Very disappointing! (The Magician's Apprentice - Trudi Canavan)

Member Name: mouche202

Product:	The Magician's Apprentice - Trudi Canavan
Date:	28/07/09 (26 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Return to the world of Kyralia; some historical background

Disadvantages: Poor characterisation; disjointed plot

I'm not a big fan of fantasy novels. I've read and enjoyed the classics - Lord of the Rings, His Dark Materials, Harry Potter, Dune - but in general I prefer my fiction to be set in a world I recognize! However, I'm always open to trying new writers and when a colleague leant me the Black Magician trilogy last year, I really enjoyed it and became an overnight fan of Trudi Canavan. I've since read reviews that say it's full of fantasy fiction clichés but since I haven't read that much fantasy fiction I didn't notice. Anyway, I was really looking forward to reading the prequel to the trilogy and after climbing slowly up the waiting list at my local library, I finally got my hands on it last week.

I can't say I was very impressed.

The story is set in a Kyralia where there is no magician's guild and magic is more of a party trick than anything really useful. The main character is Tessia, a healer's daughter who is found to be a natural magician and is therefore taken on as an apprentice by the local magician Lord Dakon. This causes Lord Dakon's blue blooded apprentice, Jayan, to be jealous and Tessia and he have a difficult relationship which ends so predictably it made me want to pull my hair out in frustration. Tessia is least interested in magic and desperate to be a healer and as a result ends up inventing the process of using magic to heal. I must say magicians of the age seem rather thick to have not thought of it themselves if a half trained apprentice can figure it out on her own. Never mind. Some disillusioned Sachakan magicians decide to invade Kyralia and the Kyralian magicians fight back - suddenly and conveniently learning how to work together and defeat the more powerful Sachakans. The story continues and yes, I did finish the book, but to be honest it was so dull, I don't really want to describe the rest of the plot (not that I would - you would hate me for taking away what little suspense there is!) Let me just say that if the first 3/4ths of the book is disappointing, the last 1/4th makes you want to throw the book across the room. It feels like Ms. Canavan was writing a trilogy and had to abruptly summarise the second and third novel into about 50 pages.

The characterization was the strong point of the Black Magician trilogy and there is very little of that here - Tessia is a pale and poor facsimile of Sonea. Lord Dakon is a poor copy of Lord Rothen and don't even get me started on the Sachakan girl whose name I can't even remember (and I read the book last week). Her story arc was completely unrelated to the rest of the plot and was such a crude stab at feminism that it made me wince! And after the sensitive way in which homosexuality is handled in the trilogy, the story of her husband is just dreadful.

This book feels like a crayon drawing by a five year old compared to the Black Magician trilogy and I regret reading it. It didn't even fulfill the most basic requirement I had of it - to explain some of the background of the trilogy. What little link there was between the prequel and the trilogy was hurried through in a few pages. The whole feel of the book feels like a rushed product resulting from the author becoming too popular and the publisher pressuring her to produce while the market it hot. I've seen this happen with some of my favourite fiction writers but it seems to have happened very quickly with Trudi Canavan.

I was very disappointed and can only hope that when Trudi Canavan will recover her abilities when she has the broader canvas of a trilogy to work with.

Summary: Avoid if you haven't read her before; read with caution if you have