Discussion of Magician

[Fake Vencar]

I agree totally Kulgan. Learning more about the conDoin family gave me a better insight into Midkemia and the Kingdom especially. And also the geography too!

 

[Kulgan]

Agreed, Ven. I want to learn all I can about this planet that I've 'adopted' and spent so much time living on all these years.

That's one of the reasons I enjoyed PotB so much also - with the focus on Kesh and the Keshian Empire, I got a much better look at what the southern half of the contineit was all about.

 

[kaneda]

I just finished reading this for the second time today.

First time I read it the only thing I really rememeber liking was the "earth, wind, fire, water" scene that Pug does.

This time around... I liked it, but I don't love it. It's not a book that personally I would recommend to my friends. I think the problem with this book is that it has so much hype surrounding it (like the original poster said, so many people love it). However, from reading peoples comments, this seems to be because it was the book that introduced them to the genre (i.e. the first love).

I think the story is great, really interesting, love that it takes place in two worlds, I even like that the time span is so vast in this book (which is quite bizarre for me, however, I would have liked dates at the beginning of each chapter). But I don't like how Feist writes when there is no dialogue (notably, the point where Pug gain's his powers - theres about 8 pages of no dialogue, and Feist can't do that - his writing style isn't consise and vivid enough to get away with it).

I loved the potrayal of Pug and Tomas as kids, and really liked the build up to them developing their powers. However, with Tomas I was so disappointed that when he did become a Valeri, it was suddenly over - I wanted more!

I really liked some of the side characters, like Amos trask and Jimmy the hand - would love it if the story had told me more about them!


Overal, I'm glad I read it, but it's not a book that I'll read again, not a book that I will recommend, and it certainly in my opinion doesn't deserve the title as one of the best fantasy books ever written.

 

[Connavar]

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.

I thought Magician was great until the last 1/4 of the book.

The royal story,Arutha,Anita, the who will be king thing almost ruined the great book i read before it. What i highlighted of your post i agree fully.

The book until the end was to me a 9/10, the end and the near end was like a 5/10 for me. Too generic and clichè like it wasnt even the same book.

 

[Laerten]

Feist wasn't my introduction to Fantasy fiction - that was David Eddings and The Belgariad series. Every author has something different to say, a different way of expressing themselves and appeal to different types of people.

Whilst I thought that Magician was a great book, I preferred the Empire trilogy purely because it is nice to see books that gave a different view of 'the enemy' as we saw them in Magician. You could then understand why the war continued for as long as it did.

If you go back and re-read Magician, Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon straight after the Empire trilogy you get a slightly different view of the books.

I read a lot of different authors and, like Feists work, think certain books are better than others:
Eddings' Elenium and Tamuli are now preferable to the Belgariad and Malloreon (and I'll never be reading the Dreamers again - it was the worst series I've ever read!)
Trudi Canavan's Black Magician Trilogy is much better than the Age of the Five (although both series had weak endings)
Terry Goodkind's Wizards First Rule and Confessor were the only 2 half decent books in the Sword of Truth series (I found he 'preached' too much - the series could have been written in half the number of books)

I welcome any responses to my observations but as I've already pointed out, different books appeal to different types of people.

 

[holmes321]

I read this having not read any kind of fiction for over about 3 years, straight after my GCSE's i left for a music college, reading nothing but music crap... in the end i decided i needed a good fiction book before my vocabulary came so lacking i might turn into a vegetable...

Mum came home with Magician, and 'Neverwhere' by Neil Gaiman (also a great book imo). But magician was on another level, the way he leaves some subtle details out, enough for you to decide things for yourself, gives a kind of imagery you don't get in other books. I read this in just under a week, with many a late night just because i HAD to get to the end, it was truly gripping.

One of the things i least liked, as said above, was the whole royal crown thing at the end, kind of detaching from the great fantasy element it had before, also one of the things that most irritated me was what happened with Carline... She seemed to get the rough end of the deal, getting stuck with a minstrel! All through the book i was thinking it should have been her and Pug, despite when they came back with katala, also Anita and Arutha was kind of not tied up very well, and i would've loved to hear more between tomas and pug after the coronation, these for me were the 2 main characters of the story, and towareds the end it kind of forgot about them and Lyam, Arutha and Martin were.