Leafing Through Pages - The Rise of Flynn Rider (Lost Legends Series # 1)
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Stars: 4 / 5
Recommendation: This was so much fun to read, even though the plot wasn’t great or the pace wasn’t action-packed. Catered to middle-grade students the book gives more meat to the popular Grimm Brother's tale Rapunzel thus enticing the readers to learn more about these extended characters that otherwise have less role in the original stories.
The Rise of Flynn Rider is the first book in the Lost Legends Series originally published on September 21st, 2021 written by Jen Calonita. This first book takes us through the adventures that Flynn Rider goes through as a teenager with his trusted friend Lance Strongbow. We know Flynn Rider as the Prince who comes to the aid of Rapunzel.
The series explores the origins and youthful (mis)adventures of the famous rogues from several fairy tales, who eventually end up on the right side of the law when they grow up. We get to see the young Aladdin, Peter Pan, Flynn Rider, Kristoff and others.
In this first installment we meet Flynn Rider as a young teenager who sets on his adventures to find his birth parents. He is accompanied by his trusted friend Lance Strongbow. We met Flynn Rider first time in the 2010 American animated musical adventure fantasy comedy film Tangled. Named in the orphanage as Eugene Fitzherbert, he becomes a small-time thief while going through his adventures and names himself Flynn Rider based off of the Flynn Rider series of books he reads all the time.
Flynn is based on the Prince that comes to rescue Rapunzel from her tower. The evil Mother Gothel who had kidnapped Rapunzel and raises her as her own child in the long tower. The original German fairy tale by Brothers Grimm does not have a name for him. He is just called Prince. Getting more of his character as adult in the fairy tale is a conception by the 2010 film directors Nathan Greno and Byron Howard who thought the original Brother Grimms fairy tale was too small for a movie. So they expanded Flynn's characterization.
Author Jen Calonita used the film directors' conception of Flynn as basis for her teenage version of Flynn Rider, and also the fictional Flynn Rider books she includes in the book. Each chapter has a quote from the supposed Flynnigan Rider books as the sub-heading.
She gives names to his orphanage too - Miss Clare's Home for Boys - and gives more new characters to add weight to Flynn's childhood. She also connects his past with a Moonstone Opal that controls the King and his Kingdom. She does give brief glimpses of Rapunzel plot-lines but not Rapunzel or her parents or the evil sorceress yet that ties to Flynn's connection with Rapunzel in the plot.
This was so much fun to read, even though the plot wasn’t great or the pace wasn’t action-packed. Catered to middle-grade students the book gives more meat to the popular Grimm Brother's tale Rapunzel thus enticing the readers to learn more about these extended characters that otherwise have less role in the original stories.
Spoiler Alerts:
1. Plot Reveals:
a. Flynn's family and friends: King Edmund, Flynn's birth father; Maeve, Flynn's mother's trusted handmaiden; Lance Strongbow aka Arnwaldo "Arnie" Schnitz, his best friend;
b. Others at the orphanage: Leif; Filip; Rolf; Miss Clare, the owner of the orphanage; Marius;
c. Other characters: Lance Archer, a Robin Hood type of person; Kurtis Frost, the tax collector;
d. Circus people who work at The Great Baron and His Unusual Oddities: The Baron; Staylan; Andy; Sideburns and Patchy Stabbington, brothers; Big Nose: Vlad;