The Magician’s Apprentice by Trudi Canavan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
The Magician’s Apprentice was an Aurealis award winner and tells the story of Tessia, a girl from a village who wants to be a healer like her father, something that is not acceptable within her culture. But a twist of fate sends her on a path to become a magician.
The Cover: I really like this cover. The picture, the fonts, the colours, and the placement of these elements all present it nicely as a fantasy novel.
The Good Stuff: Trudi’s stories are always well constructed, she has good quality cover designs and her books are well copy-edited. She has created a believable fantasy world with starkly different cultures, making good use of the conflicts that arise between them. It is clearly evident that as an author, she knows this world inside and out. The setting is familiar across all of her books (or at least with the ones I have read), which makes it easy to fall straight back into the fantasy world. In this book Trudi has covered topics that are an issue in some modern day cultures and have been prevalent in Western World society, both in the past, and to a lesser extent in current times.
The Bad Stuff: Trudi uses the characters internal thoughts to tell readers how the characters are feeling or where the plot could go. This internal dialogue doesn’t seem to be natural to me and I struggle with this technique as a reader.
On the whole, I never really got hooked into this book the way I have with some of her others. I have read many Trudi Canavan novels in the past, the best in my opinion being The Black Magician Trilogy, but this one just didn’t have the same level of enjoyment for me. I’m only giving this one 2 out of 5 golden bookmarks.
Allan Walsh writes Fantasy and Horror. If you’re looking for something new to read in these genres, why not check out his books here. You can also find his titles available in libraries.
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