The Burning Bridge (The Ranger's Apprentice, Book 2) (Part 3 - Plot)
Hello, all. Welcome back to the ongoing analysis of The Burning Bridge, Book 2 of The Ranger’s Apprentice.
This part is going to focus on just the worldbuilding and characters. Please check out Part 1 if you’d just like the overview and Part 2 if you want to look at the worldbuilding and characters. We’ll cover plot contrivances next week with Part 4.
Step softly now. It’s time to go hunting.
STATS
Title: The Burning Bridge
Series: The Ranger’s Apprentice (Book 2)
Author(s): John Flanagan
Genre: Fantasy (Middle Grade)
First Printing: May 2005
Publisher: Puffin Books
Rating: 8/10
SPOILER WARNING
Mild spoilers for The Burning Bridge will be included throughout this review, through I will keep the first paragraph of each section as spoiler-free as possible. Heavy spoilers will be confined to clearly labelled sections.
Unmarked, heavy spoilers for The Ruins of Gorlan may be used as necessary to support this review. I will also assume that you have read the review series for that book, though doing so won’t be necessary to understand this review.
PLOT
Narrative Structure
We’re only two books into this series, but I’m already starting to notice a pattern.
Main Plot
Much like the main plot of The Ruins of Gorlan, the main plot of The Burning Bridge is extremely simplistic.
Slow, low-stakes buildup to a very simple objective, replacing Will’s training with the Celtica mission.
A revelation kicks up the pacing, replacing the news of impending war with news of events of Celtica (which I’ll get to in a moment).
Big action set piece where Will has to tip the scales. Incidentally, this one also involves archery and fire.
The simplicity is not a flaw. I just can’t help but notice that it’s not nearly enough to fill an entire novel. Middle Grade novels are on the short side, of course, but even so, this book would be two-thirds or even just half the length if the main story was all there was to it.
The Necessary (?) Side Character Story
Part of me wonders if the bullying subplot in The Ruins of Gorlan was added to fluff the length of the book. In this book, it’s replaced by the side quest featuring Halt and Alyss (plus a couple buildup chapters in which the Baron of Halt and Will’s fiefdom notices Halt being grumpier than usual and tries to decide how to defuse the situation). Outside of building up Alyss as a Love Interest for Will, there really isn’t any reason to include it in this book. This could have been a bonus short story, rather than a part of this book.
That being said, I don’t think this subplot is quite as problematic as the bloat in The Empyrean. Whether intentionally or not, it aids the evolving tone of the story.
See, whereas the Horace bullying subplot lasted two-thirds of The Ruins of Gorlain, this Alyss and Halt side quest wraps up at the one-third mark, right when Evanlyn is introduced. Her arrival brings the aforementioned revelation that kicks Will’s story into gear. The sudden absence of this side quest enhances the seriousness of the main plot, much in the same way that the abrupt cessation of the musical elements of Disney’s animated Mulan film made the horrors of war feel far more visceral without having to show gore to the children.
As with the bullying subplot, I feel like this could have been streamlined to give more time for character development for Will. Seems like Alyss could have come along on this mission, instead of Horace, and that she could have been the one to insist on joining Will for the events of his arc’s climax. (Her established characterization from the last book would suit this sort of decision.) Still, it doesn’t damage the narrative, and I think the tonal shift justifies its inclusion.
Mission and Mystery
All right, so the main plot of this book sees Will sent with Gilan and Horace on a diplomatic mission to Celtica. They are supposed to remind the Celtics of their mutual defense treaty and get this kingdom to send troops to aid in Araluen’s defense against Morgarath.
When they arrive in Celtica, they discover that every guard checkpoint and every town in abandoned. No bodies are to be found, and people’s possessions have just been left in their homes. Eventually, after an encounter with bandits and with Evanlyn’s account of events, the Rangers (and Horace) learn that Morgarath has been quietly raiding Celtica for months, abducting miners in the dead of night and scaring the other inhabitants to flee to a distant corner of the kingdom. (I have questions as to how this tiny raiding party is able to effectively bottle up the entire kingdom and why Celtica made no effort to call on Araleun for aid, but that is the least of this book’s contrivances.)
