#the ruins of gorlan

[xxlucyxlolaxx]

Where are you Ranger's Apprentice fans?

Did I get black listed from fans or something? no one interacts with me anymore?

[permettez-moi]

In the Ruins of Gorlan, Halt is talking to Will about the boar, and asks/says' something along the lines of 'I don't suppose you have seen many boar hunts?'

And listen, listen, I know Flanny doesn't do much planning ahead so it's all coincidence.

But ofcourse Halt would've seen many boar hunts! At the court! Maybe even participated! His parents might not have taught him how to yield a sword, but, boar hunting is with a spear for fancy people! Pr maybe he'd sit on Declan and just watch from a little distance!

[iwanttobepersephone]

So apparently my mom is gonna read the ruins of gorlan now???? To understand why I love it so much????????

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[brittanybwrites]

Taking this one slow and it’s good so far.

[ss-hikaru]

I decided to read this cos both my mum and little brother said they liked it. An unusual consensus 😝

It was a very comfy read. While obviously written for a much younger audience, it managed to hit that balance of simplicity without being braindead and therefore enjoyable as an adult reader.

I was a little surprised how easily the bad blood between Will and Horace was settled, but it wasn't a bad thing. It made sense in hindsight as this is very much a set-up novel.

Feels to me that the series will follow the five orphans as they grow up. I love series that do that, so hoping this is the case 😊

[destielblamscilesinfinity]

Hard to remember I like Halt when my boy Will gets worked so hard in Gorlan. I know, part of his training.

[portuguesedisaster]

Re-reading one of my childhood favourites and 20s Carol 100% agrees with late 00s/early 10s Carol: Halt is really cool.

[findingcrow]

"Halt and Will" this, "Will and Horace" that, I'm a little insane recently so can we please. please can we talk about Gilan and Will because I'm being driven up the WALLS about them

Gilan first meets Will at the Gathering and he's like, "oh, this dude is tiny. but he's polite and Halt trusts him, so I do, too." and then they find out the Kalkara have been released and that Halt wants him- which is cool, whatever- and Will to go and help him track it. And he's completely fine to put his own life at risk, because he knows Halt and the kingdom and himself, but the moment it processes that Will is going to be walking into danger, he completely stops. I mean sure, he comes around to the plan, but one of the first things he says is, "But he's only a boy!" He barely knows this kid and wants him far away from any kind of danger. And when he listens to Halt, when he sees that Will is fully capable of taking care of himself, he even places trust in him, allowing him to ride Blaze to Redmont and beyond.

And then he takes him on a mission in the Burning Bridge. Can we just. Really process that. Like we all talk about Halt grieving Will after watching him be shipped away, but think about Gilan, who had left Will in charge and the next time he hears about him, he's probably not alive. The guilt would tear him apart. That was his brother, that was the boy he joked with and gave advice to and watched grow, and he left him for only a few days and suddenly he was gone. Not only did he have to grieve, he had to grieve on his own- Halt was spiraling, Crowley was trying to keep Halt in control, and the Rangers still had work to do. He couldn't react like Halt because someone still needed to help search for the convicts. He could only stand by, knowing it was his fault, blaming himself for leaving, unsure if his brother was alive or dead, watching his father become closed-off and wreckless.

When the time comes, he can't even search for Will. Halt goes, losing his title- the way he had even met Gilan, his shared aspect with the man, the part that had initially made him family- to find his brother without him. Gilan has to wait for a year, now without two family members rather than one, unsure if either of them were okay. He didn't even know if they would come home. And still, he has to blame himself, because if he had just taken Will with him back to the kingdom, if he had waited a little while longer, none of this would have happened.

And then Will comes back. The bright boy he had known so long ago is now even smaller than when Gilan had first met him. He has a hard time remembering things and gets cold too easily for a boy his age. His skin is pale and his eyes are tired, and deep down Gilan thinks that he did this. Will went through things no Ranger, especially no Ranger's apprentice, should go through, because of one careless mistake on Gilan. He doesn't know what even happened to him! All he knows is that Will and Halt have changed and Gilan hasn't. He tries to bond with him again, and everyone tells him not to blame himself, but holy shit it all went so wrong and Gilan barely had the chance to know.

