Discussion of Magician

The Magician was certainly a milestone in Fantasy literature. I was recommended to read it back when I was 14. I then ate up the books that followed and am now waiting... forever waiting for the next.

But just how hot is Pug's wrath at the Grand Imperial Stadium? Perhaps hot isn't the appropriate term. But still, it gives me goosebumps everytime I read it.
 
I havent finished Magician yet but i enjoy it alot. I was wondering does the other Riftwar series belong to the first one? Are there sequals? Or does Pug and co's tale end with the sixth book.


This book is the first fantasy i like other than Gemmell books. I have read Hobb's Farseer,Salvatore's Demon Wars,King's Dark Tower and disliked them all.


Its good to read this book cause it makes me hungry for other good fantasy both REF and others.
 
I read "Magician" a very long time ago - back in 1990 I believe. Since it's one of the rare books that I've read, liked but don't own yet (because I keep wanting the combined edition with the pages that were cut from the original printing or something), there's no source material for me to go to and refer at the moment. When I read the book, I believe I was transformed :) I loved it so much that I had to hunt high and low till I got the other books in the series. If I recall correctly, I enjoyed all of them - especially the humour and some of the characters like Arutha and Jimmy that I found totally memorable.

I then continued to buy any Raymond E. Feist that I could get my hands on and I believe I have everything up to the Conclave of Shadows except for the Empire series (which I haven't read) and the original "Magician". However, I don't remember much anymore of the actual book :p What I do recall (since I read that fairly recently - about 2-3 years ago) is the ending to the Serpentwar Saga - everybody dies. I guess that's usual for Feist but it just turned me off wanting to read more Feist. So the Conclave of Shadows books sit there waiting to be read when one day I get back into Feist.

What I do remember is that he had characters I cared about and that's basically what got me going with the Serpentwar Saga - the later generations are not as good as the first ones. Arutha's sons are a bit more watered down and his grandsons are plain ineffectual - compared to Arutha that is. So it seems fitting that everybody should die by the end of the series. However, it also is a testimony to how good the original series must have been for me - I can't remember it all, but I still love it :p
 
I was wondering about "the enemy" they talk about in the end of Magician Master.

I have only read the two magician books so far and was wondering if i will see this enemy when i read more of the series?

Right now i took a paus from Feist cause of some sci fi and Legend by DG.
 
course ypull find out who the enemy is, i cant believe youve only read 1 feist book (or 2 in ur case, mine was a omnibus of sorts of bothe magician parts)
 
It just nagged at me for some reason that maybe never we will get to know.

I loan the books since i am not sure how good Feist and i only buy my favs.

The rest of the series i am gonna have to read later cause i bought Legend by my fav writer aka David Gemmell.
 
Fahim said:
I then continued to buy any Raymond E. Feist that I could get my hands on and I believe I have everything up to the Conclave of Shadows except for the Empire series (which I haven't read) and the original "Magician".
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I'd recommend reading the Empire series sometime, it is some of his best work. The second book in it, "Servant of the Empire" is especially good, particularly if you like lots of political intrigue.

I was wondering about "the enemy" they talk about in the end of Magician Master.

I have only read the two magician books so far and was wondering if i will see this enemy when i read more of the series?
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They explain who the 'Enemy' is in the third book "A Darkness at Sethanon" IIRC.
 
I read all of Feist's books before I became willing to read another Author, that's when I found Gemmell.
Feist and Gemmell both write Historical Fantasy, I think that Feist's stories are slightly faster paced and Gemmell creates a full pictures with great discriptions.

You really do want to continue reading the rest of the Feist books.
They get better and better in my opinion and you can really see the development of each character.
And to answer your questions Connaver - yes you learn more about the Enemy and the rest of Feists books do have Pug in them.
 
I am a huge Gemmell fan as you can prolly see and Fiest was actually the first fantasy writer i found good enough to read after Gemmell.


I will read more of this series that for sure. Not cause i care about the rifwars or something. Mostly cause i hope for more characters like Arutha who was one of few in the first two books that grew out of his role and became a real character. I hope Pug becomes like that too.
 
I absolutely adore Magician, I've read the original magician and I've got the revised addition that came out, apparently there's an extra 10,000 words but I haven't found them yet. I was thinking about borrowing my mum's original and reading them side to side. I dont like loose ends.

