Feast of Souls: Book One of the Magister Trilogy (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this imaginative, deftly plotted fantasy from Friedman (The Wilding), the first of a new trilogy, a female witch's magic comes at a terrible cost: her own finite life force, which drains away with each spell. Nearly immortal male Magisters, on the other hand, tap a more murderous fuel for their power. No woman has ever found its source, until young Kamala, hardened by life as a child whore, insists on an apprenticeship and secretly becomes an unheard-of female Magister. Meanwhile, Prince Andovan, third son of the avaricious King Danton, is expiring from the baffling Wasting disease, which can only be caused by a Magister. When the enraged king banishes his right-hand Magister, the mysterious and sinister Kostas takes his place, much to the dismay of Andovan's benevolent mother, Queen Gwenofar. As the kingdom threatens to spiral toward a dark age, Kamala and Andovan find their fates entwined. Readers will eagerly await the next installment. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

For the Magister Trilogy, Friedman conjures a world in which the price of using magic is the death of either the magician or a consort on whose life force he feeds. Ordinary witches usually die young. But magisters--all male, for it is believed that women cannot make the transition from witch to magister--are practically immortal, taking consort after consort and using them up. Prince Andovan, son of a powerful king, has fallen ill with a wasting disease. When his father consults the magisters, they realize that an unknown magister has taken the prince for a consort. They won't say so, however, for that would put their lives and power at risk. But Magister Colivar helps the prince fake a suicide to track down his unknown exploiter. King Danton, driven nearly mad by his son's "death," falls victim to a souleater, which is worse than a magister. Magisters are parasitic; souleaters can destroy the world. Powerful, intricate plotting and gripping characters distinguish a book in which ethical dilemmas are essential and engrossing. Frieda Murray
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: DAW (February 5, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0756404630
• ISBN-13: 978-0756404635
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #23,242 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Buy it now - one of the best fantasy novels out there, January 10, 2007

By	SciFan - See all my reviews

This review is from: Feast of Souls (The Magister Trilogy, Book 1) (Hardcover)

Bottom line: It's an extremely good story that will keep you up late at night, turning pages into the wee hours of the morning. The book is intense, gripping, and you'll be sucked in from the beginning.

Other reasons I enjoyed it
1. It's not derivitive. Most of the stuff in the fantasy section isn't very creative - everyone's copying off of a previous hit trying to be the "next Harry Potter" or whatever. Feast of Souls is a novel in the true sense of the word and it's a pleasure to read something original.
2. It's up to C.S. Friedman's quality bar: no cookie cutter characters here. All her books are rich in new worlds and experiences. Like her previous series The Coldfire Trilogy, Feast of Souls has well developed characters that avoid the archetypes and one-dimensionality found in lesser works.

I have no idea where the other reviewer is coming from regarding gender roles and battle of the sexes comments being poorly handled. Looking back over 4000 years of literature, gender equality is an anomoly and even today in the US prostitution, child exploitation, human trafficing, etc. all exist, and worldwide are growing problems. If anything, I found her willingness to tackle these issues in a realistic (as opposed to rose colored glasses) manner refreshing.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars initially hard to get into, but Friedman does not disappoint., January 15, 2007

By	risa "laughing wolf" (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Feast of Souls (The Magister Trilogy, Book 1) (Hardcover)

anyone who is a fan of Ms. Friedman knows she frequently deals with power and what happens to people who have it. This book gets further into the model she started with the Coldfire trilogy, delving into what people will do for power and how it changes them to make those decisions. Those of you who've read In Conquest Born will recognize a bit of Anzha lyu Mitethe in the main character of Kamala, but it isn't at all distracting. unlike Anzha, Kamala is not more powerful than the other Magisters, and her main strength is that people mostly assume she is not as powerful as she is. it's refreshing to see a character who starts off self-assured and arrogant learn more about her own limits, becoming more sympathetic as she goes along.

also, in contrast to her own drivers, the men to whom she gravitates emotionally are not power-hungry at all and would prefer not to live their lives as slaves to what power demands. contrasted against a world very medieval in its character, this morality play leads you along in shades of grey. unlike what another reviewer said, it is not Kamala's horrible past that enables her to succeed where other women have failed. it is an essential drive to survive no matter what, which is reinforced by her witnessing a witch's death at a young age.

this book is the first frame of what is to be a larger struggle, with many differing types of power wielded against a force that would reduce humanity to a dark age of barbarism. i'm excited for what the next two books will bring.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Feast for this fantasy fan, April 23, 2008

By	Ashley Megan "amazonfox" (Vernon, CT United States) - See all my reviews

There are a couple of things I really loved about this book. First is the fact that Friedman never withholds information about her world just for the sake of creating suspense or avoiding exposition or whatever other excuse too many fantasy writers use to keep their readers in a state of complete befuddlement. Friedman tells us right off the bat that Magister power is derived by draining the lifeforce from other human beings. Any other author would have dragged that out for chapters and chapters, dropping tantalizing hints and ominous foreshadowing. But Friedman is more interested in examining the way that the source of their power affects Magisters, and how they differ from witches, who must drain their own life force to use magic. It's a fascinating system, and one that sets up complex moral and ethical issues, which are explored sympathetically and in depth. (And let's also give props for Friedman actually justifying why a female Magister is, in her world, unusual. None of this Robert Newcomb women-are-eeeevil-and-too-incredibly-stupid-to-use-magic crap. Kemala is the first of her kind, but once you see what their power does to the other Magisters, you understand why.)

The second thing I loved is that there is no "hero" in this story. No starry-eyed youth coming of age; no hard-bitten veteran called back to fight a final battle; no hidden prince discovering his destiny. There is a protagonist, sure. There are victims and opportunists, bad people who do good things and good people who do bad things. Perhaps unfortunately, there is an easily identifiable bad guy, complete with a requisite army of minions set to Take Over the World. But who will stand against him, who will sit this one out, and who will throw their hat into the ring of eeeevil? For that matter, given that a fairly important character dies in this book, who will still be left to even fight the final battle? I don't know, and I love it.

Plotwise, "Feast of Souls" gives us two major events: Kemala becomes the first-ever female Magister in history; and the Souleaters, a long-vanquished race of demons, reappears. The first part of the book is a little confusing, since Friedman mixes in a lot of flashbacks, to the point where I wasn't quite sure who and when and what was going on. Once it settles into a fairly linear pattern, however, things really get rolling. Andovan, Kemala's "consort" (the person she is sucking dry to feed her own magic) grimly sets out to find his murderer. Meanwhile, his father the king falls in league with the aforementioned bad guy, a sorcerer who becomes his lead advisor, to the horror of Queen Gwynofar, whose family has long been charged with guarding the world against the return of the Souleaters. There are a host of secondary characters, who as I said all have conflicting loyalties and motives and ethical quandaries.

This is fantasy at its best. Friedman asks you to think, to withhold judgment, to put yourself in her characters' shoes and ask yourself honestly what you would do. There's a point to be made here, and she does it elegantly, subtly, and with a razor-sharp edge. I can't wait for the rest of this series.