Brotherband Chronicles

About the Brotherband Chronicles series

Set in the same world as Ranger's Apprentice, the Brotherband Chronicles hands the spotlight to the Skandians -- Flanagan's Viking-inspired seafaring culture, previously seen mostly as raiders and allies on the margins of Will Treaty's story. Hal Mikkelson, a half-Araluen outcast among his own people, is assigned to Skandia's least promising brotherband training crew and, through ingenuity rather than brute strength, turns them into a genuinely formidable ship's crew aboard his self-designed ship, the Heron. Across nine books the crew sails further from Skandian waters into open-ended nautical adventure, facing pirates, slavers, and rival cultures across Flanagan's wider world.

Flanagan created the series out of what he's described as a lifelong love of the sea, and it leans harder into ship handling, naval tactics, and open-water adventure than the largely land-based Ranger's Apprentice. Occasional characters and references cross over between the two series, but Brotherband tells its own complete, self-contained story with its own cast.