The Ranger's Apprentice - Book 1 - The Ruins of Gorlan

This book is about a boy named Will. He is a boy who is fourteen and nearly ready to be apprenticed to somebody. He wanted to be in battle school (that is where knights train). He is apprenticed to the ranger. At first, the ranger only uses him for doing the chores. But then, Halt (that is the ranger's name) starts training him in the ways to use the bow, the sax knife and the throwing knife. Will gets his very own ranger horse called Tug. He is a very gentle beast, but if there is any harm to his master, he will try to tug the person trying to harm his master's arm out of its socket. Then they go to a ranger meeting, where they meet an old apprentice of Halt's named Gillan. But then they have to pack up quickly because there is news of the Kaklara (they are beasts with the body of a large shaggy bear with incredibly waxy matted fur and the head of an ape. They are bigger than a man and can hypnotize people) - they have killed a lord without touching him. Halt and Gillan go off to find the Kaklara, and Will goes off to warn the king. Will gets to the nearest lord, but he has to use two horses to get there, Tug and Gillan's horse. Meanwhile, Gillan is tracking down the Kaklara to a place called the ruins of Gorlan. When they arrive, they are separated and each of them are attacked by one of the Kaklara. Will's warning comes just in time and three knights and Gillan kill the first kaklara, but Halt is left alone againt the other Kaklara. His bowstring is snapped and his knives are lost. Then gillan and the knights find out the kaklara's only weakness - fire. Halt realizes this too when it shies away from a candle flame and gets an idea. he soaks rags in kitchen oil and lights it with a candle and throws it at the kaklara. It misses, but the kaklara is scared enough that it dodges, and when it dodges, Halt gets his cloak on and hides in the ruins. Then, Gillan finds the second kaklara, but the kaklara has pushed Halt to the edge of a cliff. Halt falls off the cliff, but it isn't a very big cliff and he manages to break his fall. The Kaklara survives the fall too and they continue to fight. When the knights and Gillan get down there, Will tosses Halt his bow. Using some of the cooking oil and the lantern, Halt lights another arrow and fires it at the Kaklara with wills bow. It hits the Kaklara and makes it burst into flames. Then it is dead, and the threat is over....for now. At the end, they all have a big feast and the local lord offers Will the chance to become a knight. Will says no, and says he would prefer still being a ranger.

What I liked about this book is how they figured out how to make the Kaklara die, because I really didn't like the Kaklara. I'm glad he chose to be a ranger, because the book showed that being a ranger is more interesting than being a knight, because rangers can go all over the kingdom, they get better and faster horses than knights do, and they can travel into territory where the enemy is, where a knight would attract attention. I liked all of this book - I rate it a 20 out of 20.

The Last Apprentice - Book 6 - Clash of the Demons

In this book, Tom goes to his mom's homeland, Greece, and his mom has formed alliances with all of the witches in Pendle (where Tom lives). They have to deal with pirate ships and sirens along the way. After they deal with the sirens, the witch assassain Grimalkin gives Tom two weapons, a knife and a dark wish. A dark wish is a wish used with the power of the dark. When he gets to Greece, he learns a secret that his mom had never told him - his mom is not a lamia witch, she is the first lamia witch. This means that she is an immortal enchantress who was cursed by Zeus to have the lower body of a snake. The witches and Tom are going to find the Ord, which is Ordeen's home (Ordeen is a witch that was created by the fiend mating with a dead earth witch). Ordeen is the worst witch you could ever think of, and she is horrible beyond imagining. But then Tom gets lost and finds Alice, but then the group accidentally moves on without them, and then they find a new enemy - Maenads. They are witches trained to go into a killing frenzy - they serve the Ordeen. Tom and Alice try to find their way back to the group, but Alice is nearly killed by feral Lamia witches. Then Tom heals her with the dark wish. Then they find the group and they go on to get to the Ordeen. The first trap they have to go through there is one where somebody will force you to eat from the table, but if you do you will be trapped in the Ord for all eternity, and you will have to eat or one of you will have to challenge a heavily armored knight in single combat. Grimalkin challenges the knight and succeeds, and then the knight asks Tom to give some of his own blood to the Ordeen. Tom says that he will, and then after that he runs to find the Ordeen and destroy her before she awakens. What they find is a few small traps and then they find where the Ordeen is, but after that they find Tom's mother changing into a form to destroy the Ordeen. Then, Tom goes to kill the Ordeen, and first, he looks like he's successful when he binds her with a silver chain after he managed to stop time itself. But then a fire elemental called a salamander crawls out of her body and melts the chain, and when he uses the knife that Grimalkin gave him, it melts too. then his mom comes in to try to save Tom and Tom flees the building. The building gets sucked back into the portal, and is trapped and so is his mom. When he gets home, Tom goes and waits outside for an hour because;se he had made a deal with the fiend to delay Ordeen's waking by an hour. the fiend came to claim his soul, but alice comes and stops him by giving tom a blood jar that will prevent the fiend from getting him until he dies.

