The last apprentice: Revenge of the witch review

[DXmagma]

I have an issue with teen adventure novels, and that is that the main character rarely does anything for the first few books. Usually, another character, who I have designated as ?Mr. Badass?, does the majority of the work. Occasionally the main character will help by getting Mr. Badass out of a jam, but it's not until book 3 or 4 that they really step up.

Not too mention most of these adventure stories that last more than one book can be really long, I mean REALLY long. Like Stephen king long. This makes the payoff for seeing the main character stand up to fight the antagonist, or even just some goons, take quite a bit of work. And as the pendragon books have taught me, it often isn't worth it.

Now, I suppose it does make sense, these characters wouldn't be very proficient in combat while Mr. Badass would be, it's a way of staying realistic without sacrificing the action. But even when it makes sense that these characters would be good at combat, they often get shafted by Mr. Badass taking the spotlight, or they just run away from combat, like pendragon! Though in his defense his nemesis is an inter dimensional being.

So why do I bring this up? Because the last apprentice manages to do just this, make action without our hero being shafted by Mr. Badass.

The last apprentice: revenge of the witch takes place during a time where creatures of the dark are prominent, knights have been replaced with soldiers, but we're not quite yet in the steam age. It's a lot like the pirate era, but on the mainland.

Our hero is young Tom Ward, who is about to leave home to begin work at the age of twelve, later than his siblings. Hey! It's the past! People have to work hard! we can't all sit on computers reviewing books...anyway there doesn't seem to be anyone left to take Tom Ward on as their apprentice. Luckily his dear old mam (don't see why it couldn't be mom but okay) sent a letter to the county spook, claiming Tom would be his last apprentice.

Now the first thing I thought was ?great, a name drop. How many times am I gonna hear that?? well, actually that's the only time it's said in the series, at least in that context. I think tom says the last apprentice sometimes, but he means the spook's previous apprentice. The original title for the series is the wardstone cronicles, which doesn't make much more sense. What's a wardstone? Is it like steampunk? Is it a place? English slang for a spook? What does it mean? Either way I feel the last apprentice is just a more fitting title, even though it's not an less generic.

Anyways, the spook, who's name is John Gregory by the way, takes on tom as his apprentice and prepares him to fight the dark in the county. Tom is the seventh son of a seventh son, meaning he can sense the dark when other people can't. As the title suggests the story revolves around a witch the spook had previously fought coming back for vengeance, and tom is stuck in the crossfire.

Like I said, Tom can take care of himself, despite having almost no combat training he manages to not be totally reliant on the spook, our Mr. Badass for this adventure. Well, partially. For the first novel much of the conflict is resolved by either the spook coming to the aid of tom or the aid of the blatantly obvious love interest.




Still, tom does manage to fend for himself. He doesn't put up much of a fight, but the guy can run and is constantly thinking of a means of escape, if the spook can't help him in time. So, he isn't the self dependent character I hoped he was, but he is at least competent, and even if he just runs away all the time, unlike pendragon he rarely escapes. Well, in book one at least. Book four is another deal. How do you out run the [SPOILER REMOVED]?

Anyway there are also drawings of the characters or creatures in the chapter at the beginning of every chapter. They aren't well done to be honest, but they look cool and give you a better idea of what the characters look like. Actually that's pretty useless too. Part of what makes books great is you can replace the characters with something more familiar, which in turn may make the story superbly stupid in appearance, but gives you a more personal connection to the characters.

Plus, who's ever gonna know what you pictured them as that? Who's gonna know I pictured the spook as Kakashi Hatake, Tom as Scott pilgrim, bony lizzie as the last member of the elite four from platinum, mother malkin as Misa's shinigami, and alice as chi for the first 4 books? Other than you guys I mean. Also when I say Scott pilgrim I mean that very loosely, I changed the design in my head to not look completely stupid in the setting. And I stopped imagining Alice as that by book five. But not the spook. He stays kakashi, it fits him frighteningly well- why am I telling you all this!?

Anyway overall the book is pretty good. The story is okay, and the tension is great, like any good horror novel should be. It leads into some great story telling in the later books, and by comparison this one falls short. It feels sort of cramp compared tot he other books. But this is the first book, so comparing it to the later books in the series where the plot gets thicker and more interesting, and as a first novel it does a great job.