Customer Reviews

The Novice (Black Magician Trilogy)

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Now that Lord Fergun has been sent into exile, Sonea is starting her first year as Novice at the Magician's Guild University, under Lord Rothen's guardianship. She's eager to learn, but being a slum girl she knows it won't be easy to be accepted by, not to mention make friends with, her wealthier and nobler classmates from the Houses. However, she far from conceives the depth of their scorn yet. Indeed one of them, Regin, probably because he simply can't stand a mere slum girl outdoing him, will rally the others and gang them up against her, bully her constantly, play pranks on her, repeatedly ambush her to exhaust her strength and destroy her notes. In other words, make her life hell.

In the meantime Lord Dannyl has taken up his new role of Second Guild Ambassador to Elyne. After an adventurous sea voyage, and after sorting out some of his appointed duties in the capital Capia, he finally has some time to himself to investigate Akkarin's journeys. Indeed, Administrator Lorlen, who suspects the High Lord of performing Black Magic, which is forbidden by the Guild's laws, has asked the young magician to retrace Akkarin's footsteps, ten years earlier. Doing so, Dannyl meets Tayend, a scholar who works at the Great Library and has an amazing memory. The handsome lad will aid him in research and they'll become close friends.

This middle novel is very exciting, I just couldn't put it down. All the loveable characters from the first volume are back, with the exception of Cery, whom we almost hear nothing of. Replacing Fergun, Regin is suitably despicable and irritating, and you can really feel Sonea's frustration when she can't find proof enough to expose him. The High Lord, although first depicted as the ultimate invincible villain, becomes more three-dimensional throughout the book, and I'm looking forward to reading the thrid installment to discover what his real motives are.

The second in the series Sonea's story continues as she begins to learn the finer points of magic.

Akkarin is more featured in this book and despite how 'evil' he is meant to be, you can't help but be curious. This book also sees a brief love interest for Sonea.

I admit the book gets a little wordy with Lord Dannyl's journey and I got a little bored as I couldn't see how it was effecting the story (but trust me - you need to know it)

Overall a great sequel.

As Bildungsromans go, this is a good one. Sonea grows a bit here and acquires more of a conscience. The other characters are expanded more and the tale is told from 4 separate viewpoints. There's some serious bullying, a good fight at the climax, a mystery or two, a red herring, tales of adventure as the story moves out of the confines of the city into the greater world and a little romance.

All in all this is a good successor to the first book in the series. Also, as the middle book in a trilogy, it has a suprisingly satisfactory end, with just enough plot hooks to keep the reader interested without being too much of a cliffhanger.

It's very rare that I read a book and finish it and say, "You know, that could have been a good book, but the editor screwed it up."

This is one of them. The editing is appalling.

I don't mean things like typos or grammatical mistakes, I mean storyline editing. There's just no way this trilogy should have passed muster. There's setups with no payoffs, payoffs with no setups, major characters who don't do anything, major conflicts mainly revolving around a misunderstanding (which later gets cleared up), and plot points that repeat themselves and repeat themselves over and over.

These problems are found throughout the trilogy (the second major character in the book only appears once, briefly, during the second book, and then at the end, doesn't really have anything to do with anything), but the first book is the worst. The entire first half of the book should have been axed by the editor, and rewritten down to 20 pages. There's just no point, you know how it will turn out, and it's repetitive. I barely managed to slog my way through it after trying four or five times.

The second book is a little better, though the same central plot point repeats through the entire book (she's an outsider! she's being picked on!). It is a little bit more interesting though. The third book, and really, the second half of the third book, is the only part of this trilogy where things actually start to happen.

Seriously, the editor of this series needs to be fired. It's not a bad trilogy - I didn't mind reading it, but it really feels like it needs two or three more drafts before it's ready for print. As Brian Sanderson says, "Don't describe a shotgun on the wall of a cabin unless someone is going to use that shotgun later." There's just entire, major, characters and places that are set up to do something, but then never do. (Cery's girlfriend, the Arena and layout of the Guild in general, etc.)