With Feist you get to love the characters but you're not too bogged down with them, he's happy to bring them in and take them out. You have a reference, if very brief, of something that happens in the empire series so at least on a time scale things match up. I just found the book so easy to read and the characters really likable. The bit I like is Pug, Tomas and Roland getting very drunk in the Ale shed :) When I started collecting my own books, Magician was the first book I bought.
 
I thought magician was great but i like most of fiest's books especially the riftwar and serpentwar saga. At first i found it quite boring but once i got into it i couln't put it down, it was that good. Since then i've read almost all his books.
 
After finishing The Conclave of Shadows trilogy, (which I thoroughly enjoyed, I have to say) I knew I needed to read more of Mr. Feist's work. I went out and bought Magician, and I am so glad I did as again I am finding it a very enjoyable read, although going from Pug and Tomas as grown ups to them being youngsters was a strange transition. In hindsight I should have started at the beginning.:eek:
 
Maybe if you read Silverthorn and Darkness in Sethanon your opinion might change. Of course it might not, but I do like Magician more now I've read the rest of the trilogy.

Though, on the other hand it might not neccesarily be your kind of book. I don't go mad about Terry Pratchett. Feist may not be your kind of thing.
 
Personally although I like all Fiest I've never been a bundle on Magician although it's a vital read. I guess we all look for different things in a fantasy work and the serpent war saga is my favourite feist work although the Darkwar series promises to return to some of those levels. It's a good book, but I feel he improves as he writes more, it's possibly a better value for money buy considering the length of the more recent books though....
 
I'll again state that Magician is my favourite book, but did anyone else notice that the ending is all wrapped up too nicely? It is as if Feist was not going to write anymore books after it. The ending does not wrap up nicely around Anita and Arutha either. They seemed madly in love at the start of Silverthorn, but this is not the case at the end of Magician even though there's only a few months between them.
 
Some keen observations there, Ven. I suspect that when he wrote Magician he expected it to be a one-off and was very surprised at its populrity. Then with the prospect of making more money and having more fun writing about Midkemia, he popped off a second... and away he went.
 
i still feel that magician was a near perfect novel. silverthorn and darkness at sethanon diminishes magician's greatness. seriously if the sequels did not exist Magician would be a masterpiece on so many different levels. its kinda sad that he peaked with his first novel. unlike tad williams whose first novel was kind of weak, the 2nd and 3rd novel blew the first out of the water. What pisses me off the most about the sequels to magician are the lack and absence of pug and tomas. how do u just suddenly shift from the main characters to jimmy (supremely annoying brat) and arutha?? that ruined the whole midkemia world for me. i cant get over that. Pug was such a great character, Tomas was so complicated, and then he just ignored Katala. there was so much about her that could have been explored. All in all the sequels ruined magician for me. i remember when i was done with magician i was so excited and suped up i was trying to get everyone i knew to read it. And then i read the sequels... ugh...
 
kauldron26 said:
i still feel that magician was a near perfect novel. silverthorn and darkness at sethanon diminishes magician's greatness. seriously if the sequels did not exist Magician would be a masterpiece on so many different levels. its kinda sad that he peaked with his first novel. unlike tad williams whose first novel was kind of weak, the 2nd and 3rd novel blew the first out of the water. What pisses me off the most about the sequels to magician are the lack and absence of pug and tomas. how do u just suddenly shift from the main characters to jimmy (supremely annoying brat) and arutha?? that ruined the whole midkemia world for me. i cant get over that. Pug was such a great character, Tomas was so complicated, and then he just ignored Katala. there was so much about her that could have been explored. All in all the sequels ruined magician for me. i remember when i was done with magician i was so excited and suped up i was trying to get everyone i knew to read it. And then i read the sequels... ugh...
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I don't agree with you at all. Magician was very good, but I feel Silverthorn and aDaS were equally as good in their own ways. The reason Pug is not mentioned more is the fact that he was building his Academy at the time, so his tale would not be very interesting. Same with Tomas; he had a young son and would not go off adventuring whilst he was so young.
 
The way I see it, Ray was in the process of building an erntire world, not just writing to focus on specific characters. In order to introduce new charcters and develop some of the older ones more completely, certain others had to be left alone for awhile - which, in many cases just whets our appetites to see them reappear in later novels.

Sil. and DaS gave us a more in-depth view of Arutha, the ConDoin family and Jimmy, just to name a few and I thoroughly enjoyed both of them.
 
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