The Last Apprentice (Seventh Son)

"Someone has to do it. Someone has to stand against the dark. And you're the only one who can."

To help us enter into and better understand the entertainment shaping today's youth, I offer my latest review of books effecting a primarily YA audience. My goal is not to critique the art form as much as look at the worldview in the story.

This review will look at The Last Apprentice, the first of a dozen books in Joseph Delaney's The Wardstone Chronicles.  The Last Apprentice won New York Public Library's "One Hundred Titles for Reading and Sharing" as well as the ALA Best of the Best Books for Young Adults. A movie based loosely on the series will soon arrive on the big screen as Seventh Son.

Tom Ward is the seventh son of a seventh son. That's an interesting lineage, sure, but who really cares? John Gregory, for one. He is a Spook, the last line of defense between the forces of evil and the rest of a blissfully unaware world. John's not getting any younger, and he needs an apprentice - namely, Tom, who has arrived after just the right amount of sevens.

You can read the plot elsewhere. I'd rather focus on the messages within the story.

The Childlike Hunger of Grief

    At the National Writer's Series at the Opera House in Traverse City, I met Tom Perrotta, author of The Leftovers (among many other books).  The book is a certainly a dig at the Left Behind crowd (the Leftovers are people who remain after a Rapture-like event), but that plot device is just the backdrop for a story about grief and loss.

    When I began reading, I thought this book would perhaps be a screed against the idiocy of Christians who believe in the Rapture. By the time I was done, the precipitating event has given way to a poignant story of the effect of cataclysmic loss on a small town.

     As the evening progressed at the Writer's Series, two main thoughts struck me.

     First, Mr. Perrotta and I are very different when it comes to our view of God, faith, religion, and social issues, though he was very tactful when talking about people and beliefs with whom he disagrees.  He was careful to note that he used the Rapture scenario because it was in the culture's imagination thanks to the Left Behind series, and he decided to use it as a way to explore how communities respond to such massive upheaval.