The Trial of Rooker Flynn
Rooker Flynn made his choice.
He cut the bond that tied him to the only person who could hold him back. Now free to pursue his own path, Rooker must discover a way to thrive inside the Locke Institute, outlasting entire gangs of criminals, outrunning giant spiders, and outfoxing Headmistress Gerba Whipmarples herself, never forgetting that sunset is always coming, and with it...the horrendous shiq.
But there are more secrets on this tropical island than Rooker ever imagined, and each answer leads to another mystery.
• Why does the Institute collect the prisoners' blood?
• How did the Headmistress master a spider-dragon?
• What secret lies at the heart of Huánghūn?
...and, perhaps most importantly...
"Where's the dog, Rooker?"
Join Rooker Flynn on an adventure inside the legendary labor camp that's nastier than your worst nightmares, where he discovers there's more to life than survival, and the worst prisons are the ones we build ourselves.
A story of betrayal, perseverance, abandonment, and revenge, The Trial of Rooker Flynn is more than an ordeal, it's a reckoning.
-Goodreads
Title: The Trial of Rooker Flynn
Series: Locke Institute Trilogy #2
Author: A.R. Witham
Page Count: 370
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 5.0/5.0
Date Read: December 5th, 2024
Opening
My journey through the works of A.R. Witham began with The Legend of Black Jack back in 2022 and once I settled into the wild tales I loved it. So much so that just 3 months after visually reading it, I listened to the audiobook narrated by the author himself which was also a pleasure.
Fast forward a couple of years and I now had 3 books (The Legend of Black Jack, The Tale of the Border Knight, and The Crimes of Rooker Flynn) under my belt. I have continued to sign up to read the Locke Institute Trilogy's as they have become available. Most recently this was The Trial of Rooker Flynn.
Pacing
The pacing is a smoothly told tale with plenty of fast paced action oriented scenes throughout this read. That shouldn't take anything away from the nicely worked build up of the story throughout either. I know sometimes reads can focus on one and the other falls short. The digital version I read was very clean with little to no editing issues that stood out to me. As usual there were no overly odd names of characters or places to trip me up while reading either.
World Building
The world building is top notch as usual. This is something I'm quickly coming to expect from the author. Not only does he appear to have quite the imagination for fantastical worlds but the way he continues to use words to paint the picture allowing us to feel as if we are in these moments is a pleasure to experience. The world itself does expand a bit in book two in geography and history as more pieces of the puzzle fall into place. We learn more about the island where the story has been taking place up to this point as well as some of the surrounding islands and other regions where characters may be coming from.
I've said it before but I love a good story that provides us a good amount of history as to what has brought us to these points and what makes the characters the way they are. We had plenty of this type of information provided to us including some great backstory for Whipmarples which was fantastic.
Character Development
The brings us to the character development. Again one of the feelings I've come to expect from so many authors over the last couple of years of reading is, I don't know who to trust anymore! We had so much character progression in The Trial of Rooker Flynn, I'm not even sure where to start without giving too much away. Of course I already mentioned Gerbo Whipmarples who may not change much but we learn so much more about her in this one. And it would be odd if we didn't see some growth for both Rooker and Jack even though their relationship may not be as smooth as The Legend of Black Jack was.
The character growth doesn't end there at all though. We have some returning characters as well as plenty to witness with some of the other prisoners as well.
Closing
This series has been very different from my previous Witham reads but at the same time, there is plenty of similarities with the way he spins a tale. This one just doesn't seem to have the same amount of hope for it's characters. We have just enough to keep us clinging to what little we have as we ride these rough seas!
We have one more book in this series, yet to be released later this year. I'm looking forward to seeing how this wraps up. I can't help but hope for a happy ending for many of these characters even if I'm already assuming we are probably going to lose some more of them along the way before we get there.
As far as recommendations go, it goes without saying if you've read anything else from A.R. Witham and having gotten to this series, you need to give it a go! If you haven't experienced any of his work yet, I made a statement to a group of friends recently that I'd consider this world and especially The Legend of Black Jack to be a darker telling of Peter Pan. It's that wild and fantastical but at the same time perhaps a bit darker and maybe not the best story for a child audience.
Scoring
Pacing 5.0 / 5.0
Worldbuilding 5.0 / 5.0
Character Development 5.0 / 5.0
