Tough Traveling: Invisible Colleges (Or Hard-to-Reach/Difficult to Gain Admission)

The Thursday feature "Tough Traveling" is the brainchild of Nathan of Review Barn, who has come up with the excellent idea of making a new list each week based on the most common tropes in fantasy, as seen in The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynn Jones. Nathan has invited anyone who is interested to come play along, so be sure to check out the first link for more information. Compulsive list-maker that I am, I'm very excited to take part!

This week's tour topic is: Invisible Colleges

Invisible College is used for training WIZARDS and usually occupies a prim site in some major CITY…

But Nathan has taken pity on this week and made things a bit easier, opening up the topic to any school in fantasy that is difficult to reach or gain entrance to. Thank you, Nathan! Because I was starting to get a little nervous here...

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Let's see how many weeks the Harry Potter books will show up in these Tough Traveling posts! Again I'm choosing another book from the series I haven't done yet though, because while obviously Hogwarts is the obvious one here, I picked Goblet specifically since it's the first book to also feature students from other wizarding schools around the world. Who can forget Krum from the Durmstrang Institute or Fleur from the Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, competitors at the Tri Wizard Tournament. Just like Hogwarts, I assume these wizarding schools are also cloaked in some way or are located in some remote place.

The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani
Every child in Gavaldon knows the story of the School for Good and Evil. Two children are kidnapped from their homes every four years, never to be seen again. One child is always beautiful and good, the other one an outcast and strange. They say a mysterious schoolmaster takes them to this fabled and magical place where storybook heroes and villains are made. The "good" kid gets to take classes in Princess/Prince Etiquette and Animal Communication while the "bad" kid gets dumped in classes like Uglification, Death Curses and Henchmen Training. (Review)

Academ's Fury by Jim Butcher
The Academy is the foremost school in Alera. To attend, prospective students would have to be able to afford the fees or find a patron who would support them. In the first book, Furies of Calderon, the main character Tavi's life's dream was to study here, and in the end is granted a scholarship. In Academ's Fury, Tavi learns the lesson of "Be Careful What You Wish For" when he realizes the cruel and petty ways at the Academy, but he's stuck here for now.

The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson
Continuing with the theme of "protagonists who desperately want to get into a particular school of magic but can't", we have sixteen-year-old Joel Saxon who more than anything wants to be a Rithmatist -- but because a tragedy made him miss his inception ceremony, that path is closed to him forever. Being the son of the school's chalkmaker, Joel was still able to attend the prestigious Armedius Academy, but he must watch with envy from afar as the chosen Rithmatist students get to study the magical art of creating chalk-drawn lines, circles and figures called Chalklings. (Review)

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
"The University! I had come to think of it in the same way most children think of the Fae court, a mythical place reserved for dreaming about. A school the size of a small town. Ten times ten thousand books. People who would know all the answers to any question I ever asked." Well, Kvothe does eventually get his wish and attends the University, under extraordinary circumstances -- his young age was factor, and the University ended up paying him to attend rather than the other way around. So, maybe GETTING in for him wasn't an issue, but STAYING in certain was. He constantly had money issues and struggled to pay tuition, and he was always on the verge of being kicked out due to his penchant for getting into trouble.

LAST MINUTE ADDITION!

The Magicians by Lev Grossman
I'm actually reading this book now, and what do you know, it's about an unseen school of magic. A very secret, very exclusive school of magic, hidden by a number of concealment spells. Located in upstate New York, the Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy is a place where the aspiring young magician can receive a rigorous education in the practice of modern sorcery. I haven't gotten very far in this book yet, but so far it's great. The book has been described to me as "what would happen if a regular person went to a school for magicians and experiences all the things one would at a regular college" - you know...sex, drugs, booze, friendship, boredom and the like.

Book Review: The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson

The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson

Huge fan of Brandon Sanderson here, which is why I was all over this book even though I knew it would take place outside of his Cosmere universe and be a little different from his usual epics. I admit I was mostly curious as to what reading a young adult fantasy novel by him would feel like, since I've never read any of his Alcatraz series books for teens.

On the surface, it didn't feel too different, thanks to Sanderson's unique brand of world-building and magic system creation. The Rithmatist is about 16-year-old Joel Saxon who goes to school at the prestigious Armedius Academy, one of just a handful of Rithmatist schools in the United Isles of America. He is somewhat of an outsider at the school; unlike a lot of his fellow students who are the sons and daughters of politicians, the rich, or other people of influence, his mother is a cleaning lady at the academy, and his father, who died eight years ago in a springrail accident, was its resident chalkmaker. Neither is Joel a Rithmatist, though he desperately wishes to be one.

Rithmatists are a chosen group of magic users who can make chalk-drawn lines, circles and figures called Chalklings come to life and take on unique properties. They are trained at schools like Armedius, then sent on to the wilds of Nebrask where they defend humanity against hordes of dangerous and blood thirsty Wild Chalklings that threaten to overrun the territory. When several Rithmatists students go missing, Joel is assigned to be an assistant to Professor Fitch, the Rithmatist expert tasked to investigate the disappearances.

My first thought while reading this was that the writing is less subtle than I'm used to when reading Sanderson's adult books. Instead of the letting details of the magic system trickle through as you make your way through the plot, there were a couple of pretty big info dumps near the beginning where one character explains Rithmatics to another.

Even then, I didn't find the magic system or the world building to be as robust as it could be, though of course I'm not expecting Sanderson to go on in detail about such things in a young adult novel compared to the the way he does it in a 1000+ page fantasy epic. Still, I found myself asking a lot of questions about Rithmatics; it just felt like a magic system I could poke a lot of holes in without thinking too hard about it.

Rithmatics by itself sounds like a lot of fun, though. Is there something wrong with me that when I think about Rithmatist battles with their defense strategies and Chalklings, my mind immediately went to Pokemon? Or, okay, let's say Magic: The Gathering, or Starcraft, or really any kind of game which involves a fundamental set of rules, strategic gameplay, a combination of chance and skill, and limits that force a player to think quickly and creatively when trying to defeat their opponent.

For Rithmatists, the decision comes down to whether to spend the time drawing a strong defense, or mounting a fast and powerful offense. Despite my skepticism, it really is quite cool. The technical aspects like circles, lines, and ratios didn't interest me so much, but the idea of Chalklings attracted me more speaking from an artist's point of view, since I suspect passion and talent for drawing Chalkings will end up playing into their effectiveness. Obviously, I'm looking forward to seeing more on Chalking theory. Also, I have to mention I really liked the art and diagrams which preceded each new chapter in this book.

Basically, as YA fiction goes, this was amazing. It's like Brandon Sanderson took the crash course on how to write a good YA novel and threw in the works, complete with the teenage protagonist attending a school of magic in an alternate-reality-steampunky kind of world (with a whacked-out archipelago version of the United States and a Europe that has been taken over by invaders from Asia called the JoSeun).

There are even wonky things happening in this book like the lead investigator of a murder case simply taking a 16-year-old at his word, and of course the requisite potential for a romance along with the feel-good Karate Kid-like ending. Still, I loved it all. The last chapter and final scene was just so great, and I'm glad to see there will be future books in this series. Sanderson's flair for fantasy and writing about magic is as usual unparalleled and something you absolutely won't find anywhere else.

Final verdict:

  4 of 5 stars