stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley (no blather posts)

The Riftwar Series

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 14:39:00 GMT

This series follows to young kids who grow up in a rural castle on the edge of an empire. Pug ends up being the greatest Magician to ever live, and Thomas ends up being merged with an ancient being of massive power. Its a good series, even if people accuse it of being steeped in cliche.

Year	Title
1982	Magician (later sold as Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master)
1985	Silverthorn
1986	A Darkness at Sethanon

Tags for this post: book() Raymond_E_Feist()

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A Darkness at Sethanon

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 14:33:00 GMT

ISBN: 0553263285
LibraryThing

This book took longer to read that I would have liked, because I have been busy with other things. Its a good book though, and a fine conclusion to the Riftwar Series. I liked this book a lot, although I do think that Magician (Apprentice and Master) was a better book.

Tags for this post: book() Raymond_E_Feist()

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Silverthorn

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 14:12:00 GMT

ISBN: 0553270540
LibraryThing

The characters of the Magician Books battle a new enemy in this book. The book centers around Prince Arthura's poisoned wife and the quest to find the cure. There seems to have been some criticism of this book for being a fantasy cliche (something which people seem to say about a lot of Feist's books), but that's a pretty easy accusation to make with fantasy works -- they all seem to have the same basic them. I guess that's what a genre is -- a shared theme. The book is well written and quite readable.

Wikipedia page on Silverthorn has this rather startling accusation to make:

Since its release, the term 'Silverthorn' has been adopted to describe any book in a series (although typically the middle book of a trilogy) that has served little purpose other than to set up a climax in the final book. This term can also be applied to a similar phenomenon in film or television series. This style of book typically has little overall substance, and is often quite poor when compared to the other books in the series.

That's a pretty unfair thing to say. This book has a story that stands on its own, and progresses the plot of the overall series as well. If I was to make the "does little but setup the next book in the series" accusation, I would point the finger at Tilley's First Family, which does nothing apart from setup Iron Master.

Tags for this post: book() Raymond_E_Feist()

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Magician: Master

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:57:00 GMT

ISBN: 0553564935
LibraryThing

Perhaps it would have been better if Feist had kept Magician all as one book. In the first book you hear of Guy (a bad guy!) briefly, and then nothing more. Then, hundreds of pages later in the second book he comes up again as a major plot element. If you haven't recently read the first book, then you are at a disadvantage.

Apart from that, this is a good book that I would have preferred to read faster. Unfortunately work has kept me unusually busy recently, so this one took a while to read.

Tags for this post: book() Raymond_E_Feist()

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Magician: Apprentice

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 19:30:00 GMT

ISBN: 0553564943
LibraryThing

This is the reworked version of Magician, although its split into two books and there is some content that was dropped as part of the editing process for the original version. This version was developed for the tenth anniversary of the original publication. I read the original version as a kid and was so proud of myself when it finished it -- it was by far the longest book I had ever read at the time.

I've seen people online complain that this book is just a big ball of cliche. There are dwarves, wizards with funny hats, elves, and so on. But there are also new ideas here, such as alien invaders in a fantasy novel and so on. Overall I think the cliches don't get in the way and are largely used a sort of short hand... Feist doesn't need to explain what a dwarf is, so he can skip that bit and get on with telling the story.

After rereading this as an adult, I still really like this book.

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Raymond E Feist's Serpentwar Saga

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 17:06:00 GMT

(I went book shopping in Canberra yesterday).

C	Year	Title	Notes
	1994	Shadow of a Dark Queen	Stored in Australia (Box 1). Purchased from a garage sale
	1995	Rise of a Merchant Prince
	1997	Rage of a Demon King	Stored in Australia (Box 1). Purchased from a garage sale
	1998	Shards of a Broken Crown

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Raymond E Feist's Empire Trilogy

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 17:06:00 GMT

(I went book shopping in Canberra yesterday).

C	Year	Title	Notes
	1987	Daughter of the Empire	Stored in Australia (Box 1). Purchased from a garage sale
	1990	Servant of the Empire	Stored in Australia (Box 1). Purchased from a garage sale
	1997	Mistress of the Empire

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