Ranger's Apprentice The Royal Ranger 3: Duel at Araluen

I didn’t even know that this one had came out, but hey, it did and I’m not complaining. I will begin saying that the original Ranger’s Apprentice series, especially the earlier books were some of my favourite middle-grade books alongside Percy Jackson and Harry Potter. I’m also Australian, so maybe it is because I like reading books by Australian authors. Either way, I did greatly enjoy this latest book set in Araluen.

This book is by far one of the more serious books in the series, being a continuation of the last book of this civil war involving the Red Fox Clan. One thing to note is that I have read a lot of adult fantasy, and also have learnt quite a lot about history since I first began reading the first book, so here are some of my pointers. The scale of the world is actually quite small to what the real world is, though I completely understand this as it is for younger readers and world building, scope and scale from something like Malazan would have been ridiculous. Maybe this is my history side of my brain, but having an army of one hundred and fifty soldiers seem like a lot is really strange in my view as generally, medieval battles had a few thousand men on the field. Still, this does not ruin any of the storytelling.

Sometimes, I am also kind of struggling to see that characters from the original series are all middle-aged now since I had gotten so used to their teenage and later young-adult selves and I still need to wrap my brain around the time changes, though I understand why, as this tells the tale of Maddie and no longer Will.

Despite it being aimed for younger readers, there is lots of killing and death of ‘normal soldiers’ as often in books they are not valued like real people, though Flanagan does try as there is so few people to begin with. I also found the book to be really predictable and I wasn’t all that surprised or that excited with the ending, though I did like the epilogue.

I did like this book, though I will say that I did not like it as much as the original series, which is by far my favourite over the Brotherband series and this. I have also read the Early Years which comes before the original series. Overall, a wonderful new instalment with both newer and older characters alike. 8/10