he travels toward Skandia. On their way, they are challenged constantly by freelance knights–but Horace knows a thing or two about combat. Soon he begins to attract the attention of knights and warlords for miles around with his uncanny skill. Even so, will they be in time to rescue Will from a horrific life of slavery?
The smash hit series continues with another heart stopping adventure.
Perfect for fans of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone, Christopher Paolini’s Eragon series, and George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire series.
John Flanagan grew up in Sydney, Australia, hoping to be a writer. It wasn?t until he wrote a highly uncomplimentary poem about a senior executive at the agency where he worked, however, that his talent was revealed. It turned out one of the company directors agreed with John?s assessment of the executive, and happily agreed to train John in copywriting. After writing advertising copy for the next two decades, John teamed with an old friend to develop a television sitcom, Hey Dad!, which went on to air for eight years. John began writing Ranger?s Apprentice for his son, Michael, ten years ago, and is still hard at work on the series. He currently lives in Manly, Australia, with his wife. In addition to their son, they have two grown daughters and four grandsons.
文摘Two
Halt stood motionless against the massive trunk of an oak tree as the bandits swarmed out of the forest to surround the carriage. He was in full view but nobody saw him. In part this was due to the fact that the robbers were totally intent on their prey, a wealthy merchant and his wife. For their part, they were equally distracted, staring with horror at the armed men who now surrounded their carriage in the clearing.
But in the main, it was due to the camouflage cloak that Halt wore, its cowl pulled up over his head to leave his face in shadow, and the fact that he stood absolutely stock-still. Like all Rangers, Halt knew the secret of merging into the background lay with the ability to remain unmoving, even when people seemed to be looking straight at him. Believe you are unseen, went the Ranger saying, and it will be so.
A burly figure, clad entirely in black, now emerged from the trees and approached the carriage. Halt’s eyes narrowed for a second, then he sighed silently. Another wild goose chase, he thought. The figure bore a slight resemblance to Foldar, the man Halt had been pursuing since the end of the war with Morgarath. Foldar had been Morgarath’s senior lieutenant. He had managed to escape capture when his leader died and his army of sub-human Wargals faded away.
But Foldar was no mindless beast. He was a thinking, planning human being—and a totally warped and evil one. The son of a noble Araluan family, he had murdered both his parents after an argument over a horse. He was barely a teenager at the time and he had escaped by fleeing into the Mountains of Rain and Night, where Morgarath recognised a kindred spirit and enlisted him. Now he was the sole surviving member of Morgarath’s band and King Duncan had made his capture and imprisonment a number one priority for the Kingdom’s armed forces.
The problem was, Foldar impersonators were springing up everywhere—usually in the form of everyday bandits like this one. They used the man’s name and savage reputation to strike fear into their victims, making it easier to rob them. And as each one sprang up, Halt and his colleagues had to waste time tracking them down. He felt a slow burning of anger at the time he was wasting on these minor nuisances. Halt had other matters to attend to. He had a promise to keep and fools like this were preventing him doing so.
The fake Foldar had stopped by the carriage now. The black cloak with its high collar was somewhat similar to the one Foldar wore. But Foldar was a dandy and his cloak was immaculate black velvet and satin, whereas this was simple wool, badly dyed and patched in several places, with a collar of crudely tanned black leather. The man’s bonnet was unkempt and badly creased as well, while the black swan’s feather that adorned it was bent in the middle, probably where some careless bandit had sat on it. Now the man spoke, and his attempt to imitate Foldar’s lisping, sarcastic tones was spoiled by his thick rural accent and clumsy grammar.
“Step down from the carriage, good sor and mad’m,” he said, sweeping a clumsy bow. “And fear not, good lady, the noble Foldar ne’er harms one as fair as thee art.” He attempted a sardonic, evil laugh. It came out more as a thin cackle.
The “good lady’ was anything but fair. She was middle aged, overweight and plain in the extreme. But that was no reason why she should be subjected to this sort of terror, Halt thought grimly. She held back, whimpering with fear at the sight of the black figure before her. “Foldar’ took a pace forward, his voice harsher, his tone more threatening. “Get down, missus!” he shouted. “Or I’ll hand you your husband’s ears!”
His right hand dropped to the hilt of a long dagger in his belt. The woman cried out and cowered further back into the carriage. Her husband, equally terrified and more than fond of his ears where they were, was trying to push her towards the carriage door. Enough, Halt thought. Satisfied that no one was looking in his direction, he nocked an arrow, drew and sighted in one economical motion, and released.
“Foldar’, real name Rupert Gubblestone, had a brief impression of something flashing past, just in front of his nose. Then there was an almighty jerk on the raised collar of his cloak and he found himself pinned against the carriage by a quivering black arrow that thudded into the wood. He gave a startled yelp, lost his balance and stumbled, saved from falling by his cloak, which now began to choke him where it fastened around his neck.
