Mighty Viking raids, awesome battles and fierce warriors. Brotherband, Outcasts by John Flanagan has all of this and more.

      This book begins twelve years prior with a Skandian Viking raid of a small town. Mikkel and Thorn are the mightiest warriors in the raid and deal with the village’s horsemen easily. As they turn to leave, a terrified villager kills Mikkel. It then goes on to tell of his son, Hal, twelve years later, who is struggling with fitting in because of his Araluan heritage living in a small Skandian town.

      Hal then becomes part of the brotherband program, a training program where three ‘brotherbands’ compete against each other in various challenges such as wrestling and a sprint. He finds himself leader of the Heron brotherband, which is made up of outcasts who weren’t chosen for the other brotherbands. Hal somehow has to attempt to build his brotherband’s confidence to beat the Sharks, a brotherband made up of Tursgud, who bullies the Herons, as well as his followers.

      Meanwhile, there is the mystery of Thorn, who somehow went from being a mighty warrior to a crippled drunk. The book ended with a cliff hanger that will make the reader want to read the rest of the series.

      I enjoyed the plot of this story as well as the characters however I found that it doesn’t do a good job at keeping the reader interested and there aren’t many twists and shocks; the story is a little predictable. This book would be suitable to a male pre-teen to early teen audience who like an adventure. People who enjoyed this book might also like the Rangers Apprentice series and the rest of the Brotherband series. I gave this a four out of five as I thought it had a good plot and some interesting characters.

      Anthony M. Year 9

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Drunken one-armed warriors and angry spear throwing villagers is what you might expect in Brotherband: Outcasts by John Flanagan.

The beginning of the book is set twelve years before the main story begins its course. Two Skandian warriors, Mikkel and Thorn, have set sail on the ship the Wolfwind to raid a small village. The raid was carried out successfully and everything was going according to plan, but out of nowhere, a spear thrown by an angered villager impaled Mikkel and killed him within minutes from blood loss. The story then pans to his best friend Thorn, who after Mikkel dies, loses his arm in a ship related accident, and his life slips away. Before Mikkel died, he requested that Thorn look after his wife Karina and son Hal, who later becomes the main character in this tale. Hal is not the strongest boy and is more of the type to be a ship builder but like any other Skandian boy he wanted to join the Brotherband program to learn how to fight like a warrior. As most books with a scrawny hero, there is a girl involved that he likes very much. This causes problems with Tursgud, his bully.

I give this book a 4 out of 5 stars because it is a very moving story of a boy who becomes a man. It has all the elements of a great fiction/Viking book. It describes every scene and character with great detail and doesn’t skip a beat in any action scene.

I would recommend this book to fiction lovers in their teens from about 13-16. It is a boy book with a lot of the main characters being male, and it has a little male humour touch. It has a Viking or pirate sort of feel, with a bit of adventure in there. If you like books like Deltora Quest or the movie Pirates of the Caribbean you would definitely be interested in this book.

Aryan S, Year 9.