Reviews tagging 'Emotional abuse'

The Novice by Trudi Canavan

1 review

tourneuse's review

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adventurous challenging dark slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

‘The first half suffers from the absence of the impressive Akkarin, but it's a convincing account of an outsider's struggle to grow up in a magic school.’

I wrote the above when I was a teenager and it’s sort of true but very misleading. This is the slowest book in the trilogy. After inadvertently discovering in Book 1 that High Lord Akkarin
practises the illegal Black Magic, as her punishment for doing precisely nothing wrong
, Sonea is made his apprentice and forced to keep his secret. As he never takes apprentices, the other pupils are extremely jealous of Sonea and bully her for her background in the slums. Akkarin takes less than zero interest in her - which stunts her education - even sending her out into a corridor after finding her hiding from her bullies. No wonder that when he does invite her to dinner, isolated as she is, she hangs on his every word. So does the reader. Despite what is, in hindsight, Akkarin’s atrocious behaviour, he is written so much more interestingly than Sonea’s fellow students, mirroring the problem she has in the story. Some highlights are supporting POV characters Lorlen and Dannyl but their chapters are separate subplots.

I’d like to reread it but I loved it at the time and the adult knowledge that it’s so inappropriate might ruin it for me. 

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