The Wardstone Chronicles review

The WardstoneChronicles   By Joseph Delaney

An earlier version of this article appeared in Knights of the Dinner Table #139 (May, 2008).

Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover.

I’m always searching for my next fantasy ‘hit,’ that elusive series that grabs hold of my imagination and simply won’t let go. I long to be engulfed in the story and compelled to consume it as a man dying of thirst consumes water. Such fantasy works are few and far between, sadly, and lesser fare leaves the mental palate dry and unsatisfied. But in 2005 I found a series that fulfilled every bit of that over-heated metaphor and then some. At least, the first few books in the series filled that need.

The cover first caught my attention as I was following my kids through a chain bookstore’s children’s section. It was menacing and out of place, displaying a grizzled old man in hooded cloak carrying a staff and lantern through a graveyard. I had to pick it up, though I expected the book could never live up to that cover image. But inside The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch I found mature, evocative prose and elegant pacing. The book surpassed its cover.

I dwell on the cover because the series title and cover involve some minor controversy, reminiscent of the brouhaha over Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone vice Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Joseph Delany’s fine series originated in Britain, where the series is known as The Wardstone Chronicles, with titles like The Spook's Apprentice, The Spook's Curse, The Spook's Secret, and The Spook's Battle. In the United States the series is titled The Last Apprentice and the same four books are Revenge of the Witch, Curse of the Bane, Night of the Soul Stealer, and Attack of the Fiend. The British books have more minimalist covers, simply a stylized cloaked spook with staff, lacking background or detail.

Regardless of the title, the inside of each book is filled with the same powerful prose describing the world of the Spook, John Gregory, and his apprentice, Tom Ward. They live in ‘The County,’ which is heavily based on Lancashire in England during the 1700s. The Spook is trained to deal with the supernatural, the ‘Dark,’ preventing haunts and witches from disturbing the living. It is an often thankless job, as the Spook is shunned by the superstitious county folk he aids, and persecuted by the Church.

The Spook is a hard man in many ways, but extremely knowledgeable and kind when possible. He has been fighting a lonely, losing struggle against the Dark for many years and it shows; despite this he clearly comes to care for his apprentice. Spooks are always seventh sons of seventh sons and usually possess the Sight, a sort of supernatural sensitivity. They wield knowledge against the Dark, knowing the weaknesses of the various creatures and employing seemingly common items such as salt, iron, and earth to “sort out” supernatural dangers.

The creatures of the Dark are wonderful takes on traditional horrors: witches, boggarts, wraiths, ghosts, ghasts, necromancers, and even ancient gods. The evil of these creatures is real and often gruesome. Witches utilize blood or bone magic, eat children, and generally act in the best fairy tale tradition, for example. Yet Delaney manages to introduce a touch of grey into this black and white world, often in the person of Alice, a girl of questionable background who is Tom Ward’s friend.

For gamers the books are filled with wonderful details to fill any supernatural or gothic campaign; they are especially well suited to the old Ravenloft campaign setting in tone and effect. The American versions, at least, contain chapters after the conclusion called Tom Ward’s Secret’s for Survival,  facsimiles of the notebooks Tom fills with entries on the supernatural. These include sketch maps, drawings, and basic entries. An enterprising gamemaster could even copy these pages and give them to players as a game aid, representing a found tome on supernatural lore.

The series really should be read in order. Each volume stands alone well enough, but there is an over-arching plot to the series and read in order the books reveal this plot piece by piece. The books are marketed as children’s books though the prose is adult. That is not to say it is profane or obscene, rather it deals with serious subjects in a serious, dignified way. The early books are as good as the Harry Potter series but somewhat darker, lacking the Potter series’ signature comedic touches and whimsy.

Unfortunately, starting with the sixth book in the series, Clash of Demons, the plots began to go off the rails. The story lines became less believable, and the protagonists are placed in hopeless situations over and over, from which they escape due to decreasingly believable deus ex machina. The books also leave the County, heading to Greece, Ireland, the isle of Mona, Wales, et cetera.

Some of the later books are quite good, Grimalkin the Witch Assassin and I am Alice are particular standouts as they focus on two of the most fascinating characters of the series. But overall, the stories leave the wonderful atmosphere and sense of place that made Revenge of the Witch such a pleasure to read. The final book in the series, Fury of the Seventh Son, is simply a disappointment. There is an attempt to finally get back to the relationship between Tom and the Spook, and the early chapters seem to build towards a satisfying conclusion but then the weight of the plot just tears the characterization to threads, and the ending is just … dull. Alice and Tom’s relationship goes in an unexpected and extremely unbelievable direction for no discernible reason. And though this is supposed to be the conclusion of the series, it leaves far too many threads open.

It was rather heart-breaking to see a book series end so poorly after such a promising start.

The first book in the series was made into a film, Seventh Son, which came out in 2014. Aside from character names, the film had little resemblance to the series or its world and was simply a standard Hollywood take on a fantasy movie. It received poor reviews, but I never saw it. I had been intrigued when I heard Tim Burton might direct – Sleepy Hollow could work in the Spook’s world – but when the film finally appeared, the previews made it very clear that it was not going to be anything like the books, just as The Seeker in 2007 was nothing like The Dark is Rising.

The movie was a failure, but there are also a series of short story anthologies that are generally very enjoyable and worth the read. Less enjoyable is the successor series, The Starblade Chronicles. This series is the true conclusion of The Wardstone Chronicles and is thankfully only three volumes long. It introduces a new character, Jenny, who Tom takes on as the first female spook apprentice, a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. But after another intriguing start, she is shoved aside and ignored in the later stories. In this series the antagonists are some sort of northern creature whose inspiration I cannot discern (the author has told me they are an original creation) and they draw the series from the sort of historical horror of the earliest novels into the nonsensical generic fantasy of the film. I can’t recommend these later books, unless one is simply looking for disjointed gaming examples. The potential of a better series is there, but the author seems to always choke with the endings.

I understand that some further books are coming out. I will probably try them, because an author with this much talent can always bounce back.

Either way, the Wardstone Chronicles does deserve to be explored, and gamemasters running horror games of any sort (Ravenloft or some sort of Victorian horror especially) will find all sorts of ideas and inspirations.



All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.