What I liked about this book is the battle on the ship. what I did not like about this book was the the description of castle of the Ord, because it was creepy [typist's note: it all sounds creepy]. I give this book nineteen out of twenty. I like this book and hope that the author will write more books in the series.

The Last Apprentice - Book 5 - Wrath of the Bloodeye

In this book, Tom Ward is a survivor. He has faced off against everything from boggarts to witches, but in this book he has to face one of the deadliest challenges of all - a water witch named Bloodeye. In case you didn't know, a water witch is a witch that relies on blood magic. You can find references to blood magic in the journal of Thomas J. Ward, which is in the back of every book. Blood magic is dark magic. It is when witches kill a baby child or men and drink their blood and it makes their magic stronger. Army people are roaming the country making people join the army, and one of them almost manages to get Tom to join, but he makes them go away by swinging his staff at them. But when he gets to the Spook's house, he gets shocking news - Tom is going to another Spook's house to train for six weeks. When he gets there, he is shocked to find out that it is very small, has a stream in front of it, and is haunted. His Spook master's house is rather big, doesn't have a moat and isn't haunted. The other Spook is also very violent to witches and is a hard drinker. He had two hounds called Claw and Tooth, but Tooth was killed by Bloodeye on Tom's first swimming test, which was when Tom had to swim across a marsh. Then Tom and the other Spook go to a hermit's cave to track down the Bloodeye by asking the hermit to dowse her out, but then the other Spook gets caught by the Bloodeye, and Tom has to ask the first Spook to come and help him. They go to the hermit's cave again and ask him to dowse again, and they find him, but they also find the witch assassain Grimlicken. The good news is that Grimliken is on their side, and helps them defeat some water witches (who were with the Bloodeye), but the bad news is that the Fiend came back with the Bloodeye. At the end of the story, the battle between Tom and the water witches (including the Bloodeye) is finished. Tom has won, but Alice is being sent away because she was in contact with Grimlicken. The Spook thinks Alice is bad, but Tom is utterly convinced that she is good because they are friends.

I give this book a twenty out of twenty - I liked it even more than the last one. My favorite part was the battle on the Marsh, which is in chapter XXVIII (which is chapter 28).

The Last Apprentice - Book 4 - Attack of the Fiend

In this book, Tom and the Spook are battling against every witch coven in the county - there are three witch covens, each made out of 13 witches. Tom also has to put up with an old enemy of his mother's, Wurmdale. Wurmdale is a Greek witch who tries to kill Tom by summoning the most powerful demon of all - the Devil, also known as Old Nick or the Fiend. Wurmdale manages to get the Moldheel coven, the Malkin coven and the Dean coven together and summon the Fiend, but Tom has a new weapon on his side - his two aunts. They are not witches, but they have giant wings and are incredibly dangerous. He only knows they are his aunts because it was in one of his mother's journals - the aunts don't actually talk, they just make screams. Tom tries to hide from the fiend in his mom's special room, but he is almost drawn out of it until Father Stock (who was a former apprentice of the Spook)'s ghost appears. Tom lets Father Stock's ghost go to heaven by telling him that he wasn't just a priest, he was a Spook too, and he should concentrate on his happiest moment. Then Father Stock's ghost goes to heaven, and the depression from the Fiend is lifted and he stays in the special room for a few more hours until he senses that he is OK to go outside. At the end of the book, Alice (the friendly witch from the first book) and Tom are holding hands thinking they have escaped the Fiend. But they haven't, which you'll find out about in the next two books.

I rate this book ten out of ten. What I liked about it was the description of the biggest cannon in the county, and how the witches made Tibb (a creature made out of an ox's brain and a hog and witches spit). It was very exciting and I definitely want to read the next book. There was nothing l didn't like about it.

Harriet the spy

Harriet is an only child who lives in Massachusetts. She has a nursemaid called Old Golly. She does not like most of the people in her class, but she likes some of them, like Sport, who is a writer's son. She wants to be a journalist when she grows up, so she likes to spy on everybody to find out facts. Then old golly is fired for taking Harriet to a movie and staying out too late. Then Harriet leaves her journal lying around, and some people discover it and read it, then nobody likes her. All the kids in the school join a new club call the spy catchers club and they devise ways to get rid of Harriet. Harriet and her parents find ways to stop the spy catchers club from getting their revenge on her!

I rate this four out of ten. My favorite part was when the spy catchers club was made because I liked the illustrations in that part. What I liked about Harriet is that she was secretive yet very bold. I liked Old Golly because she was very kind to Harriet, and she took her to a movie even though she didn't like them. I felt kind of sad for Harriet when Old Golly got fired because Old Golly was her best friend, and sad for Old Golly because she lost her job. What I didn't like was everything else, especially when Harriet has to avoid everybody in school. I learned some spying techniques, and also that you shouldn't spy on your friends at school, because they might find out, and if they do, they'll probably avoid you because you'd know their most embarrassing secrets.