As the other bandits turned to see where the arrow had come from, Halt stepped away from the tree. Yet to the startled robbers, it seemed as if he had stepped out of the massive oak.
“King’s Ranger!” Halt called. “Drop your weapons.”
There were ten men, all armed. Not a single one thought to disobey the order. Knives, swords and cudgels clattered to the ground. They had just seen a first-hand example of a Ranger’s black magic: the grim figure had stepped clean out of the living trunk of an oak tree. Even now, the strange cloak that he wore seemed to shimmer uncertainly against the background, making it difficult to focus on him. And if sorcery weren’t enough to compel them, they could see a more practical reason—the massive longbow, with another black-shafted arrow already on the string.
“On the ground, belly down! All of you!” The words cut at them like a whip and they dropped to the ground. Halt pointed to one, a dirty-faced youth who couldn’t have been more than fifteen.
“Not you!” he said and the boy hesitated, on his hands and knees. “You take their belts and tie their hands behind them.”
The terrified boy nodded several times, then moved towards the first of his prone comrades. He stopped as Halt gave him a further warning.
“Tie them tight!” he said. “If I find one loose knot, I’ll . . .” He hesitated for a second, while he framed a suitable threat, then continued, “I’ll seal you up inside that oak tree over there.”
That should do it, he thought. He was aware of the effect that his unexplained appearance from the tree had on these uneducated country folk. It was a device he had used many times before. Now he saw the boy’s face whiten with fear under the dirt and knew the threat was effective. He turned his attention to Gubblestone, who was plucking feebly at the thong securing his cloak as it continued to choke him. He was already red in the face, his eyes bulging.
They bulged further as Halt unsheathed his heavy saxe knife.
“Oh, relax,” said Halt irritably. He slashed quickly through the cord and Gubblestone, suddenly released, fell awkwardly to the ground. He seemed content to stay there, out of the reach of that gleaming knife. Halt glanced up at the occupants of the carriage. The relief on their faces was all too obvious.
“I think you can be on your way if you like,” he said pleasantly. “These idiots won’t bother you any further.”
The merchant, remembering guiltily how he had tried to shove his wife out of the carriage, tried to cover his discomfort by blustering.
“They deserve hanging, Ranger! Hanging, I say! They have terrified my poor wife and threatened my very person!”
Halt eyed the man impassively until the outburst was finished.
“Worse than that,” he said quietly, “they’ve wasted my time.”
“The answer is no, Halt,” said Crowley. “Just as it was the last time you asked.”
He could see the anger in every line of Halt’s body as his old friend stood before him. Crowley hated what he had to do. But orders were orders and, as the Ranger Commandant, it was his job to enforce them. And Halt, like all Rangers, was bound to obey them.
“You don’t need me!” Halt burst out. “I’m wasting time hunting these imitation Foldars all over the Kingdom when I should be going after Will!”
“The King has made Foldar our number one priority,” Crowley reminded him. “Sooner or later, we’ll find the real one.” Halt made a dismissive gesture. “And you have forty-nine other Rangers to do the job!” he said. “For God’s sake, that should be enough.”
“King Duncan wants the other forty-nine. And he wants you. He trusts you and depends on you. You’re the best we have.”
“I’ve done my share,” Halt replied quietly and Crowley knew how much it hurt the other man to say those words. He also knew that his best reply would be silence—silence that would force Halt further into the sort of rationalisation that Crowley knew he hated. “The Kingdom owes that boy,” Halt said, with a little more certainty in his tone.
“The boy is a Ranger,” Crowley said coldly.
“An apprentice,” Halt corrected him and now Crowley stood, knocking his chair over with the violence of his movement.
“A Ranger apprentice assumes the same duties as a Ranger. We always have, Halt. For every Ranger, the rule is the same: Kingdom first. That’s our oath. You took it. I took it. And so did Will.”
There was an angry silence between the two men, made all the uglier by the years they had lived as friends and comrades. Halt, Crowley realised, was possibly his closest friend in the world. Now here they were, trading bitter words and angry arguments. He reached behind him and straightened the fallen chair, then made a gesture of peace to Halt.
“Look,” he said in a milder tone, “just help me clear up this Foldar business. Two months, maybe three, then you can go after Will, with my blessing.” Halt’s grizzled head was already shaking before he’d finished. “In two months he could be dead. Or sold on as a slave and lost forever. I need to go now while the trail is still warm. I promised him,” he added after a pause, his voice thick with misery.
“No,” said Crowley, with a note of finality. Hearing it, Halt squared his shoulders.
“Then I’ll see the King,” he said.
Crowley looked down at his desk.
