Magician: Apprentice & Master (Raymond Feist)

Wow. Another great work that no one has even mentioned.

After reading Ivix's post in the "Wheel of Time," I was reminded of a series I picked up a few years ago. A friend of my mom's was moving and had a couple shelves-full of books that he didn't have space to move, so he offered to sell them to me: 500+pages=$2, <500 pages=$1. Of course did I jump all on that. Even though I had not heard of half of the authors nor have I yet read them all, but this book was one of the spoils of war, combined into one volume and missing the hard cover.



A definite new spin on the traditional concept of magic, it involves a young boy named Pug who by a twist of luck lands an apprenticeship with an old court wizard named Master Korgan, not far in description from Santa Claus, albeit with a fuller beard. Pug has quite a few mental blocks and doesn't have much success in imitating Korgan, although it is clear he has something bottled inside which he has yet to tap. When another odd, colorful, and extremely warlike race (not unlike the brigands in character from LotR) invades the kingdom, Pug gets pulled in as a slave yet is soon noticed by the powerful visceral wizards in charge of the other race and is subjected to their cruel "academy" for study. When he blazes through the ceremonies it becomes that he's about to unleash some serious power through tapping to his roots in both worlds.

In the meantime, carnage is letting loose as the Tsurani race bulldozes the countryside in several battles of epic proportion. My description may sound cheesey, but the book(s) are not, and it's definitely worth a read if you get some free time. Good character development and great conveyance of emotion to the reader, Feist's ability to spin a good yarn are surprising considering his lack of popularity.

Followed by several others encompassing the decades that span the great "Riftwar," several other stories follow including Silverthorn, Prince of the Blood, The King's Buccaneer, and Rise of a Merchant Prince, the story doesn't center around Pug's inevitable popularity to readers and Feist does a good job and crafting enough kingdom strife and political intrigue to keep you glued to the series. I have yet to finish Silverthorn as my "To-Do List" is on a long wait, but I've finished The Magician twice in both it's old form and Feist's "Author's Preferred" expanded edition that takes advantage of Feist's matured skills as his writing career progressed. It's not like you can't spend a few minutes a day away from neo to get a little reading done...

Nah, you're right on track. Pug's boyhood friend Tomas inadvertently ends up in a cave where he finds a dying dragon who gives him the armor of the "dragonrider" race that had once enslaved his kind. Tomas becomes uber-powerful later in the books as the soul of that ancient wizard-warrior to whom the armor belonged begins to overtake his mind; he struggles with his sanity several times in the later battles but nonetheless never fails to whoop some serious ass in the process.