Book Review: Thief's Magic by Trudi Canavan

Thief's Magic by Trudi Canavan

Genre: Fantasy

Series: Book 1 of Millennium's Rule

Publisher: Orbit (May 13, 2014)

Author Information: Website | Twitter

Mogsy's Rating: 4 of 5 stars


I was very excited when I first heard about Trudi Canavan’s Thief’s Magic, and doubly more so when I discovered it was going to be an introduction to a brand new universe we’ve never seen before. I’m not completely unfamiliar with the author’s work, having read The Magician’s Guild, book one of her Black Magician trilogy, but knowing that she has two series and a couple more novellas based in that world of Kyralia which I haven’t even yet come close to finishing, I was glad to have a fresh start in Millennium’s Rule.

Magic and magic users seem to feature strongly in Canavan’s books, and that’s no exception here. At the beginning of this novel we meet Tyen, a young archaeology student (though calling what he and his professor and fellow students do “Archaelogy” might be a bit of stretch…they’re more like tomb robbers) who discovers a sentient book while excavating an ancient tomb. The book can read the minds of anyone who makes physical contact, communicating through text appearing on the pages. Calling herself Vella, the book claims to have once been a sorcerer-woman, until she was transformed into her current form by one of the greatest sorcerers of history. She has been gathering and storing information through the ages ever since. Sensing bad things to come if Vella were to ever fall into the wrong hands, Tyen decides to keep her to himself for now, but as we all know, a secret this big is always bound to come out sooner or later.

Meanwhile in another world, a dyer’s daughter named Rielle harbors a secret of her own. From a young age, she has had the ability to sense magic – and hence the potential to use it. However, Rielle’s society could not be any more different from Tyen’s, where magic is used freely (and some might say TOO freely) to power their fantastical machines. Instead, the priests of Rielle’s world teach that to use magic is the equivalent to stealing from the Angels themselves. Anyone caught committing this crime is published severely then cast out from the city to live out the rest of their lives in a prison. Rielle is therefore all too happy to just keep her head down, hoping to also to do what her family wants of her and find a prospective husband. But then she meets and falls in love with a local artist named Izare, which is patently NOT what her parents had in mind. Oh, hello, Forbidden Love.

What do these two plot lines have to do with each other? Very little, actually. Reading Thief’s Magic felt essentially like reading two-books-in-one. The novel’s structure can be a little jarring if you’re not expecting it. We first start with Part I which follows Tyen’s story, and several chapters after that Part II begins with Rielle’s. The novel continues like this, alternating back and forth between their narratives. Actually getting the hang of this perspective-jumping isn’t all that difficult, but Canavan likes to tease, and she seems to have this knack for choosing the most suspenseful moments to make the switch between characters. Often, I would find myself pulled away into Rielle’s story just as I was getting completely drawn into Tyen’s, or vice versa. This format was both simultaneously addicting and frustrating, though I have to admit I kind of liked it.

When it comes down to it, I’m just completely hooked by these two characters and their respective worlds. Both Tyen and Rielle are written very well, even though occasionally their naiveté would grate on my nerves. However, their decisions – misguided as they are sometimes – always led to interesting things happening. I’m fascinated by the differences in their cultures and how each of them view magic. I love that their own personal conflicts take them on completely disparate adventures, so that the individual challenges they face differ profoundly as well. I’m especially intrigued by Rielle and her struggles in a society where unauthorized use of magic is treated as the greatest sin, where women like her have very little choice and practically no future when they are discovered to possess magical abilities.

I don’t know if Tyen and Rielle’s paths will ever cross, though something tells me that they will – but that particularly story is not for this book to tell. At this point, I feel I’ve been given enough information to formulate a tenuous theory on how the two characters’ worlds are linked, but for the most part we don’t get too many answers on that front. I really enjoyed following both story lines, but if you’re the kind of reader who prefers self-contained story arcs or at least some closure at the end of a novel, you won’t really find it here. It’s a factor to think about, though I already know I will be picking up the next book in spite of it. Thief’s Magic may have all the hallmarks of a “Book One”, but Canavan has crafted a very fine beginning (technically, TWO very fine beginnings) and I want to find out what happens to both Tyen and Rielle.

A review copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to Orbit Books!

Book Review: The Magician's Apprentice by Trudi Canavan

The Magician's Apprentice by Trudi Canavan

Genre: Fantasy, Magic

Series: The Black Magician Trilogy

Publisher: Orbit

Publication Date: February 2009

Wendy's Rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

The Magician's Apprentice is considered #0.5 in Trudi Canavan's The Black Magician Trilogy. It was written after, but serves as a set up for The Magicians' Guild, which I have not read. It mainly follows the story of Tessia, a young healer apprenticed to her father, who discovers her magical abilities when she deflects the advances of a Sachakan mage. She becomes apprenticed to Lord Dakon, joining his apprentice Jayan, who initially disdains the fact that he must share his education with a woman.

