Erak's Ransom by John Flanagan

I topped out on this series last month and had a hard time getting into this one. There was nothing wrong with the series or the book, but after reading 6 books in the series, I got a little burned out. This happens to my kids too. They get very all or nothing about it and assume that difficulty getting hooked means that they no longer like the series. In my experience, enjoying a book often has as much to do with one's mood as it does with the content of the book itself. Waiting a day or a week often does wonders. So I gave the series a rest for a couple of weeks and voila, I reacquired interest.

In my previous post about this series, I complained that book 6 skips right over the end of Will's apprenticeship. Erak's Ransom, book 7, goes back to that time and fills in the gap. A lot of things change in book 7. Halt, the confirmed bachelor, gets married for one thing. Erak goes back to raiding. Cassandra/Evelyn starts to assert her independence more as the solitary heir to the throne. I was a little concerned about what would happen with Cassandra actually. After the events in books 2 to 4, I couldn't imagine her simply retreating back into the castle.

Flanagan introduces a new culture with the Arridi who are loosely based off of an Arab or Persian culture. Erak get's caught while raiding and the Arridi hold him for ransom. So when Svengal, Erak's friend and second mate, crashes Halt's wedding, Will, Horace, and Halt quickly find themselves on a rescue mission. It occurs to me that for rangers, who are sworn to protect and watch over the people of their country, they spend an awful lot of time outside their country. In any case, things don't go according to plan (they never do really) and things get complicated fast.

As a book that is in that transitional place for the main character Will going from student to adult, Flanagan does a really good job. Much better than other series in fact. (Book 5 of Harry Potter, for example) While there are a couple of angsty moments, Flanagan doesn't dwell on them and the plot keeps moving. It's hard to write a good transitional book and those transitions are critical for a long series. When bungled, it's easy to put the series down and never pick it back up. However, without these transitions, the characters get stale and trapped in roles that never change. When the series in question features a kid as the main character, the kid literally never grows up without those key transitions. I'm glad Flanagan, and Will, jumped the hurdle well.