Tough Travel
24 July 2014 
Every Thursday, Nathan at The Fantasy Review Barn takes us travelling through the tropes of fantasy. I love this weekly event – it’s good fun and it’s thought provoking and, if that’s not enough to encourage you to join in then you should go and check out all the other participants answers – there are some great book recommendations and we all love to grow our TBR after all!!
This week’s topic:
‘PRACTICE RING OR COMBAT RING is a sanded circle used for sparring and WEAPONS practice… It can be found attached to any school of weaponry, outside mercenaries’ winter quarters, and quite often on the outskirts of aggressive towns.’
I think I probably could have got some more – The Magician from Raymond Feist or Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb – but I could remember exactly whether they did or didn’t have practice rings.
Bloodsong by Anthony Ryan – lots of combat rings going on in this novel. Vaelin is the protagonist, he joins the Sixth Order where he trains to become a warrior. In order to succeed he must pass a number of fierce challenges. This is a great book – highly recommend.
Half a King by Joe Abercrombie – the combat ring in this is only very briefly mentioned so maybe it’s a bit of a cheat but… Prince Jarvi is not deemed fit to rule the Kingdom to which he is born due to the fact that one of his hands is deformed. Unfortunately in a cruel twist of fate he ends up becoming King quite unexpectedly. At the start of the novel we see him take on one of the other young men in combat – a fight he can’t win with the aim being to humiliate him in front of his subjects. Of course he has the wit to change this situation around.
Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson – I’m thinking of the training ring where Zahel will train both Adolin and Renarin – pretty funny reading about Renarin jumping off heights in his shards and basically face planting!
Unbelievable as this may seem – this week I haven’t got Lord of the Rings on my list!
Books and travelling with Lynn 
The scene in Half a King is so great, not only because it has a funny/grim ending, but because it makes a later scene even more shocking.
Great list.
All fairly recent reads for this one. Could only come up with three though.
Lynn 😀
The scene in Half a King is NOT a cheat! 😀 It was one of the more memorable scenes in the book, I think, especially since it came so early on and I included it in my list as well. Also did WoR because I loved those training scenes with Adolin and Renarin with Zahel (THAT’S his name! I’d forgotten it) and Kaladin training as well in order to protect the princes 🙂
The scenes with Zahel were so good and funny. Renarin was really good natured during that training.
Lynn 😀
Love that scene in Half a King. And your right, just about all of Blood Song is a training ground. A very brutal training ground. Great picks!
It was a really good scene if a bit brief.
Lynn 😀
Interesting choices I haven’t read any of these, actually I can’t think of any books to mind that I have read that had a practice or combat ring in.
Actually this was tougher than I thought it would be. I’ sure there are more books I’ve read that could have gone on the list but they wouldn’t come back to me.
Lynn 😀
I haven’t read any of these! This week’s list was one of the more difficult ones for me. Clearly I need to read some more macho books if I want to keep up with these dang tropes each week. 😉
I also struggled this week – Princesses next week! That should be easy, right?
You could just cheat and use Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings or Discworld – they’re on almost all our lists every week. LOL 😀
Lynn