THE OUTCASTS, A review by thierryhenry14

Title: The Outcasts

Author: John Flanagan

Format: Hardcover

Length: 434 pages

Price: unknown

Hal never knew his father, a respected Skandian warrior, because he died when Hal was only four years old. When Hal's dad died on a raid in a far off coast his shipmate and loyal friend, Thorn, promised to look after his son and wife. But on their way back home to the city of Hallasholm their ship, wolfwind, was struck by a terrible storm and Thorn was forced to cut off his right hand. No longer able to work as a mighty warrior, Thorn takes up the art of drinking and for six whole years he continues to get drunk night after night until his late friend's, Mikkel, gives him a stern talking to after he fell unconscious in front of her eating house and had to be awoken by her son throwing a cold bucket water on him. Hal's mam makes thorn promise not to drink one more drink for the rest of his life and she also forces him to live in a lean to behind her eating house. Fast forward six more year and Hal is a bit of an outcast among his piers. At the age of sixteen Hal is a an absolute genius and an inventor. When Hal got a job at a local boat yard he helps design a new boat for an old retired sea raider much like Thorn but when that man unexpectedly dies Hal's boss lets him build it and keep it for himself. And does exactly that. Of course he can't do all of the work so he asks a couple of local boys to help him. He asks his only friend Stig who has a bad temper but is strong and huge, twins Ulf and Wulf who are always bickering, Ingvar who is huge and strong just like Stig except Ingvar can't see more than a yard in front of himself and in quite clumsy, so with all of his crew he takes heron for a test drive to test out his new sail rig that he designed himself. It works just as well as thought it would and everyone either saw or heard about his grand entrance into the harbor for he almost crashed into the Oberjarl's ship but he pulled it off skillfully. Two days later he starts BROTHERBAND training, a training program that gets 16 year olds prepared for the hard life of being a skandian sea warrior. Right away Hal finds that his fear is confirmed; he was not chosen to be in one of the brotherbands but then a surprise comes his way and the Oberjarl demands that Hal and the other seven outcasts, which include his whole crew and a few others, become a brotherband. Hal was elected to be his teams skirl and they name their team the herons after Hal's boat. At the end of brotherband training Hal receives another surprise, his brotherband of outcasts actually wins the brotherband competition even though they were two men short. Yet the night of their victory tragedy strikes when the Herons were gaurding the andomal, Skandia's most precious possession, as all winning brotherbands have in the past, it got stolen. Hal could only see one way that his life could return to normal, he only saw one way that he wouldn't have to live the rest of his life in shame so he and his brotherband and Thorn went after the pirate that stole the andomal.

This book is really well-written, and it has lots of adventure.  The characters are adventurous and fun.  My favorite part is the ending because it was kind of a twist, and when I closed the book, I couldn't wait for the second book!

I give this book five chocolatebars out of five chocolatebars. I seriously think that this is my new favorite series.

I also give this book the rating of vampire there is practically no violence, but there are some weapons and there is one scene of nothing but fist fighting.
Cover Thoughts: I really like this cover because I got it for Christmas, and immediately I thought it looked like a super good book.