Ranvan the Defender

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

The strong characterization and powerful themes found in Wieler’s
first two young-adult novels, Last Chance Summer and Bad Boy, are
equally present in this story of an adolescent’s search for personal
values and identity. Rhan Van, a 15-year-old orphan who lives with his
Gran in Vancouver, enjoys playing video games, especially one called
“Stormers,” in which he “becomes” an ill-equipped knight who
must fight his way into a castle, against seemingly impossible odds, to
rescue a princess-in-distress. Under the video-game monicker of RanVan,
Rhan has accumulated the game’s highest score, but his time spent in
front of the video screen inadequately prepares him for the reality of
rescuing a real “damsel-in-need.”

Rhan first encounters Thalie Ming, a 17-year-old Vietnamese immigrant,
when she is apparently thrown from a parked car. Meeting her later in
his new high school, an idealistic and romantic Rhan quickly jumps to
the conclusion that Thalie is being sexually abused by Garry, her
mother’s boyfriend, and has need of a contemporary knight to defend
her honor, a role Rhan enthusiastically and naively assumes. Thalie
leads Rhan through a series of materially destructive episodes that
culminate in Rhan’s attempted arson of Garry’s new home. There, as
Rhan confronts the Dark Lord, aka Garry, he discovers the shocking truth
about Thalie. Junior/senior-high readers of both genders will enjoy this
book’s rich cast of characters and eagerly await the sequel, A Worthy
Opponent: RanVan 2nd Level. Highly recommended.