Disappointing first novel. (Aurian - Maggie Furey)

Member Name: mpeh

Product:	Aurian - Maggie Furey
Date:	31/12/01 (92 review reads)
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Maggie Furey has written a series and a half now. The Artefacts of Power, of which this is the first book of four and the first two of a new series called The Shadow League; 'The Heart of Myrial' and 'The Spirit of the Stone'. I read the last two first and loved them. They are brilliant modern fantasy with a twist. Afterwards I was told about this series by my Mum and little brother who said that these were also brilliant and so here we are:

This book tells the story of a young mage named Aurian. Her father was an earth mage who experimented too hard and destroyed himself and a large amount of land in the process. Her mother withdrew to grieve and hence Aurian grew up away from the main city of her land and the only centre of the immortal magefolk in the world.

The first half of this book- two hundred and fifty odd pages, tells of Aurian growing up from a small child in her mothers magically protected wood in the crater where her father killed herself. She is befriended by a master swordsman Forral who looks after her in the face of her mother's neglect (due to grief) and opposition (due to a bias against mortals). Her entry into the real world, when she travels to the city and begins her tutoring as a mage. Generally not very much to fill that many pages and although you can feel the ideas behind the characters and the plans for their development and interaction as you read it it isn’t really there in the text.

Unfortunately the beginning of this novel is slow- really slow. Now I don't mind some amount of wordiness in a novel. In fact some of my favourite books are those which measure in the thousands of pages but there is a difference between wordiness and a book just being slow. This one is just slow. In fact if I hadn't had two people hammering on at me about how good the rest of the series is I wouldn't have finished this book- and that is a rare thing for me to say. One of the reasons that I wa
s so harsh is that I had enjoyed the other books of Furey's that I had read so much and they are so well written, that I had hoped for great things from this one and didn't really make the necessary allowances for it being a first novel. If you do make those allowances then this book isn't that bad at the start it's just not brilliant either.

After this first half the plot really picks up and then the book improves. There is an injection of pace and so the slight discontinuities in the writing are easier to pass over. Once the story picks up the book shows definite promise, Maggie Furey is obviously a very talented story teller, her flair for narrative and telling a darn good story shines through the otherwise naively written text. That is one of the most obvious properties of this book- the naivety of the author at the time when she wrote it. It is relatively easy for me to sit here and type this review and tear holes in this book. I do recognise that the writer had more talent than I have but seeing as the market for fantasy fiction is today flooded with a range of very well written books, the later offerings from this lady among them, I feel it is necessary to demonstrate that this book isn't up to the very high standard that we've come to expect.

Apologies out of the way I should now make it clear that this isn't an awful book- it's pretty good and as I've said the story itself is very solid. The writing throughout the rest of the series improves, slowly, but still isn't up to that top standard that people like Erikson and Pratchett are turning out and that Furey herself developed into. There are too many times in the text when you think- she didn't have to say that, places where a more experienced author leaves the reader perfectly aware of something without saying it. For example two characters have a argument, the way the dialogue is written indicates that one is very angry with the other and then
suddenly there's a line in the text saying 'Character X was very angry with Character Y' and it's just vaguely off putting and quite annoying.

I found the book hard to read, initially because it didn’t really engage as the pace was too slow and then because I didn’t find the writing subtle or sophisticated enough to truly distract me from my real world activities, and that’s what we read for isn’t it? Escapism, if a book doesn’t truly provide that, certainly a fiction book, then it isn’t really doing what we’ve purchased it to do. Aurian does provide a certain level of escapism, the world that Furey has imagined and constructed is all there in the detail necessary but the structuring of the narrative and the dedication given to bringing the reader into that world isn’t there in sufficient quantities.

I did enjoy this book and the series does improve. Both the series and this book are worth reading but if you’re looking for something by Maggie Furey read her later series. They are better crafted, better written and in fact nearly sublime. If you’ve already read those and are looking for more by Furey because you liked her then by all means try these (I sound like I’m giving you permission don’t I?) but brace yourself for disappointment or at least a let down. If in general you’re just looking for more fantasy to read then this isn’t the best place to look- there are far superior books out there. All in all a dissatisfactory experience.

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