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ndsr 's review for:
Magician: Apprentice
by Raymond E. Feist
It is not inherently an insult to point out that someone is riffing on Tolkien. Tolkien was riffing on older material, too. Star Wars was riffing on Kurosawa and other influences. The question is always how well are you riffing, how interestingly, how effectively. For the same reason, it can be, and should be, enjoyable to read the kind of 70s and 80s fantasy that is essentially taking up Tolkien like chess pieces and playing different lines with those pieces.
And in so doing in Magician: Apprentice, Raymond Feist landed on some additional interesting concepts. It is interesting to combine Tolkiena with portal fantasy, and for that portal fantasy to be linking not our mundane world to the secondary one, but two secondary worlds to one another. There is potential here. It is also interesting to explore the logistics of large-scale conflict between a society advanced in some areas but lacking horses (an essential technology), and another behind in areas but playing defense with cavalry. There is potential here, as well.
Magician: Apprentice is held back, however, by simplistic characterization and dialogue, and very scattered plotting. I am reading this book primarily as a prerequisite to Daughter of the Empire, and I understand that Feist's own writing improves through his experience working with Wurts (and just his experience having written more than one novel). So I am looking forward to that, but it’s a shame that this first outing is so flat, when the material hints at more.
And in so doing in Magician: Apprentice, Raymond Feist landed on some additional interesting concepts. It is interesting to combine Tolkiena with portal fantasy, and for that portal fantasy to be linking not our mundane world to the secondary one, but two secondary worlds to one another. There is potential here. It is also interesting to explore the logistics of large-scale conflict between a society advanced in some areas but lacking horses (an essential technology), and another behind in areas but playing defense with cavalry. There is potential here, as well.
Magician: Apprentice is held back, however, by simplistic characterization and dialogue, and very scattered plotting. I am reading this book primarily as a prerequisite to Daughter of the Empire, and I understand that Feist's own writing improves through his experience working with Wurts (and just his experience having written more than one novel). So I am looking forward to that, but it’s a shame that this first outing is so flat, when the material hints at more.