And they end up okay, of course. Gilan works to give Will advice in his last year of training, as the mocking-older-brother he is, he makes fun of him when the younger apprentices model themselves after him. But I really think, deep down, Gilan still thinks about what could have happened if Halt hadn't been faster. He thinks about what might have happened if he had been smarter. Gilan wakes up in a cold sweat knowing that he ruined anything and was lucky for it all to be okay.

Anyway, I think we should have more bonding scenes for Gilan and Will and I want them back and I miss them and they mean so much to me and htey're brothers and and

[ragingadhd]

I think this was already sorta addressed in Ruins of Gorlan but I can’t stop thinking about how fucking funny this sequence of events is. Will doesn’t know jack shit about his parents and wants to go to battleschool to feel closer to his father in some way. He is (somewhat brutally) rejected from battleschool. He becomes Halt’s apprentice and he’s like “hey do I get to learn sword fighting? It’s kinda the only thing I have to remember my dead father” and Halt is like “bitch thinks rangers carry swords lol”. And then the next fucking ranger Will meets has a fucking sword.

[biggestqiblifan]

Ruins of Gorlan scene

Anyone going to talk about how Halt dead-ass jumped off Abelard to go comfort Will? This scene needs to be talked about more often.

Alright, here I go with another ranting/tangent.

When we had the boar scene, Will proved the reason why he was a ranger's apprentice. Even though he was going to flipping die, he still fought, he accepted it and went to protect the one guy that had made his life in the Ward a miserable existence, bullied him all ward his life. It sucks that that isn't mentioned more, but anyways, when the first boar came out, Halt neutralized it and basically did nothing.

But then, the second boar came on out, Halt not only killed it, but went to comfort Will. Not giving a fig about what others thought, especially about his tough-guy appearance. He let Will cry into him.

Now, I don't think people get how important physical connection is to a child. Growing up will strangers and adults who don't understand you like your parents would've, if they had been alive, the only touch and hugs that I think the ward kids would've gotten was from each-other. But it's not the same as having an adult hug and support you.

Imagine how comforting it must've been for Will to get that. And Halt too. This scene shows how close Halt already felt to Will, he doesn't connect or comfort anyone like he does with Will. This helped further their father/son relationship. Awesome. But, what did Halt get out of it?

For Halt to rush over like that, imagine how scared he must've felt. Also, not only was it the raw fear of Will dying, but I like to think that Halt was terrified that he'd fail Will's parents.

Also, Halt has been living on his own for several years. And, Ferris had been the favorite, so Halt must've been ignored at sometimes. So this connection was good for both of them.

I mean, when Will went off, Halt felt like he had no purpose. He was just mopin' around, missing his son.

So, this is where we first see Dad Halt. I don't think that the other Battleschool peps comforted Horace the same way Halt did. Halt just dropped everything and ran to protect his boy.

Gotta love that.

Halt would do anything to keep Will from harm. As proven over and over.

How proud do y'all think Halt was of Will after he got over the attack of nearly losing Will. I swear he had a heart-attack.

[xxlucyxlolaxx]

Ranger's Apprentice fans, please vote!

You have one Audible credit, what would you pick? I own these books in paperback (except oakleaf bearers.) and I did listen to them first. "borrowed from someone." Now I have a credit I could use...and not sure what to pick.

[permettez-moi]

Okay so, I'm currently listening to the ruins of Gorlan audiobook, and I find that I notice very different things when listening to it rather than reading

Some things so far:

Aralds apparent suprise at Lady Pauling laughing with the bunny prank. I choose to believe this is not, in fact, Arald being suprised Pauline thinks this funny, as they have known eachother for very long, but more so that Arald is suprised she can't diplomatically surpress it

HALT WAS WEARING HIS CLOAK WHEN WILL STOLE THE PAPER AND WAS BROUGHT TO THE BARON!! You cannot tell me it didn't hide his face full of fears and uncertainty when Will didn't immediately accept his offer, especially because of the sense of debt he undoubtedly has toward will.

[pixelfun20]

A Snippet from My RA WIP: "The Hunt"

Does anyone happen to remember when I flashbanged into the Ranger's Apprentice fandom and started a fanfic? I've been slowly chipping away at it over the last few months, and now that I'm going to have a lot more free time, I want to work on it more. But I'm also impatient and want to see what people think, so here's a snippet from chapter 1:

Summary: Eight years ago, halfway into his exile in the Mountains of Rain and Night, Morgarath decided that if his plans on conquering Araluen were to ever see fruition, he needed a way to kill Halt and disable his illusive organization, the Ranger Corps. His solution is a simple one: train a select set of assassins, able to kill a Ranger before they ever know what hit them.

