Title: The Wolf
Author: John Flanagan
Series: The Ranger’s Apprentice #10.9
In: The Lost Stories (John Flanagan)
Rating Out of 5: 4.5 (Amazing, but not quite perfect)
My Bookshelves: Australian authors, Easy reading, Medieval fantasy
Pace: Medium
Format: Short Story
Publisher: Random House Australia
Year: 2011
5th sentence, 74th page: We should mention it to Bob.

Will is tasked with tracking down and killing a lone wolf who has been creating havoc in the local villages.

The relationship between the Rangers and their mounts is definitely a thing of folklore within The Ranger’s Apprentice series. Their connection is beautifully uncanny and lasts through the years of conflict and danger that each Ranger must undergo. However, I never quite thought about, or even understood (once I did think about it) how the Ranger’s could keep one mount for such a long period. After all, a human’s life span, and even the period over which they are able to work is much longer than that of a horse’s working life span.

This story is a great way to explain the reasons why Ranger’s horses last for so long. Although it starts with a rogue wolf, the explanation of Tug’s replacement and how this occurs for all Ranger’s horses is actually really clever. It is something that, although it is often fanciful, it is actually kind of plausible and makes a poetic kind of sense.

Image source: Wikipedia