Magician Apprentice Raymond Feist

[Gwenda Arguin]

Irediscovered my love for pleasure-driven reading this past Spring when I received a Kindle for my birthday. Being swamped with work, I decided to forgo the edifying classics and attack my increasingly growing fantasy reading list.

After starting their apprenticeships (Pug is training to be a magician while Tomas a fighter), they investigate a shipwreck on the shores of Cyrdee. Here, they find a foreign race with advanced magical skills. There is a lone survivor, and they save him along with a scroll before the ship sinks losing all its contents to the sea.

With the knowledge of an impending invasion by Warriors buffered by magic greater than their own, a sortie of Cyrdee royalty and warriors (including Pug and Tomas) leave to warn the rest of the Kingdom and bring them to arms.

There were about ten to fifteen characters of importance. It was a blessing to be able to see a name that was not mentioned for some time and still be able to recall them from the depths to continue reading. Their backstories were clear and concise and it was easy to feel like you understood them.

There were shallower moments, though, particularly when it came to the details of magic in this world. While you get some division and categories, it is hitherto unclear how any of it works. A significant plot point, the climax of the novel, was a deus ex machina where magic is able to solve all. Normally, this would make me run rampant with anger, but given how I felt this novel was more about exploration, different worlds, and the characters, I was willing to give this a pass.

Now, the first novel is full of fantasy tropes with your elven forest and dwarven mines, but once past the stereotypical settings, Midkemia is full of interesting places because of the people in them. Take for instance Krondor, your typical medieval town. While not initially too imaginative, here lives a thieves guild and a secret police ferreting out political dissenters. When our party finds themselves trapped, it is a riveting race to escape before found as we see the underbelly of city life.

Without exposing too much, the final pages evoked some of the strongest feelings I have had in some time. A slight twist involving a swashbuckler, it reminded me that I was saying a momentary goodbye to a wonderful world before realizing this: the adventure is never truly over.

To the forest on the shore of the Kingdom of the Isles, the orphan Pug came to study with the Master Magician Kulgan. But though his courage won him a place at Court and the heart of a lovely Princess, he was ill at ease with the normal ways of wizardry.

Once he was an orphan called Pug, apprenticed to a sorcerer of the enchanted land of Midkemia. Then he was captured and enslaved by the Tsurani, a strange, warlike race of invaders from another world.

The story follows two boys, Pug, an orphan at the rustic Castle Crydee, and his friend, Tomas, who is the son of the keep cook. In a coming of age ritual, boys are chosen for an apprenticeship, and while there are other jobs in life and life without being chosen is quite liveable, there is a great shame and stigma attached with not being chosen. Tomas dreams of being a warrior, and to some degree so is Pug. When Tomas is chosen easily by the Swordmaster Fannon, Pug is chosen by the magician Kulgan, in part because Kulgan sensed great power in him when he showed one of his magical artifacts to Pug in a storm some weeks earlier, but also out of mercy and compassion.

The two boys are among the first to find a ship that has floundered on Midkemian shores after passing through a portal from another world, the first portent of what will be an invasion from a vast and alien Empire.

When Tomas is lost in the mountains, he finds himself in a cave of an ancient dragon, where he is gifted magical armor that unites him to an amoral of being of great power from another age: the mythical and alien Valheru. He becomes a great warrior in the defense of Midkemia, but the mind of the Valheru could destroy his humanity and turn him into a villain.

Meanwhile, Pug is captured by the Tsurani, the warrior-people from another world, and taken as a slave. But when the power within him is discovered, he is again whisked away from all he knows to become a magician like none ever seen before.

The question had been asked several times before, and always his answer had been met with the blank inner silence that told him he had answered incorrectly. This time he carefully considered, eliminating all the answers he had made previously, as well as those that were combinations or extrapolations of the previously incorrect ones.

A new novel from internationally best-selling author Raymond E. Feist. The world of Garn once boasted five great kingdoms, until the King of Ithrace was defeated and every member of his family executed by Lodavico, the ruthless King of Sandura, a man with ambitions to rule the world. Ithrace's ruling family were the legendary Firemanes and represented a great danger to the other kings. Now four great kingdoms remain, on the brink of war. But rumour has it that the newborn son of the last king of Ithrace survived....

Kitchen-boy Simon is bored, restless and 14 years old - a dangerous combination. It seems, however, that his life has just taken a turn for the better when he's apprenticed to his castle's resident wizard. As Simon's learning to read and write under Doctor Morgenes' tutelage, forces greater than he could possible imagine are gathering: forces which will change Simon's life - and his world - forever. Following the death of Good King John, Osten Ard is plunged into civil war as his sons battle for control of the fabled Dragonbone Chair - the country's throne as well as the symbol of its power.

The Malazan Empire simmers with discontent, bled dry by interminable warfare, bitter infighting and bloody confrontations with the formidable Anomander Rake and his Tiste Andii, ancient and implacable sorcerers. Even the imperial legions, long inured to the bloodshed, yearn for some respite. Yet Empress Laseen's rule remains absolute, enforced by her dread Claw assassins.

Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Animals hide in shells, trees pull in branches, and grass retracts into the soilless ground. Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter. It has been centuries since the fall of the 10 consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor.

Zac was alone in the middle of the forest when the world changed... The whole planet was introduced to the multiverse by an unfeeling System... or God. A universe where an endless number of races and civilizations fought for power and dominion. Zac finds himself stuck in the wilderness surrounded by deadly beasts, demons, and worse. Alone, lost and without answers, he must find the means to survive and get stronger in this new cut-throat reality.

To the forest on the shore of the Kingdom of the Isles, the orphan Pug came to study with the master magician Kulgan. But though his courage won him a place at court and the heart of a lovely princess, he was ill at ease with the normal ways of wizardry. Yet Pug's strange sort of magic would one day change forever the fates of two worlds. For dark beings from another world had opened a rift in the fabric of spacetime to being again the age-old battle between the forces of Order and Chaos.

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"One of the world's most successful fantasy fiction authors."--The Guardian Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar Saga--a classic of fantasy literature which no true fan should be without--opens with this tale of magic, might, and adventure. Orphaned boy Pug is apprenticed to a powerful court magician named Kulgan in the world of Midkemia. Though ill at ease with the normal ways of wizardry, Pug soon earns his place as a squire after saving the life of one of the royals at court. But his courage will be tested still further when dark beings from another world open a rift in the fabric of spacetime to rekindle the age-old battle between the forces of Order and Chaos. Now the lives of Pug and his friend Tomas are thrown into danger and disarray. Only Pug's strange brand of magic might yet turn the tide, in the struggle to repel the invaders and restore peace to Midkemia. Praise for Magician: Apprentice"Understandably, this is one of the highest-regarded books in the world."--Fantasy Book Review"Totally gripping . . . A fantasy of epic scope, fast-moving action and vivid imagination."--The Washington Post Book World "Most exciting . . . A very worthy and absorbing addition to the fantasy field."--Andre Norton

"The best new fantasty in years . . . has a chance of putting its aughor firmly on the trone next to Tolkien--and keeping him there."--The Dragon Magazine

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