Magician: Apprentice

Written by Raymond E. Feist, Magician: Apprentice is a fantasy novel that presents a familiar universe, built on genre tropes, but also a story with wasted potential, which suffers from some shallow worldbuilding and a highly problematic climax.

The book follows a young orphan named Pug and his best friend, Tomas, who see their lives drastically change the moment they come across a shipwreck on the coast of Crydee, where they live. Out of the wreckage comes a strange individual in strange clothing who speaks an even stranger language, leading the Duke of Crydee to imagine that the man came from another world entirely. In the midst of preparations for a possible invasion, the boys – Pug, an apprentice magician, and Tomas, a soldier in training – are forced to accompany the Duke on a long journey to warn the neighboring kingdoms of the foreign threat.

Magician: Apprentice is a typical fantasy book, whose universe is clearly inspired by the work of J. R. R. Tolkien. From the prefix of the name of its main continent, Midkemia, to the characterization of the races that inhabit it – there are haughty elves living in forests and sneaky evil goblins hiding under mountains – the world created by Feist is very familiar to any fan of the genre: the dwarves, for example, are described as a resilient people that speak with a guttural tone and excel at the craft of digging tunnels in deep mines.

The problem with the novel’s worldbuilding is that its world is not filled with rivalries and internal disputes: it lacks conflict. In his journey through Midkemia, Pug will rarely encounter difficulties in recruiting the most various peoples and races, who will readily offer their help without posing an obstacle for the heroes. If Midkemia differs in any way from Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, it’s in its harmony. Except for the obvious battle against hopelessly evil creatures, such as the goblins orthe Dark Brotherhood, there’s no discord between its inhabitants, who seem to love each other without reservation – no wonder the war needs to be started by invaders from another world. This absence of conflict and division makes the relationship between dwarves, elves, and humans uninteresting, less complex, and engaging. Even in the human capital, the only place where political intrigues and betrayals are considered, the protagonist’s journey remains unaffected by these elements.

Despite its lack of complexity, this world is still presented to us by lengthy dialogues filled with exposition. The younger characters often make questions about the elements of the world that they are still unfamiliar with, and these questions almost always yield extensive and didactic answers, as exemplified by the following dialogue between Pug and an elven prince:

“Would you tell me more about elven magic?”

“Our magic is ancient. It is part of what we are and in what we create. Elven boots can make even a human silent when walking, and elven bows are better able to strike the mark, for that is the nature of our magic. It is vested in ourselves, our forests, our creations. It can sometimes be managed, subtly by those who fully understand it . . . Spellweavers, such as Tathar. But this is not easily done, for our magic resists manipulation. It is more like air than anything, always surrounding us, yet unseen. But like air, which can be felt when the wind blows, it has substance. Our forests are called enchanted by men, for so long have we dwelled there, our magic has created the mystery of Elvandar…”

The paragraph still goes on for what seems like an eternity, exposing countless unnecessary pieces of information that could have very well been left out of the narrative. With this approach, instead of arousing the reader’s curiosity, Feist actually bores us with so many needless details.

When the focus is on the characters themselves, the story becomes a bit better. The dramatic core of Magician: Apprentice is anchored in Pug’s process of maturity, whch can be observed in how his relationship with Crydee’s princess, Carline, changes with time. As he gets older and a bit wiser, for example, he starts to suspect that he is in love with an idea instead of with the real Carline:

“As beautiful as he found her – her black locks and blue eyes igniting some very uncomfortable flames of imagination – the images were always somehow hollow, colorless at heart, lacking the amber-and-rose glow such daydreams had possessed when Carline had been a distant, unapproachable, and unknown figure. Observing her closely for even as short a time as he had recently made such idealized musing impossible.”

The protagonist’s love for the princess has a fundamental role in the novel, perfectly representing the protagonist’s growth as well as his flaws. When Pug reflects grumpily that Carline “was proving herself to be just too complicated to fit into simple daydreams,” it is possible to notice that, despite all that he has gone through, there are still traces of an entitled angered boy in him.

His ascend through Crydee’s social hierarchy defines the first act of the book. Chosen by the magician Kulgan to be his apprentice, Pug begins to frequent the castle of Crydee and so discover a new world with customs different from his own. Not that this leads to any quarrel between Pug and the nobility, however, as even the rich of Midkemia seem to respect the poor and treat them well. Therefore, it doesn’t take long for his powers to begin to attract the Duke’s attention and for Pug to find himself rising higher and higher in position in the court.

Magician: Apprentice has, at first, a correct structure, even if not very inspired. The author uses Pug’s rise in Crydee to introduce the main characters to us, and quickly inserts the shipwreck that leads to the discovery of those beings from another universe, called the Tsurani. The following journey through Midkemia also respects genre tropes, having its points of conflict generated basically by “random encounters”, in which the heroes face various monsters and are, eventually, forced to thread separate paths. However, it is easy to see that the similarities with Tolkien’s trilogy are numerous, which can be tiresome to someone used to them (spoilers): after failing to cross a mountain during a blizzard, for example, the group goes into an old dwarf mine, where they “lose” one of their companions.

On the other hand, the author efficiently prepares the groundwork for the battle against the Tsurani by narrating in detail all of Crydee’s efforts to get an army. Furthermore, Feist builds interesting subplots, like making a certain character acquire a magic artifact that begins to cause him strange dreams, or making the main group meet a mysterious wizard who promises to help them before the end of their journey, as both cases promise a special payoff at some point in the series.

It’s in its third and last act that Magician: Apprentice deeply disappoints, since no character arc is completed and almost no plotline reaches any sort of climax. The story narrated in the novel doesn’t end (the book was originally published with its sequence, Magician: Master, in a single volume) and this makes all the tension built by the narrative fade into nothing by the end.

The worst consequence of this division into two books is the climax, formed by a great battle against the Tsurani, but led by characters that were until then completely secondary. The battle doesn’t even feature Pug, Tomas, or even the Duke and his army, positioning the Duke’s son, Prince Arutha, under the spotlight. This means that there is no reason for any emotional investment on the part of the reader during the battle, with the exception of Carline’s presence in the castle under siege.

With an uninspiring universe, problematic worldbuilding, and an unsatisfactory climax, Magician: Apprentice ends up being a mediocre introduction to Raymond E. Feist’s work.

February 11, 2020.

Review originally published in Portuguese on May 17, 2016.