The Icebound Land

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death and emotional abuse.

The Icebound Land starts in medias res with Will, the protagonist, on a Skandian raiding ship alongside Evanlyn, a girl he met in the previous novel. The events of the previous two novels directly lead to the plot in this novel. 

In the first novel in the series, The Ruins of Gorlan, the primary characters are introduced, as well as the antagonist for the first two books: Lord Morgarath, a disgruntled noble from Araluen who has taken over the isolated Mountains of Rain and Night with an army of creatures called Wargals, whom he rules through mind control. Morgarath has also gained control over a group of vicious, apelike hunters called the Kalkara. Will is one of a group of orphans (including Horace, the apprentice knight) who live under the care of Baron Arald in Redmont Castle. On Choosing Day, the orphans are meant to be apprenticed to various guilds, but the Battleschool rejects Will due to his small stature. Will ends up apprenticed to Halt, a reclusive and sardonic King’s Ranger (and the person who brought him to the orphanage after his father died, though Will does not know this).