Book Review: The Magician's Apprentice

The Magician's Apprentice, Trudi Canavan, 2010, Orbit, Great Britian.

I bought this book in the UK. The girl in the shop told me it was a good one when I came up to pay, and I had a short conversation with an acquaintance about how nice it was.

Yeah. No.

In short? Meh.

The longer story? I've got this great big 700 page fantasy story lying on my desk, and it feels like I just read a 5000 word short story. And not in a good way, believe me. Now, I'm not saying it's a bad book, really, but it's not a good one, and this is why.

Characterisation

I didn't want to know the characters. The main character, Tessia, has about as much depth as a pond, and her biggest development is falling in love with the man she hated at the beginning of the book. The fact that she's to become a magician doesn't do much to her. She isn't sad about losing her old life, apart from some mild anxiety about moving out of her parent' home, she isn't ecstatic about getting to be a powerful magician, which will probably give her the opportunity to carry out her dream to be a healer. She's just sort of... content. When her parents die, we are told she's broken up, but we see her getting over it in a space of a few pages. When she's in the middle of a war she seems a little subdued at all the death and horror around her, as if she just discovered the milk's gone sour. When she discovers how to heal with magic, which is a huge achievement, something she's been hoping to figure out ever since she started her apprenticeship, she... well, she seems pleased, I guess. When she and her twoo lurve get together, she... seems a little smug, at most. Yeah. I did not really feel compelled to root for her, considering she has the personality of a spoon.

Her fellow apprentice, Jayan, is little better. He goes through a development from jealous and aloof to... hopelessly in love yet still jealous and aloof. To be fair, I liked his practical view on the romantic subplot. Sadly, I hated the romantic subplot.

Our third major character is Stara, a woman in the very restrictive neighbouring country. She was the only reason I kept reading. Oh yes, I liked Stara. She starts out as a rather naive little girl, come to live with her father. When it turns out he only wants to marry her out, she starts hating him, which is only made worse when he forcibly reads her mind. She then goes on to become a major player in the underground slave resistance. This character has the best motivation, the most interesting character, and evokes the most empathy with the reader. Sadly, she also gets the least screentime.

Style

The style was, truth to be told, easy to read. It read quickly, even though there were a few consistent bumps in the road that kept slinging me out of the carriage.

One of these is the writer's insistance on making long, strung-together sentences every now and then, in which it isn't really clear anymore who was doing what, and I had to read them three times just to get what was going on. The writer also has a tendency to chance perfectly good english words for more 'exotic' sounding ones. This is a common problem with fantasy (and sometimes sci-fi) as a genre. There are no hours, for example, and none of the animals and plants are familiar. For some reason, there is an animal that's described as having wool, which pretty much makes it a sheep to me, but which is called a reber. If this animal is notable different from a sheep, I didn't notice it and it should've been explained. Otherwise, it's a sheep, dammit.

Speaking about animals, there's a little glossary of words in the back of the book, three pages long. Half of these words are made-up fantasy words, about ten of which actually figure in the book. The discriptions are a little redundant:

Squimp - squirrell-like creature that steals food

Alright, so we have a non-squirrell that wasn't even in the story. The rest of the glossary consists of the relevant definitions of tribes of people, titles and a few misc. words. Although it's more interesting to read what exactly the characters mean when they address someone by 'Lord' than the fascinating bit about the squimp, (Try saying that out loud. Squimpppp.) this is all something that isn't really necessary. Readers will figure it out as they go, because it's not like any of the terms are that different to require extra explanation:

Lady - wife of a Kyralian landowner

Oh my squimp!

Magic

One of the nice things of fantasy as a genre is the mucking about with magic. No, wait, I take that back.

Magic, when done right, is pretty awesome and I personally can't get enough of it. I have a few conditions, though. Among these are my hate of magic as deus ex machina, demand that the magic is, if not logical, at least intelligent or too complicated or mysterious for anyone to understand, and magic being part of the world as a whole instead of just thrown in for giggles somewhere.

The Apprentice does one of these things right.

The magic is part of the larger world, and it seems pretty firmly embedded. The only armies that are important are armies of magicians, most important people/men have some magical training, natural talents have special laws.

Unfortunately, this means that magic is used for everything. How shall we light the fire? Magic. Why does Sachaka fear Kyralia? Magic. How will we fight these people? Magic. How can we cross this river? Magic. This doesn't mix well with the story's view of the lower classes, who still toil in the fields and do their labour-intensive jobs at their own cost. Is every single magician really so ignorant? It's something that haunts me throughout the story, grating.

Worst of all, however, is the way magic is explained. Now, magic comes in two forms; regular and high magic. High magic is awe-inspiring and only for the best, it's dangerous and very important. According to the book, it takes a lot of practice to use magic properly, but what we see is Tessia visualising her magic, and that's all the theory we get. Further exploits in magic work like this: Jayan wants someting to be so, and it is so. Higher magic? It's the art of transferring someone else's magical energy into yourself, like a battery. How's it done? You cut the other person's skin to break the natural barrier, you reach inside them, take it, and make sure to tuck it in with your own neatly. Done! The reader gets treated to another secret in the course of the story, how to kill someone while sleeping with them. Basically, you wait until they orgasm, because the natural barrier breaks down at that point, reach inside them, take... I think you get the rest.

How is all of this such a great secret? Magic's given this world the wheel, but they can't figure out how to make it roll. Up until the discovery of healing through magic, the difficulty level is about at knee-height. There's an initial threshold, and a lot of practise, but that doesn't explain why everyone seems so... well, so stupid. These people do not come across as smart magicians, at least, not once you know the whole secret of their magic. I really expected a little more.

Overall Rating:
5.5/10
It's a little boring and unchallenging, the system of magic is unimaginative and simple and most of the characters are flat. Still, it's a quick read and it's not nearly the worst I've read.