But he needs to be sure his plan will work. After all, Halt is one of the best Rangers in the kingdom, and Morgarath knows that if he wants his enemy dead, his assassins have to know how a Ranger fights—and more importantly, how men like Halt think. And who would be a better test subject than Halt’s own apprentice?

Let the Hunt begin.

Will tilted his head up, trying to catch the brief beam of sunlight as it flitted through the clouds. Perched as he was at the top of a large tree, the light flickered off the pines and raced up the mountainside towards his position, dazzling his eyes and making him blink away the glare. 

He sucked in a breath as it approached. He knew better than to hope, truly, but in the moment the excitement carried him away and he pulled back the cowl of his cloak to try and catch the beams on his bare skin.

Then the chance passed. Far above, some gust of wind pushed the clouds in a great burst, and the brief break that had allowed the sun to peek through closed, cutting off the yellow streak of light hardly a hundred meters from his position.

A bitter wave of loss crept up Will’s throat, and he sighed, returning his cowl to its previous position over his forehead. The wool was scratchy and coarse on his skin, the mottled green-and-black frayed and torn in some places, but it was warm, and Will knew better than to complain about its disadvantages. This high up in the mountains, it was always cold, and with winter well on its way, it was only going to get colder.

And darker. That patch of sunlight was the first Will had seen in days. During the summer, it wasn’t uncommon for the clouds that seemed to permanently shroud the mountains to break, but as winter approached, they would descend until the land was covered in a never-ending fog. At the turn of the year, when the snow piled high in drifts and the clouds sunk low into the valleys, a man needed a lantern to be able to see any distance.

But it wasn’t winter yet, and Will had a few more hours until the hidden sun sunk below the horizon, if the angle of the sunbeam he had seen was accurate. He wished he had been able to touch it. Who knew when the chance would come next.

Will sighed again, then rallied himself, returning his attention to his surroundings. He reached backwards and brushed his fingers against the shaft of his recurve bow, nestled in a branch at his side. The spot he had chosen was a good one, situated in the curve of the mountain that sat in shadow in the morning and was in one of the denser clumps of pine that climbed the side. However, the very shaft of sunlight that had distracted him was a reminder that the shadows were turning, and now that it was late he no longer had the advantage of the dark. 

He cast his eyes about, taking stock of his surroundings. Little had changed since his last survey. His perch gave him a good sight of the surrounding woods; clumps of pine trees clotted the mountainside, thickening into a forest in the valley below that obscured anything that might have been moving at the bottom, but gave him a wide view of any path that someone might take to approach him. 

As he looked around, the wind changed direction, bringing with it a shift in the pine needles in the forest below. Will didn’t see it immediately—it was hardly anything more than a flicker maybe a quarter of a mile down the mountainside. Instead, some part of his subconscious caught the movement and alerted him, and when he shot his gaze in the direction again, he barely caught a flash of green wool slipping down into the shadows.

There. No time to move now. Will sucked in a breath and then, very carefully, retrieved his bow and nocked an arrow against the string. He didn’t draw, not yet, but his fingers twitched as he scanned the general area where his pursuer had first appeared. He needed to have patience, waiting until the perfect moment came to strike. His master had said it was his one weakness, and Will knew that if he ever planned on completing his training, he had to learn when to sit still.

He’d done a good job of it thus far. Will had climbed this tree early in the morning and hadn’t moved since. He’d kept good focus too, tracking the occasional movements of the wildlife in the valley below, but now all his preparations were coming to a head. Everything depended on the Hunter below not seeing him.

Will breathed, one large intake, then settled himself into the folds of his cloak. The garment’s black and dark green splotches would help hide him, but he was relying on his height as much as the camouflage to see him to victory today. It was a tenet he had come to live by during his time here: when being hunted, the best place to hide was up.

[ghost-gathering]

Day 11: risk

[unrestraineddog]

"The Ranger's Apprentice" turns 20 this year!

The first book (the ruins of gorlan) was first released in Australia on November 1, 2004.

I feel.. old.