I don't want to spoil the books for anyone, so if you haven't read the lost stories you might want to read it before you read this story!
I loved some of the stories in the lost stories, but some of them didn't make sense. It took me twice as long to read than any of the other Rangers Apprentice books. I spent hours trying figure out how some of the stories fit into the time line.
One of the most confusing stories was "the Wolf" the first half of it was pretty good, but the farther I read the less I liked it.
But there were also some really good stories too. My favorites were:
"the death of a hero" (that one made me cry 😭. But I love how it explains about Will's parents.)
I liked "the inkwell and the dagger" But I thought that it should have been a stand alone story so that people who are new to the series could read it right after "the ice bound land."
"Dinner for five" was really funny, I think I laughed half the time I was reading it.
Of course I loved "the bridal dance." Because we got to see Horace and Evanlyn's wedding. But I would have liked it more if there was a better story surrounding it.
"The Hibernian" was cool, but I would have liked it better as a full book. Let the readers actually see a little of Halt being trained.
I also enjoyed "And about time to." I don't usually cry during happy ending or wedding scenes, but Halt giving Alyss away, and trying to hide his tears during the wedding scene really got me. I would have liked the story to be just a little longer. Alyss was complaining because Will always had to leave in the middle of dancing with her. At the end of "the bridal dance" she said: "you left during our dance at Halt and Pauline's wedding, and you almost missed our dance at Horace and Evanlyn's. You better be there at our's." (Not sure if those were the exact words, sorry.) And we didn't get to see their wedding dance, I must admit I was slightly disappointed.
Over all, I liked the book but felt it could be better. But to me it's really hard to judge a book that has multiple stories in it, because I loved some of the stories and didn't like others. My main thought was that the book could have been a little bit better laid out.