Even though I liked it, I can't really recommend it to others due to these problems.

I thouroughly enjoyed this book. Trudi kept the action moving and kept adding surprise twists to the plot throughout!

The story had many major characters and this reader got emotionaly involved with almost all of them. They were well introduced and their individual stories wove well into a complex and complicated plot. I loved it! When is her next book(S) going to be available? I definately look forward to more excellent writing.

I found the first book in the series to be a light, enjoyable read. The characters, however, were a bit flat and the plot too predictable.

In this book, we start getting some dimensionality to the characters: Sonea finds that passive resistance is not as effective as active response. Rothen begins to show some of his weaknesses, including the errors of believing "if you ignore it, it will go away." Sonea gains two new guides: one that encourages her to take control of her situation, and one that can control her.

The plot also is a bit more complicated in this book, and begins to show the ties and the weaknesses of the political world. The plot is still a bit predictable, but lends at least a few dark mysteries that probably won't be revealed until book 3.

Overall, an enjoyable read, and an improvement over book 1.

This is a pretty good sequel.

Sonea is a little bit of a wimp and I am hoping the third book allows her to grow out of that. Overall this is a decent fantasy novel, but I would reccomend reading the first book before tackling this one.

What a wonderful sequel to the Magician's Guild! I thought it continued the sequel nicely. The character development continues, and you can't help but wonder about the High Lord's past. There is a small bit of love interest in this one, as well as more action. Yet again, it finishes itself without leaving a cliffhanger ending, but leaves you in suspense to read the next book (which I happened to have laying beside me as I finished). I thought it was a great book and would recommend it to any fantasy reader!

I bought all three books of the Black Magician Trilogy at once because we don't often have convenient access to English bookstores.

The first book was fine. The action was a little slow and the characters a little hard to get to know. But all in all it was a pleasant romp with all the enjoyable (if predictable) story elements frequently found in this genre.

The second book improved on the first, and I was really feeling more invested in the characters and trying to guess what was really going on in the background--is the obvious "bad guy" really a bad guy?

Anyway, I'm not done reading it yet, but I was surprised and a bit disappointed that the author has Dannyl come out of the closet. I am not convinced, as Canavan is, that homosexuality is just one of many legitimate expressions of human relations, so when I read:

"What *was* natural and right? Who really knew? The world was never so simple that one person could have all the answers." While I think she does a decent job with the subject, that isn't what I pick up fantasy/sci-fi books for; therefore, it cooled my enthusiasm for the book.

I know I don't *have* to keep reading, but I do just want to reiterate that I read fantasy/sci-fi to escape.

I don't think I would have purchased this series had I known that she was going to develop one of the character's homosexual struggles as a sub-plot.

This review is just intended as a heads-up for others who might like to know.

I felt like in a lot of ways that this second book was a lot about the author, Trudi Canavan, finding her feet as a professional writer. In the first book Dannyl was one of my favorites and I was hoping for him and Sonea to have a relationship in the second of the series. This book threw me for a loop there! I was at first very interested in Dannyl's journey's and his eventual 'outing', but I didn't like the whole soapbox style that the author put on the entire subplot. Tayend, I mostly found annoying and whiney.

The villain, Regin is just so single mindedly evil and cunning that he seems almost cartoonish. This character was written for the sole purpose of making Sonea's life miserable, and was so one dimensional that he was pretty annoying. I missed the Sonea we got to know in the first book. Where was her spine? Did she misplace it in Rothen's rooms?

While the author tried to explain why her teachers looked the other way at the abuse from the other novice's, it didn't settle well for me. It seemed like she was grasping for straws to try to garner more sympathy for the main character.

Despite this I did find the book to be fast paced and fun. The plot did draw me and and I felt the main character's highs and very low lows as if they were my own. The battle at the end really made the enter book for me, and I'm going to go out and get the third part of this series as soon as possible. My advice for this book is to take it with a good heart and be willing to overlook some flaws.