“The King won’t see you,” he said flatly. He looked up and saw the surprise and betrayal in Halt’s eyes.
“He won’t see me? He refuses me?” For over twenty years, Halt had been one of the King’s closest confidants, with constant, unquestioned access to the royal chambers. “He knows what you’ll ask, Halt. He doesn’t want to refuse you, so he refuses to see you.”
Now the surprise and betrayal were gone from Halt’s eyes. In their place was anger.
Bitter anger.
“Then I’ll just have to change his mind,” he said quietly.
网友对The Icebound Land: Book Three的评论
真正好书，值得拥有。
In this continuation of the Ranger's Apprentice series, we find Will and Evanlyn attempting their escape from the Viking-esque Skandians. However, despite Will's prowess as a Ranger, it is quickly revealed that Will has much to learn about basic seamanship and the colder parts of the world.
And drug addiction.
For a young adult fantasy title, one can definitely see how such a subject could polarize reader response. In general, drugs are found very little in fantasy, unless we're talking about Michael Moorcock's ELRIC SAGA, which is quite a bit more adult in nature than this series.
However, I think one also needs to keep in mind that John Flanagan initially wrote this book for his son. Maybe this installment was a subtle way of teaching children about the dangers of addiction.
Ironically, I felt that the inclusion of such a rare subject matter is what made this book work for me; for the offerings of the rest of the book are basically chivalrous challenges and jousts--a dime a dozen in fantasy.
One thing I disliked about this book is in the characterization of Halt, the senior Ranger who is trying to track down Will, his apprentice. In this volume, Halt shows a bit more of his personality--to include his soft side. On the one hand, this makes Halt a bit more human, but on the other hand I found it a bit harder to imagine Halt as a force to be reckoned with.
Where the last two books dealt with grander settings and senses of urgency, this book takes a detour to explore the personal struggles and inner workings of some of the characters. Don't expect it to be as action-packed, but in its own way it is still entertaining and sets the stage for the next installment, which I'm sure will be more along the lines of the first two books.
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The Icebound Land, book three of The Ranger's Apprentice series, takes things in a new direction as the dangers of battle and espionage are exchanged for the perils of imprisonment and travel in hostile lands. As with the first two novels in this stellar series, The Icebound Land delivers a gripping story filled with interesting characters and places, and with just enough plot turns to keep you guessing until the end.
In the chaos that followed the fearsome final battle with Lord Morgarath, young apprentice Ranger Will and his new friend Evanlyn are taken captive by the fierce Skandian raider, Jarl Erak. Disgusted by the failure in Araluen, Erak plans to sell Will and Evanlyn as slaves to covers the expenses for his journey across the Stormwhite Sea. Will and Evanlyn fight to stay together as they make the wild sea voyage, but once they reach the Skandian capital of Hallasholm, an insidious enemy threatens to take Will away for good. Only Evanlyn's ingenuity and courage - and the aid of an unlikely ally - can save them both.
Back in Araluen, Halt is increasingly frustrated by King Duncan's refusal to allow him to pursue the Skandians and rescue Will. He made a promise to recover his apprentice and he means to keep that promise, even if doing so means defying his King and forsaking his vow as a Ranger. Shamed, stripped of his place in the Ranger Corps and banished from the Kingdom of Araluen, Halt sets out to rescue Will, but he is not alone. Will's best friend and former wardmate, Horace is an apprentice warrior with a natural gift for swordplay. He joins Halt on the journey and stands beside him as they cross the treacherous Gallican countryside.
This series continues to captivate. Mr. Flanagan has a real knack for describing the strategy and actuality of skirmishes and battles, as well as for building an interesting and detailed world. Best of all, the Ranger's Apprentice books tell stories you WANT to read about characters you truly admire.
I chose this rating because the book had a very strong plot and structure. But, at times the book was a little slow and boring. I liked the many different sentence structures and length which made the story run smoothly. I recommend this book to anyone who likes fantasy and adventure books and someone who can commit to a long series.
This book delved into a topic that is uncomfortable for me, drug addiction. It was hard to watch fictional characters that were brought to flesh and blood in my mind by a very talented and creative author, go through drug addiction. I've seen too many former school friends, friends of friends, and now in my later years - children of friends struggle with drug addiction. It hits too close to home as I now find myself worry about "drugs" and my foster children.
I plan to use this book as an avenue to address drug addiction with my foster kids, nephew, and nieces. Now after facing my bias issues about this book, I plan on reading it again. I think I was too distracted to appreciate the most interesting part of this book of how Holt handled being a guest/prisoner, and how he freed himself, it gave a little more insight on how Holt thinks - as should we all. Sometimes it's best to tread carefully no matter how moral your intentions.
PS. Book 1 & 2 are firm five star books *****
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