Yes, haha, my name is Haley.

Anyway, RA follows Will, an orphan living in the fictional kingdom Arulen. He is selected to become a Ranger - Rangers being, um, scouts of a sort, highly trained with longbows, daggers, and concealment. They're like a secret police, minus the arrest-people-and-kill-them-secretly bit. They're very mysterious so most people think they practice magic (they don't).

Anyway, Will goes to live with his master, Halt (who is awesome) and gets a horse, Tug. He learns how to track, hide himself so completely as to be nearly invisible, shoot a bow, fight with a saxe knife and a throwing dagger...

Meanwhile Will's friend Horace is training to become a knight, and turns out to be a natural with the sword. 

Then there's an evil Dark Lord (since this is fantasy, after all) called Morgarath, who was exiled previously and has started attacking Kind Duncan's closest advisors/friends (though at first they don't know it's Morgarath). Will and Halt are instructed to find out what is killing these lords, and find out it's Morgarath.

Then in the second book, Will and Duncan's daughter are captured by Skandian mercenaries working for Morgarath. Rather than turn the captives over to Morgarath they keep the two hidden in hopes of selling them into slavery. Morgarath leads an attack on Duncan's forces, and, as his army fails, demands the right of trial by combat. He challenges Halt, but ends up being challenged by Horace instead, for reasons I can't remember.

Will and the princess are taken to Skandia by the Skandians.

Halt gets himself exiled for a year (because that's the only way he'd be allowed to leave the Rangers) and he and Horace  travel to Skandia, where they meet up with the princess and Will, who escaped slavery with the help of a kind-hearted Skandian, Erak (sp?). Halt realizes that Skandia is going to be attacked by a ferocious race of warriors, and strikes up a bargain with the Oberjarl (leader); Halt, Will, Horace, and the princess help him defeat the invaders, and Will and the princess go home.

They defeat the invaders, but the Oberjarl is killed, to be replaced by Erak, who signs a treaty with Duncan.

In the fifth book, Will has become a full-fledged and famous Ranger with a fief of his own. He is sent to investigate a mysterious, and allegedly magical, illness that has stricken the lord of the northernmost thief, and goes in disguise as a jongleur. His friend Alyss joins him, in disguise as a lady staying at the castle.

Will uncovers a plot to kill the lord and his heir, and must flee the castle with the heir whose name escapes me, leaving Alyss in the hands of the rebels.

The sixth book has yet to be published. :(

Anyway, it's fantasy with a good deal of historical fiction thrown in, and there is minimal magic; Morgarath bent the weak minds of a race of monsters to his own, but that's about it, which makes a refreshing change, I think. 

Those sound interesting. I will go request them from the library website, I think.

Ha, my two sentences sound pathetic right under that mega-long synopsis. :)

Correction, Aliza: She likes Bellatrix and Voldy. ;)

Ooh, read Sorcerer, it's good. But the cliffhanger at the end made me grrr - it was worse than the one at the end of Icebound Land. :\

And Harry Potter is the exception to the rule; 95% of modern fantasy I find repulsive.