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August 2004
Reviews
The Magicians' Guild starts as a romp and ends with a whimper. It has a promising beginning with
facinating characters that draw you in. The evil guild and its nasty magicians and their unfair
'purge'. The nobel but poor dwells whose only crime, ie Sonea's case, was her mere existance.
Then a ripple through the filthy crowd and a rock breaks through the magician's magical sheild something
never before done by a mere dwell. And the chase is on.
Sonea's flight through the underworld of the 'slums' is well done and taught with vibrant energy. Then just as things are heating up they flare out. Halfway through the book, Sonea is caught by the magician's who perhaps are not as evil and unfair as we think. The rest of the book is spent on Sonea's decision whether to stay in the guild or go home to the slums. Thought provoking? Yes. Meditative social commentary? Indeed. But it makes for boring reading. I wanted to get back to the chase, to the vibrancy and energy of the first half of the book with its Theives and criminal underground and Sonea's wild untamed magic.
Unfortunatly the book slides into mediocrity from the middle 'till the end. Even with the BIG reveal at the end that something wicked is afoot in the guild. It seems an after thought and is unfair. However it is a first author's, first book mistake and the first part of the book is worth the second. I wanted to know what happened to these people and where the ending would take us therefore I read the second book, though it too shares the same flaws. Even so, I'll read the third, there is a mystery here worth discovering, I only wish it were slightly better put together.
This was an entertaining book. It only had few problems but it also lacked many oustanding qualities.
The main character, Sonea, was believable but under-developed. She remained reactive and two dimensional. The rest of the characters were not given enough emphasis to grow beyond slot-fillers. We get a mediocre villian to overcome in the fist book and the introduction of the trilogy's Bad Guy which leaves you unconvinced he's bad.
The plot was the biggest problem for me. The middle of the book grew to a fevered pitch as Sonea's powers become
uncontrollable. This, to me, is the climax of the book and we are only half way through the book. I felt the book should
have ended there. The climax at the end of the book did not contain half the energy of the first. It left me with a sense
of disappointment. The revelation of the Bad Guy's identity and "crime" reads like it was added after the fact. Like:
"Oh, Yeah! I forgot to get back to that. I'll just stick it on at the end."
Style-wise it reads like most fantasy. Good but nothing original. It fails to convey an identity to set it apart from the pack of fantasy novels being released in the wake of Lord of the Rings.
After much debate of whether quietened is really a word, this story was pretty good. It took a while for the real story
to get going, but once it did, it was interesting. The book was about Sonea, a poor girl who manages to break through
the magician's shield without knowing she has magic. Most of the book is spent with the guild searching for her which
was disappointing as a lot less time could have been spent on it with more time spent on the actual guild (hence the name
of the book). The story was intriguing enough to keep me reading, but the writing itself will keep me from reading the
next one.