Reviews for Magician

The average rating for Magician based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-05-16 00:00:00 Ilie Seuchea Sometimes a book comes along at just the right time. The year after high school I was working a dead-end job as a receptionist for a company that ground lenses for prescription glasses. I was glad to see the back of everyone from high school: I'd been awkward and gawky and utterly overlooked, and the word frenemy had not yet been coined, or I would have understood why the one girl I thought was on my team consistently ran me down to others. But I was very aware that everyone else had gone off to college, and I could not. No one in my family had ever been and I lacked the cultural capital to understand what I had needed to do to even apply. Or what one studied at college. But, anyway, New Zealand had no student loans back then, and you had to pay tuition up front. This was financially impossible. I had already gigantically screwed up one job, and I was low-level incompetent at being a receptionist, spiking to appalling on a regular basis. I had an abusive boyfriend who was faking a back injury from his job as a navy mechanic so he could live on disability. I was in my second flat (share house) and I had 20 cents a day budget for food - one deep-fried potato fritter - supplemented with endless quantities of free alcohol, bought for me by my boyfriend's cronies, who, in retrospect, hoped to get me drunk enough I'd go for a foursome. Needless to say, my body wasn't doing well on this diet, the skin flaking off me as if I were a scrofulus medieval peasant. I was living in monkey mind, wading through hormones and ignorance, flailing my way from one moment to the next with no thought of tomorrow; unable to imagine that the next day could be any different. The tobacconist next to my bus stop sold books. I'd just been given the unheard-of sum of $80 by my dying great-aunt, who intended me to buy moisturizer and body scrub so I would stop scaring unprepared members of the public with my sloughing. I bought Magician, and Silverthorn, and A Darkness at Sethanon. Yes, I was medically malnourished and deficient in every vitamin known to humans, but I bought books. And I fell in love with Tomas, and Arutha, and Admiral Trask. I fell in love with Jimmy the Hand. No, I wanted to be Jimmy the Hand. And I discovered I wanted a purpose, something, anything more than the shithole my life was. I ditched the boyfriend (the never-realized foursome retains the faint pastel aura of regret). I took a second job waiting tables six nights a week. I found out what I needed to do to go to college. I applied and was accepted (business management). I saved money. I paid my tuition in cash. I grew up and took responsibility for looking after myself. Today I found my original copy of Magician. It's held together with masking tape and hope. Maybe it's true that another story would have started it all even if I'd never found Feist's work, but I'll always remember Magician as the book that saved me.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-02-09 00:00:00 Mario Williams Neto Read as part of The Infinite Variety Reading Challenge, based on the BBC's Big Read Poll of 2003. I was looking forward to getting back in to fantasy. Lately, it's mostly been literature: classics, contemporary, genreless fiction-nothing particularly fantastical. This excitement was high, fantasy is my bread and butter. It is not the magic, or the made-up nature, nor indeed the plots. It is just everything about fantasy that makes me enjoy it. Usually, no matter what. Of course, going in to Magician I was filled with a deep sense of anticipation. But I was quickly disappointed. The first 150 pages or so are pure Lord of the Rings and I could not get past that. Beyond, the storyline expanded and went beyond the standard trope of fantasy that was-and sometimes still is-prevalant in high fantasy, but to no avail. I felt nothing for any character. They all seemed to have one or two traits, and nothing more. Their voices were similar, their ideals and morals seemed interchangeable. They were just characters, not people. I cared for none of them. Not relevant, and possibly petulant, but I hated the name Pug, and his other name, and couldn't seem to get past his stupid names. Futhermore, I do not think anything particular about the plot. Sometimes standard fantasy, sometimes beyond the norm, often with clichés and often unique and imaginative, but never enough to keep me interested. It just seemed as if things were just happening, as opposed to the characters actually influencing or making the plot happen. It just sort of stumbled along. And lastly, because I dislike taking any more time than its necessary in talking about a book I have not enjoyed, the writing was vague and mediocre. But standard fantasy, I think. Perhaps when it was first published, at some point in the 80s, it was nice and new and fun back then. But now, it just seems flat and dull. Blog | Reviews | Instagram | Twitter