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Content Badge: Violence

A Tolkien Gateway Drug

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The book market is flooded with a genre called “fantasy” which ranges from innocent adventure stories to the downright bizarre. Aside from The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and a few other titles, wholesome fantasy pickings can be slim. One you should add to your list is The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander. Based on a combination of Welsh myth and Alexander’s imagination, this series of five books (including a Newberry Medal winner) and six short prequel tales is a great read for boys. The author…

Ranger’s Apprentice: The Ruins of Gorlan

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In the years following the defeat and exile of the evil Morgarath, a young man discovers who he is, and the important role he will play in the world. The Ruins of Gorlan, Book I of John Flanagan’s popular Ranger’s Apprentice series, follows Will, an orphaned ward of the Castle Redmont, as he and several of his friends cross over from childhood to youth. In Araluen, youth is a time of apprenticeship for adulthood, and that means taking on challenging and meaningful duties. In the course of the story, Will not only learns who…

A Riveting Page Turner That’s Short on Substance

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The Hunger Games, the first installment of a trilogy by Suzanne Collins, appears to raise profound questions about group violence, the angst of youth, and the power of love, but, unfortunately, the well-written book becomes a victim of its own entertainment value. Fatherless on both a personal and political level, Katniss Everdeen, as her first name seems to suggest, has been rendered hard on the outside, but soft on the inside. She’s “not the forgiving type”, in her own words, and yet “kind people have a way of working inside…

A Seafaring Man Learns the Ropes

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Often perplexed, always resilient, Hornblower struggles through, learning his trade in a world of danger and duty. Set during the Napoleonic Wars,  Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, by C.S. Forester, chronicles the early career of one Horatio Hornblower as he cuts his teeth in the Royal Navy. A modern protagonist, Hornblower suffers from a number of imperfections, among them physical gawkiness, introvertedness, and a strong tendency toward self-criticism, that would likely undermine the progress of his career, were it not for certain mitigating, and ultimately triumphant qualities. These qualities—primarily a kind of…