This revelation prompts Gilan to ride back to Alareun, so as to warn the kingdom that Celtica cannot be relied upon for aid. Will is unofficially left in charge to guide Horace and Evanlyn back to Alareun at a slower pace. During this journey, they are overtaken by some Wargal slave-drivers with a group of captive Celtics. Will decides to follow them to learn why Morgarath is abducting miners; Horace and Evanlyn both insist on coming along.
On the matter of the Evanlyn twist (I will remain spoiler-free here), the answer is revealed very quickly to Gilan once he is back in Araluen. Normally, I would chalk the whole thing up as a waste of the audience’s time. However, in this case, the quick turnaround is narratively functional. Evanlyn’s secret wasn’t driving the plot, merely dialing up the tension slightly; revealing the answer at the two-thirds mark adds a layer of dramatic irony to the back third of the book.
Which brings us to the titular bridge.
The Climaxes of the Book (Heavy Spoilers)
Will’s Climax
In a book literally titled The Burning Bridge, it should surprise no one that Will and his friends discover that Morgarath has built a bridge that will allow a Wargal army to be deployed into Celtica and, from there, march into Araleun to catch the kingom’s army unawares. (This is part of a larger ruse involving false intelligence that Morgarath planted in Chapter 1 - again, not a spoiler, as it’s made clear even in that moment that the intelligence was planted by Morgarath deliberately.) It should be even less surprising that Will decides to set this bridge on fire to destroy it.
What may be slightly surprising is that happens before the two-thirds mark.
Burning the bridge goes well. Will (and Evanlyn, because contrivance) end up trapped on the wrong side of the bridge and captured by Skandians. And, from that point on, Will basically falls out of the story. He still has POV chapters, but those POV chapters are purely about him and Evanlyn being guided out of Morgarath’s territory by the Skandians, who decided to desert from Morgarath’s forces once they realized the bridge plan was a lost cause. Will is just a hostage.
The Actual Climax
The actual climax is Morgartah’s attempt to attack Araleun despite not being able to route his forces over the bridge. This finale is … fine. Just fine.
I mean, the battle is written well enough. There are some twists. There’s a big final duel where Horace fights Morgarath one-on-one and kills him, thereby ending the war. I am sure I’d have loved this when I was a Middle Grade reader.
The problem is that, up until the point that Horace duels with Morgarath, the battle is just noise. It’s a similar issue to what we’ve seen in the battle scenes of The Empyrean, as well as something we’ll cover in quite a lot of depth when we review the Invasion Cycle this autumn. Bombastic battles are all well and good as spectacle, but unless there are emotional stakes at play (characters we care about being in legitimate danger, a location we are invested in being threatened), the spectacle doesn’t have genuine weight. In this battle, no named characters are put at risk. Halt is off-screen the whole time, all the named characters will political authority are just supervising, and Horace doesn’t even show up until nearly the end. The local is also an area that we’ve heard about but never visited prior to this fight. As a result, this climax amounts to multiple chapters of And Then They Fight action.
Credit where it is due, though: Horace killing Morgarath was quite the twist. The character being set up as the main villain is flat-out dead in the second book. That definitely shifts the narrative in an unexpected direction.
Speaking of which …
Abduction
The Skandians who have taking Will and Evanlyn hostage successfully break away from the battle and flee towards the coast. It isn’t until after, as Halt is searching for Will, that he learns of his. He rides in pursuit. The book ends on an action scene in which Halt gallops towards the departing Skandian ship, firing arrows at extreme range (and hitting his targets). The story ends on a dark note, with Will and Evanlyn being taken over the sea to Skandia (with the implication that they will be enslaved) while Halt shouts out a vow to Will that he will rescue him.
Again, this is a surprisingly and bold note to end the book on. Flanagan’s willingness to take genuine risks in the narrative is very compelling. It compels the reader toward Book 3 out of a sense that the story will keep on getting bigger and being surprising, rather than merely being an obligation to finish an ongoing narrative.
FORCED DOWN A PATH
The plot of The Burning Bridge has its highs and lows. For the most part, things are on a high note.
There’s just a small matter of contrivances.
Plot contrivances aren’t a deal breaker in a narrative. Many great stories feature some contrivance at their beginnings to kick things into gear. The issue is when those contrivances impact the ending of a story. Unfortunately, The Burning Bridge features multiple contrivances that do just that. We’ll get into it next Sunday.
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