There are two other characters who occasionally get to tell their story, namely Stara, a Sachakan noble daughter who is forced into an unwanted marriage in order to produce an heir for her father, and Hanara, the slave of the Sachakan mage who tried to take Tessia. While I appreciated the effort to reveal the other sides of the story, these characters weren't particularly strong enough in their telling. I'm not sure where Hanara's story is supposed to lead, though Stara is obviously meant to connect this prequel to Canavan's other series, The Traitor's Spy.

The use of magic is one of the most interesting aspects of this book. Through Tessia's training, we get a peek into the process of how magic works in Canavan's world. I was surprised by the idea of magical wars entirely fought by mages. Unfortunately, when the battles are fought in the story, they are very anti-climactic. In fact, I had to reread several of them, believing I must have missed something because they were so brief. Something happens, mages on one side or the other die, but despite all the descriptions that go into Tessia's training, we get no insight on the battle magic. Then certain magical items and practices - that I assume have significance in the future books - are introduced like deus ex machina.

As the war with the Sachakans rages on, things really started to unravel for me. Characters suddenly seemed to be forced into certain roles with no previous indication of why that would be so. Along with the magical elements, several guilds and factions are mentioned, and several relationships are forced awkwardly into place. All of this comes piling in toward the end in a jumble that made me feel like I should have read the other books in order to at least appreciate the significance of these things within the greater picture. I didn't need to read the other books to understand what they were or understand what was going on in this book, but things might have held more meaning, rather than feeling like a sudden rush of elements meant to connect the past to the present.

I'm sure the rest of the series is quite interesting and I did appreciate the glimpse I got of it here, but I sense that this backstory would have better served as a wiki entry instead.

Book Review: The Magicians' Guild by Trudi Canavan

The Magicians' Guild by Trudi Canavan

Trudi Canavan is an author I'd been looking forward to read for a long time, which is why she's pretty high on my list for the WWEnd Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge. Thanks to my book hoarding habits, I found that I actually own the first books from both her Black Magician Trilogy and the Traitor Spy Trilogy and didn't know which to tackle first. Then I found out that the latter series is a continuing story of some of the characters in the former, which ultimately decided it for me. I always I prefer to read things chronologically and in publishing order, so The Magicians' Guild it is!

The book centers around the life of Sonea, a young vagrant girl caught up in the disturbance which occurs every year during the Purge, an event which expels all the city's poor, homeless, beggars and other undesirables from within its boundaries. Sonea sees a group of children trying to annoy the guild magicians in charge by throwing stones at their magical shield, and decides for fun to join in. In a moment of anger, however, the stone she throws somehow manages to pierce the magicians' protection, beaning one of them on the side of the head. Then everything explodes into chaos.

The Magicians' Guild immediately launches a manhunt for the little girl who so effortlessly foiled their shield spell, because it must mean she possesses magical ability as well. No untrained magic user can be trusted to roam unchecked around the city, for the results of that uncontrolled power can be dangerous for all. Not knowing this, Sonea flees and goes deeper underground with the help of her friends, but a time will soon come when she won't be able to escape anymore, neither from the magicians nor herself.

At first, I wasn't sure if I was going to like this. I spent a good chunk of the book wondering when the story will get to the part where the Magician's Guild and Sonea meet up with each other, so that they can finally get on to training her properly in the ways of magic. That's how these kinds of stories usually go, right? Then I realized that the hunt for her was actually the whole point for the entire first half of the novel, dashing any preexisting expectations I had for the plot.

Going to be honest here, the book still didn't quite hook me until the Magicians do eventually end up finding Sonea, and that was around the halfway mark. Everything that occurred before this point detailing the search and Sonea's struggle to control her magic felt like this huge, unnecessarily drawn out introduction, but the good new is, I started to enjoy myself a lot more. It's almost like, "Okay, now that all that's out of the way, we can finally get this show on the road." The conflicts in the plot started to get more interesting, and I found myself drawn to characters like Rothen, for whom I previously felt nothing.

It also wasn't until I finished this book that I heard this series had been re-marketed for the young adult market. If so, that actually made a lot of sense. Assuming that a YA audience probably wouldn't be as critical as I'm being, I thought the story and characters were strong but could have done with a little more depth, especially since a few sections of the plot felt thin to me and not very convincing. As general fantasy though, I liked this book well enough and I think it can be appreciated by all.

Final verdict:

 3.5 of 5 stars