Story recap of The Last Ranger
With The First Ancestor releasing May 1st, 2023, you might be looking for a reminder on what occurred in the first installment, The Last Ranger.
In fact, I know many of you are! Readers are always asking after these, and for a long time, I dragged my feet to write them.
Well, this time, I got my act together in time! You’ll find a summary of The Last Ranger’s plot below.
It won’t, of course, hit everything that happens in the book, nor cover every character we meet, but it should at least refresh you on the major plot points. If you want to remember every last detail, you’ll just have to do a re-read!
But for the lazy among us, I hope you find this recap helpful!
SUMMARY OF THE LAST RANGER
RANGER OF THE TITAN WILDS: BOOK 1
Leiyn of Orille has been a ranger for five years, but is young enough to retain the brashness of her youth. She and her fellow rangers at the Wilds Lodge are tasked with protecting the colony of Baltesia at the northern borderlands known as the Titan Wilds, so-called for the gigantic spirit beasts that plague it.
After a confrontation with a thorned lion and a pack of tusked jackals, Leiyn encounters a party of Gasts, one of the peoples indigenous to the Veiled Lands, the continent at large. Due to a belief passed down from her father that a Gast shaman was responsible for her mother's death, and a conclusion that Gasts were also responsible for the magic in Leiyn that she has tried to hide her entire life, she treats the Gasts with suspicion. Leiyn confiscates the writ of passage that allows them to travel freely across these lands with the purpose of verifying it with the master of the Wilds Lodge and her mentor, Tadeo.
Tadeo confirms the writ, which is signed by a conqueror, or general, called Armando Pótecil, is legitimate, and that Leiyn should return it to the Gast party. Accompanied by her best friend and fellow ranger, Isla Ogbi, Leiyn rides out to handle the task, unpleasant as she finds it.
Before they can locate the Gasts, however, Leiyn and Isla stumble across a camp belonging to Suncoats, soldiers from the colony's land of origin, Ilberia. Already alarmed by the soldiers' presence, the situation grows stranger when a dryvan, a shapeshifter of dubious intent, appears to issue enigmatic and ominous warnings.
Leiyn and Isla race back through the night to the Lodge to find fire is spreading across it. As they hurry to help their comrades, they're ambushed in the darkness. Leiyn is thrown from her horse, and though she kills the men attacking her, she receives what should be a mortal wound.
Yet when Leiyn awakens, she finds the magic she's tried so hard to repress has saved her, drawing on the plant and animal life in the near vicinity and killing it. But she has greater problems, for when she stands, she discovers the Lodge has been burned to ashes.
Finding no survivors beyond the lodgemaster's horse, Feral, Leiyn mounts the horse and follows the tracks of the rangers' attackers, partly to claim justice against them, partly in the hope that they've taken Isla, whose body she couldn't locate. Finding the camp, Leiyn sneaks up and confirms it wasn't Gasts who attacked the Lodge, but Suncoats, though she cannot understand the reason why. Isla is indeed their captive, so she sets about looking for a way to free her.
Fortune is on Leiyn's side for once, as the Gast party she came across before forces an encounter with the Suncoats over the slaughter of the Lodge. Attacking in the ensuing melee, during which a hill tortoise rises and sends all parties into chaos, Leiyn frees Isla, and they flee atop Feral into the night.
The danger isn't yet over, however. Isla sports a grave injury to her leg, one that has become infected. Leiyn, desperate to save her friend, makes a damning decision: to use the magic she reviles to try to heal her. But her inexperience results in only delaying the disease, and nearly killing herself in the process.
Needing the closest medical aid, Leiyn and Isla head to the rangers' longtime allies, the plainsriders of the Greathouse in the neighboring colony, Altan Gaz. There, Isla receives what care she can get, but the ultimate choice lies between amputation or waiting and praying. Preferring to take fate into her own hands, Leiyn decides to attempt to use her magic again. Before she can, they must leave the Greathouse, lest her curse be discovered.
But the Greathouse isn't as it has been in the past. One plainsrider, Taban, has appeared to mount a coup and seize leadership for himself. He also tries to hold Leiyn and Isla hostage. The pair of rangers cannot understand why until one young plainsrider, Batu Khatas, explains: Taban is in communication with the conqueror Armando Pótecil, whose soldiers butchered the rangers and burned down the Wilds Lodge.
