Magician: Master

Unlike its predecessor, Magician: Master, doesn’t suffer so much from the split of the original story into two books. Its problems are unique: Raymond E. Feist seems unable to justify the focus on the supporting characters or to conclude any plotlines in a way that is not anticlimactic or arbitrary.

The story of Magician: Master continues to follow the transformations the two boys Pug and Tomas undergo during the war between the inhabitants of Midkemia and the invaders of another world, the Tsurani. While the magician’s apprentice finds himself captured by the enemy, living as a slave in a completely unknown environment, Tomas begins to suffer the effects of the magical armor he has acquired, having his personality slowly replaced by that of another being. If the previous book began with the title “Pug and Tomas,” this one now begins with “Milamber and the Valheru,” reinforcing the new identities they’re going to take.

At first, Feist crafts the protagonist’s journey with competence. Since Pug becomes a slave and is thrown into an alien environment, the author uses the boy’s bewilderment and confusion to introduce the reader to a new culture in the book’s universe. The Tsurani are presented as a militarized patriarchal society, governed by rigid customs and code of honor. The oriental influences on the Tsurani’s descriptions are numerous: from their names (Shinzawai, Hokanu), to the descriptions of their houses (“Pug and Laurie then discovered the house was fashioned like a square, with a large garden in the center, accessible from all sides.“) and their customs, such as the act of committing suicide with a sword being considered an honorable death, it’s clear that Feist could very well just have called the Tsurani Japanese.

This means that the author not only establishes the clash of cultures as one of the central themes of the story, but also develops the Tsurani far beyond the one-dimensional villainy that characterized them in the previous book. If in Magician: Apprentice they appeared as suicidal warriors without any personality whatsoever, now the Tsurani are presented as a politically divided people who were always war-driven, but now are finally beginning to question its effects. Since the Tsurani are developed in Pug’s chapters, the reader begins to sympathize with them alongside the protagonist, meaning that the affection the character gradually feels for that land doesn’t sound strange or sudden in the narrative.

Pug’s journey through the Tsurani Empire is a reflection of the one he went through in the previous book: if in Magician: Apprentice, the boy ascended in the social hierarchy of Midkemia very quickly, going from a simple orphan boy to a landlord, in Magician: Master the change is even more abrupt as he goes from slave to the greatest social position of that world, a Black Magician, in the span of just a few chapters, as soon as his affinity for magic is discovered.

Through various time lapses, the author tries to make the reader understand the extent of the protagonist’s dilemma: he was born in Midkemia, but really grew up in the land of the Tsurani. He feels a duty to both peoples and, thanks to his studies and powers, finds himself in the harrowing position of being able to fatally alter the outcome of the war – a narrative role that could be seen as a white savior story.

On the other side of the conflict is Tomas, who manages to realize the dream of getting the attention and love of the queen of the elves. With the help of the sudden energy, strength, and wisdom that emanates from the armor he acquired in the caves, the boy is able to become a competent general, whose recurrent and imposing presence in the court of the elves ends up arousing the interest of Queen Aglaranna.

However, his armor – much like the One Ring – retains part of its creator’s design, and so, it doesn’t take long for Tomas’ personality to be influenced by a Valheru – an ancient race that rode dragons and treated elves as pets. Tomas, then, begins to become addicted to war, showing no mercy to all those who threaten Midkemia: he’s a character that starts to move towards the precipice soon after conquering what he most desired in life. His plot is permeated by internal conflicts, with the boy having to face the presence of the Valheru inside himself, unable to contain most of its actions.

The elves finally gain unique characteristics in this part of the story, displaying some particular customs, such as never mentioning the names of the deceased so as not to disturb them. This helps gives them their own identity, distinguishing them from their usual characterization in the genre. Queen Aglaranna is an excellent example of how the elves became more nuanced in this novel: if in the first book, she is presented as a haughty, wise, and introspective queen who cherishes nature and is known for the strange magic of her kingdom. Whereas here, she appears as a leader who sometimes fails to impose herself in court and who regrets the nature of her attraction to Tomas – she understands that she loves his power more than his personality – recognizing her own inability to fight against her feelings. In other words, while in the first novel she was your typical elven queen, in Magician: Master she is a fascinating character due to her flaws and contradictions.

If Feist is able to prepare the beginning of the book in an exemplary way, he definitely slips up during the second act, coming back to the character who headed the climax of Magician: Apprentice: the Prince Arutha. Arutha, before the conclusion of the previous book, was just a supporting character that was duly relegated to the backstage of the action. During the climax, however, the spotlights were suddenly placed on him, resulting in a final battle without any dramatic punch.

In Magician: Master, Feist continues to fail at justifying the focus on the prince. Arutha’s trip to Krondor in search of military support takes up significant space in the book, introduces more irrelevant characters – such as almost all members of the city’s guild of thieves – but produces no tangible result during the climax. In other words, if all his chapters were ripped out of the story, not only the main events of the novel would not have been affected, but the pacing would also have improved greatly.

It’s also in the middle of the book that, strangely enough, Tomas’ character arc concludes in what can be considered an anticlimax, since his final psychological battle against the Valheru occurs during an insignificant event in the narrative.

The novel’s main problem, however, lies again in its final act, which is plagued by deus ex machinas. Deus ex machina is a concept from Greek theater that refers to an arbitrary force – usually divine in nature – that suddenly appears in the story to solve all problems and save the heroes. In Magician: Master there is a character who embodies this concept: the mysterious wizard Macros.

Every time Macros appears in the novel, he does so to solve a conflict that would otherwise kill the main characters, and then he disappears back to wherever he came from. In the middle of the book, his presence is not that problematic, since the character manifests powers far beyond what is deemed possible in that universe, which can intrigue the reader. Feist, however, abuses so much of the character that he even makes Macros artificially create a conflict just to solve it afterward. That is, instead of the book’s main climax being the result of a cascade of events built throughout the narrative, it is actually created at the last minute by a random character just so he can save the day again. The deus ex machina in Magician: Master is so intense that even when there are no problems to be solved, it creates some just to have someone to randomly save.

One of the last chapters of the book, for example, is about Macros telling the characters that they were all, all this time, in immeasurable danger because of an evil force capable of destroying worlds, an evil force which they did not know about until that moment and that has absolutely nothing to do with what they were doing. However, now, they no longer have to worry about this evil force either, because he, Macros, has already stopped the creature from appearing, solving everything, and saving the day. Congrats to him.

Feist also turns his attention back to Arutha once more before the end, making the last conflict in the story be about his family. However, not even this move is capable of making the focus on the prince pay off, since the whole question is based on a choice his brother has to make and not Arutha himself.

Raymond E. Feist may have built fascinating narrative arches for the main characters, but the problems that affect the outcome of each of them are impossible to ignore. Therefore, the promising beginning of Magician: Master only makes its conclusion much more disappointing.

February 27, 2020.

Review originally published in Portuguese on May 26, 2016.