The Last Apprentice: Wrath of the Bloodeye (Book 5)

Taking up immediately after the ending of book four, book five in the Last Apprentice series still delivers the goods. Not a stand alone story, one must have at least read book four, if not all the others, in order to understand what happens in this book and which characters are on which side of the battling forces of good and evil. This series has not petered out, the action, the frightening events and scenes, the ongoing developments of Tom's apprentice training, and additional insight into the main characters, remains steady and intriguing. I did not feel AS frightened in this book as in the others, but the reader will not be disappointed. The fear and chills are still there to keep the eerie intensity and high suspense alive. There are a good deal of high action scenes to keep you riveted to the book and to keep the pages turning. I found the author put in a lot more character development to the key players, showing us that all of us have darkness as well as light within us. As Tom learns this more in this book it helps him grow and aids him in his ongoing training as he inches toward his eventual graduation to an official Spook himself some day. I also felt that this book had more of an intricate plot that leads the reader down many paths and shows us many twists and turns that are unexpected and surprising. As Tom grows, his experience broadens and the story backs this up with more of a challenging read than the earlier, simpler installments. I enjoyed this book as much as the others, I found no disappointing aspects and in fact, I thought the wonderful surprise elements at the end were quite brilliant and teasing which will have us all eagerly awaiting the next book. It appears that the author is showing us his increasing talent, as well as our young hero's. Delaney has created a fabulous horror series for young adults that just does not stop delivering terrific reads. One other thing I feel I must add and praise; the illustrations. I truly feel that these marvelous black and white illustrations and almost holographic cover designs add even more appeal to the success of these books. Each illustration evokes such a frightening feeling that the reader just cant help but feel scared to death. The art work here is truly talented and wonderful to behold. How can you not have a winning series with sensational illustrations to accompany very talented and creative stories? Bravo to both the author and the artist!

This series seems to take place in merry old England about half a century ago. Okay, maybe England wasn't so merry than. It's a land of small towns and villages steeped in history, tradition and superstition. It's also a land of ghosts, bogarts and witches, and luckily spooks. Spooks are the good guys, the ghosties, bogies and witchies are bad, generally. Then, of course, there is the Fiend himself, I don't have to tell you whose side he's on. Four books ago (this is the fifth in the series) twelve-year-old Tom had been apprenticed out to Old Gregory, the Obi-Wan of spooks. Old Gregory is like that soldier named Tommy who Rudyard Kipling wrote about, nobody wants a redcoat around, nobody wants to know him "For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, wait outside", but it's "Please to walk in front, sir,'' when there's trouble in the wind." That's Old Gregory, when the Witches come, he's the guy the folk want around. By the time we get to this book, Tom's been through a lot and trained pretty well, but he's still got a way to go, so Old Gregory sends Tom off to the Lake District to be trained by Bill Arkwright a spook who knows the baddies wo habit the water and it's not long before Tom is doing battle with Morwena, the Water Witch. This book can be read as a stand-alone, but I don't recommend it. If you started here, you might think Joseph Delaney was short on characterization and I want to assure you that's not the case. Tom's character, especially, has been building and I am more than happy to see that Mr. Delaney is going to go on with the series, I hope for a long, long time.

For maximum enjoyment, the Last Apprentice series should be read in the order. That said, Wrath of the Bloodeye (volume 5) can still be enjoyed as a standalone novel without having read the previous volumes. I read volume one and then skipped over the next three to read this one. While there is a clear subplot and many references to events that happened in the intervening volumes, the main plot is independent of the others and I still enjoyed it greatly. In Bloodeye, apprentice Tom Ward is sent to the Lake District for additional training from that area's spook. This new setting is rich in all things wet and soggy; bogs and fogs, swamps and mires, canals, moats and deadly tidal plains. It is equally rich in all the evil beasties that make water their home. There are selkies, skelts, spirits of drowning victims and, deadliest of all, the water witches. Tom's new master, Bill Arkwright, is a fascinating character, tormented by demons both inside and out. He is a hard and angry man but Tom manages to see the value of his training and accompanies Arkwright on a mission to capture Morwena, the worst of the district's water witches. When tragedy leaves Tom on his own it is up to him to call upon all that he has learned to defeat Morwena alone. Delaney is great in setting an atmosphere of impending danger and Bloodeye does not disappoint. The reader is always convinced that something wicked is waiting just a few feet away in the fog and Delany seldom disappoints us. Bloodeye was hard to put down.

Well, let me start off by saying I've not read the other books in the series, so I apparently had a bit of catching up to do. From the first few pages, I wasn't entirely sure whether this was the start of a series of books, or somewhere in the middle (apparently it's one of the latest installments, the 5th book {?}). I guess it was somewhat in media res (dropped into the setting without too much setup beforehand). While I eventually caught onto certain aspects of the story, and the roles of the characters, it felt as though there was history that wasn't quite neatly explained from the start, and could only be sussed out through reading the entire book (and getting enough references back to prior events). Once I finally got my bearings on the setting, characters, roles and plot, the book was pretty good. I rather liked it. I didn't find anything in the book especially terrifying (as it's lauded as something of a horror novel) that may simply be because I'm older and wiser than I would have been had I read this at the suggested age / reading level. I may just be too jaded by today's movies, etc. to be moved by the words on the page as effectively as I once was. I'd assume this would be relatively age appropriate for the young to mid teen market? Some of the stuff dealt with is a bit gory, though I don't think there was too much description of blood and guts, though the witches appear to be fond of tearing out people's throats (as some villains are apt to do). It's not described in detail and left at that for the most part. In any event, the plot seemed to move right along from one chapter to the next and kept me turning the pages. It seems to answer a few questions, and leave others open while raising new questions for the characters, hopefully to be answered in subsequent installments of the series. Before I knew it, I'd finished the book and found myself wanting to know what happens next. I'd probably recommend starting from the beginning, and working one's way through the series to get the back-story not explicitly recapped when starting this entry in the series. Though, even without explicitly reading the other books first, enough details are sussed out to still make the world of the story feel complete and relatively rich. I'd say this is a pretty good book, and probably better once having read the prior books in the series.