Middle Earth Ranger Forum

I am wondering what fantasy ranger books there are other than the rangers apprentice.

I forgot the name of the series but the first book is "So dies the fire". It takes place in our time but something happens that stops electrical functions at a level. Bottom line the world is thrown into a pre-industrial age. Several communities spring up forming their own variations of society.

One in particular the "Bear Killers" is a semi clan group with a subdivision of Tolkienesque rangers as several of the younger generation were Tolkien fans.

That'd be the Emberverse series by S M Stirling.
a personal favourite of mine

next one is out in September looking forward to it already

The term "Ranger" seems to be a well loved fantasy trope these days, but Rangers in the sense of Tolkien's Dunedain are somewhat difficult to come by. Obviously the Ranger's Apprentice series is built around this concept, but beyond that I'm not really sure. "A Song of Ice and Fire" by George R. R. Martin does include a group of people referred to as "rangers," but the term is more synonymous with "scouts," and only applies to a small group of men among the Night's Watch - the order that guards the enormous Wall in the north - whose job it is to go ranging north of the wall to prevent against invasion. Then there's the Sword of Truth novels, in which the protagonist, Richard Cypher, was a "woods guide" before the events of the first novel took place. There are also some good Robin Hood books out there that sort of fall into this category, but then, Robin Hood is sort of a genre unto himself. He's not really a forester or woodsman, not really a hunter, not really a "ranger" type - and yet he's sort of all of those, while also being an outlaw and a sort of Middle Ages "super hero," if you will.

Of course I'm biased, but I too would very much like to see more books geared towards the concept of rangers (or foresters, or woodsmen, or whatever they are to be called in a given universe).

What's the premise of the Ranger Apprentice series?

In a paralel medeival European setting a young orphan boy who wishes to be a knight though he is not big enough or strong enough to enter such training, is selected by a Ranger of the Araluen Ranger Corps to be his apprentice. 12 books later I still love this series and met my wife through it...good stuff this!

And when you are done with them, Flanagan has writen the first few books of the Brotherband Series which moves the focus to the Scandians (vikings) of this world and lets you explore that culture into which you have been given glimpses throughout the first series.

Flanagan's Rangers are a corps of individual peace keepers, scouts and in some ways spies. One master Ranger per Fief, fifty fifes and each can take an apprentice (kind of Padawan learner) They have a strong central corp structure and come together to help one another, but they are very specialised almost mystified by commoners and have some very cool yet managable skills and equipment.

That should get you started!

And if you like to write, my wife and I are Global moderators on a site called "Halt's Playground" a literary RPG. come visit you will enjoy it!

http://araluenrpg.proboards.com/

The R.A. Salvatore Forgotten Realms books have a Ranger (D&D style) as the main character. They are a good read, and there are a lot of them.

Brian

Good to know. I've sort of steered away from Salvatore as being a little too pulpy for my taste (or more accurately, too Dungeons and Dragons), but I may have to give his work a shot.

Nice, I may be on the lookout for one after I finish my current book. I'm good missing the Viking ones however.

Legend of the Seeker series....the 1st book is THE SWORD OF TRUTH, if my memory serves me, has a woodsman male lead character.

robinhoodsghost wrote:Legend of the Seeker series....the 1st book is THE SWORD OF TRUTH, if my memory serves me, has a woodsman male lead character.

It does and I absolutely love the show.

robinhoodsghost wrote:Legend of the Seeker series....the 1st book is THE SWORD OF TRUTH, if my memory serves me, has a woodsman male lead character.

First book is Wizard's First Rule.

robinhoodsghost wrote:Legend of the Seeker series....the 1st book is THE SWORD OF TRUTH, if my memory serves me, has a woodsman male lead character.

Though as the series goes he is less and less rangery. The 1st book he is fairly woodsman through most of it but after that not so much. Still a great series though, it is actually one of my favorites for delving into some deeper subjects in the guise of fantasy writing. Which is something I really like about fantasy or Scifi, these fiction genres are able to explore philosophical questions and illustrate them in these fictional worlds.

If you want a couple of blasts from the past the Shanara books (the first one in particular: Sword of) has a rangery character and Hugh Oxhine of Urshurak is another very cool ranger type. (perhaps it is my love of the Brother's Hildebrant and the fact that I read this so early in my quest for such literature, but I emensly enjoyed the characters from this book, dispite it's lackluster reviews) Then there is Tanis Half-Elven from the Dragonlance books (though if you think Salvator is too D&D I would leave Dragonlance alone!)

I've tried reading a lot of these books, and in the end I almost invariably stopped after the first in the series, or didn't even finish that one. I think my trouble is that I'm actually not a very big fan of the classic "high fantasy" genre. Not to say I don't like it at all, but just that I tend to prefer a more historical approach - which is why I devoured George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels, as well as Flanagan's Ranger's Apprentice series (though the two series couldn't be more different from one another in other respects). Tolkien is a notable exception for me, and I think the reason there is that he was sort of the first to popularize the idea of high fantasy in our culture. I've always felt his stories were less overtly derivative than most of the work that came afterwards, despite his having drawn on a lot of old stories and myths. Martin seems to have done something similar, with a really rich, unique world all of his own. Anyway, just my own musings on the subject.