With Batu's help, Leiyn and Isla flee with the plainsrider, but they're hotly pursued. Only after a titan rises from a river do they make it free, but not before Leiyn receives an arrow wound to her leg. Isla is in worse shape than ever, the hard chase taking a severe toll.
Out of options, Leiyn heals her arrow wound, then tries to combat Isla's infection. Draining a grove of trees for energy, she makes progress, but it still isn't enough. She fears she's going to lose her best friend when the dryvan they encountered before reappears.
This dryvan, Rowan, whisks them away in some magical manner to an identical forest that's somehow… different. Needing the healing Rowan offers, Leiyn and company follow the dryvan to a place she calls Glade, where others of her kind live together. A tree-looking dryvan, Eld, endeavors to heal Isla, though it comes at the cost of Isla's leg never quite being the same, Leiyn's own attempts at healing resulting in her containing some essence of a tree.
Giving their farewells to the dryvans, Rowan returns them to the world they know close to a borderland town named Folly. There, they receive the aid of the mayor, Itzel, who was the longtime lover of the lodgemaster, Tadeo. The betrayal by the conqueror Armando Pótecil compels them to head to the colony's capital, Southport, with all haste.
But they don't head south alone. In Folly, they run into the same Gasts once again. Now, their purpose is revealed: to seek an alliance with Baltesia in their own war. Still in the throes of her bias, Leiyn struggles to believe they can be true of heart, yet has no choice but to agree to travel with the chieftain of the tribe, Acalan Tikau, and the shaman with him, Zuma Apisi.
During their travels south, Leiyn slowly warms to the Gasts, even if her bias remains. She defends them at an inn against hateful locals, and they fight alongside one another when Suncoats seek to impede their passage across the Saints' Crossing bridge at the Gorge de Omn. But it is only once they take shelter amid a ruined castle that the shaman Zuma reveals the truth that he thought she already knew: Zuma was the shaman who delivered her at birth. And he didn't kill her mother, but allowed her to sacrifice her life for Leiyn's. The stories her father told of the event were false, and Leiyn, already torn in her opinions, finally accepts what he says as truth.
Her worldview turned upside down, Leiyn endeavors to accept the Gasts and her own magic now. But as they reach Southport, those issues fall to the back of her mind. Receiving an audience with the governor, Mauricio di Siveña, by merit of their status as rangers, Leiyn and the others inform him of the plot against Baltesia, and that Lord Armando is behind it.
But before decisions can be made about what is to be done, Leiyn is lured into complacency and abducted in the temple inside the governor's own estate. Lord Armando himself visits Leiyn there, then proceeds to interrogate her by benefit of an odiosa, a magic-user like Leiyn, but whose will has been enslaved to serve Ilberia. Managing to fight him off, Leiyn is left to starve for six days before a last-ditch effort to reach out with her magic touches Zuma. The shaman brings help to save her before she expires.
While Leiyn still lies abed, recovering from the ordeal, Lord Armando brings his soldiers to the governor's own gates and demands that she be given over to him. She is to be the excuse for which the conqueror punishes the colony for their disobedience. Mauricio refuses, even knowing what will follow, for he has already mustered a militia seeking to fight off Lord Armando and his Suncoats.
By benefit of a burst of magic from Zuma, Leiyn joins in the fight. She and her companions manage to hold out against the soldiers, but Lord Armando, seeing the tide turn against him, sets to fleeing the city. Refusing to let him go free, Leiyn makes a desperate gamble and raises an ocean titan, a kraken, from the bay with her magic. She manages to command it to kill the conqueror before she succumbs to it.
But she once more awakens. Now, she discovers it's Zuma who's saved her, as he saved her as a newborn. But it has come at the cost of his life. Before he departs, he passes a piece of himself to her, a spark that remains alive within her. He also draws from her a promise: to help his people in their war.
In honor of her oath, Leiyn and her comrades, Chief Acalan included, prepare to head back north, to face a shadowy enemy Acalan only refers to as “death.”
That’s about it for The Last Ranger! Now that you’re ready to continue Ranger of the Titan Wilds, you can pick up the latest installment in the series, The First Ancestor, through the button below.