The Magician's Guild by Trudi Canavan

[meganbmoore]

In Imardin, all people with magic ability are automatically drafted into the Magician's Guild.  This isn't so much for power as it is that those who aren't trained to use their power constructively and to let it out tend to end up losing control and killing themselves with it.  They tend to take other people out with them.  A sensible enough reason, but it does leave the Guild in a position of great power, and since it's rare for mages to be born to anything but the noble class, it only emphasizes the class distinction, leaving the lower classes understandably bitter, something that isn't helped by the fact that every year, the mages purge the city of what they consider to be undesirables.

Sonea used to be one of those undesirables and a member of a gang of street kids until two years ago, when her aunt and uncle were finally able to move out of the slums and start their own business, and she went with them.  However, when she learns that her old district will be the target of this year's purge, she goes to warn her old friends, Harrin and Cery, only to get caught up in the riot caused by the purge.  When she sees others uselessly hurling rocks at the mages, she throws one of her own, only to have her rock get through their fields and strike a mage, Fergun, in the head.  By the time everyone calms down enough to go "hey, that was someone with magic and if she did that without training, she's probably going to kill herself and half the city soon" Harrin and Cery have bundled Sonea off and into hiding.

The first half of the book is Sonea going from place to place in the slums as she hides, first with both Harrin and Cery, and later with just Cery-who has a Very Big Thing for her that I feel won't do him any good in the long run- eventually ending up in debt to the Thieves Guild, while the Magician's Guild tries to find Sonea for her own good.  Well, most of them for her own good.  Fergun, our stand-in bad guy for the first book, hates the idea of a girl from the slums as a mage, and wants revenge for the rock throwing bit, not to mention to use her to discredit the idea of anyone from the lower classes as a mage, though he claims to bear no ill will and want to help her.  Support in the guild is fairly evenly divided by him and Rothen, the mage who first realized the significance of the rock, and who wants to make Sonea his apprentice.  In a somewhat amusing subplot, Fergun goes around the guild house displaying his tiny bandage for as long as he can, so Dannyl, Rothen's former apprentice, feigns a limp for most of the book after being injured looking for Sonea, just to even the playing field.  Except that he sometimes forgets when he's in a hurry.

The second half of the book features Sonea in Rothen's care in the guild as he attempts to teach her to control her power while she, distrustful of mages, has to decide whether to become one or never use her powers again.  Not helping things is that Rothen is keeping some things from Sonea, not wanting to overwhelm her too much before she's learned control.  Not helping things even more is that Fergun, well aware that misguided kindness would lead to  Rothen keeping things from Sonea, presents her with his own skewed version of what's being kept from her.  Sonea, no idiot, wisely questions Rothen about as much of it as she can without giving Fergun aware, and catches on that something is very much Not Right there.  But then Cery had to get worried and break into the Guild University to check on her, giving Fergun all the leverage he needs...

I admit, I was a touch frustrated the first half of the book.  I loved the street kids with connections and the looking out for your buddies aspect, and it makes perfect sense that, having been gone for two years, Sonea would have to rely on Harrin and Cery's friends and connections, and, really, no one had time to actually DO anything besides what they were doing.  However, I really wanted our main character to get to do something herself, not just get shuffled around by her friends.  Things looked up, though, when Sonea and Cery hooked up with the thieves, and Sonea met a thief with just enough magic ability and know-how to give her a clue what she was up against, but I was happy when Rothen finally found her and she went to the guild.  While she was controlled by others just as much there as she was on the outside, she was put in the position of having to think for herself and figure out what was what, and was able to make her own decisions about some important things.  She didn't get to be quite as active as I would have liked, but, well...she's young and amazingly out of her league and her comfort zone, and it makes sense that she'd mostly be trying to find her footing and get a good grasp of what was what.  She's shown that she's smart and deductive, and that's a good start.

I'm not sure what I think of the ending, which seems to be Sonea being put back in the position of being mislead to further a magician's ends, though on a much, much bigger scale than before, but her ability to think, investigate, and see through Fergun's manipulations gives me hope that it won't lead to two books of her being used and misguided.  I'm also not quite sure what I think about the fact that her choices-join the guild she's always hated, or give up the powers she was born to-almost come down to the lesser of two evils, but I do think that by the time she actually did make a choice, it was for good reasons, as far as she knew.

In all honesty, it's a fairly straightforward medieval-lite guilds and politics fantasy, but it's a pretty well written one with and interesting enough take on the usual setup(peasant-variety kid learns she has great power, is sought after) and good characters.It's also only a three book series, so no endless storylines.  (Her website tells me that there are more books planned for the world, but in different time periods.)

Comments

[kitkat-cat.livejournal.com]

I read this series a few years ago and yes, it is light reading, but I enjoyed it and it was a well spent couple of hours...

I might have to re-read it now...

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

To be completely honest, my b rain might reject anything that wasn't light reading right now.

[shewhohashope.livejournal.com]

I remember coming away from the first book a little disappointed, and even the second-book pretty much stays with the straightforward, medieval fantasy plot, but the third book is entirely different and is pretty much the entire reason I retrospectively love this series.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

The first book blurb does make it sound like it'll be a little more original than it is. I think the only thing about it that really bothers me, though, is that it seems to be being set up not only for Sonea to be tricked and misled for at least part of the rest of the story(don't trust Lorlen) but also for Sonea to basically be stuck with a life where her choices are the lesser of two evils, not really choices about her life.

[shewhohashope.livejournal.com]

That's exactly it.

(You don't want to be spoiled for the nature of the ending do you?)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

definately no spoilers, please.

[koalathebear.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the the The Magician's Guild (http://koalathebear.livejournal.com/tag/trudi+canavan) novels. The first one was probably the best though. I rather liked the Garth Nix Old Kingdom series (http://koalathebear.livejournal.com/tag/garth+nix) a bit more. Those are a bit more consistent in terms of writing and being gripping.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I think I've had Nix recced to be before. I'll look at the tags at work.