Will is an orphan and Ward in Castle Redmont. He has dreams of becoming a knight, like he believes his father was--though who and what his father was is only in his dreams too. But when he is called up to become an apprentice, he is denied from battle school because of his stature. When Halt the Ranger gives the Baron a note and doesn't divulge what it says, Will has to find out and sneaks into the Baron's office to sneak a peek at it, only Halt and the Baron catch him as if they knew he was going to do it. With Halt's commendation, Will becomes the Ranger's Apprentice where he learns to be more sneaky and archery and tactics of being a ranger. His other Ward mates become apprentices to cooks, diplomates, scholars, and Horace goes to battle school. Horace struggles with battle school bullies. Bullies aren't going to be the only problems. Morgarath, an enemy to the crown who's been hold out on in the mountains, has sent beasts to kill leaders. It will be Halt and Will's job to stop them.
This series is a long series of 16 books. Previously I've read the first four, so this will be an adventure reading the other ones. This has the same kind of feeling as Revenge of the Witch but with far less hibi-jibi's and more friends, which I find I like better.
It's a very basic story, which can be nice. There is plenty of world building in a basic "medieval" world which makes it different. Different peoples and cultures, though they share some similarities with history-ish. There were some times when it was a little long, going through the plains was maybe a bit unneeded.
My son really liked that the bullies got beat up. I was glad that it gave us an opportunity to talk about bullies and that it's important to let adults know what is going on, that "hazing" isn't okay either.
We can kinda tell that it is a debut novel. There is a handful of repetitive words that were weird or alliteration that was off that probably should have been caught by an editor, but somehow didn't.
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