The Novice - Review

First of all, this book is the sequel to the first book I reviewed. If you plan on reading The Magician's Guild, I suggest you don't read this review yet. I won't hide spoilers for either book in the summary part and only hide spoilers for this one in the impressions.

The Facts

Title	The Novice (The Black Magician Trilogy, part 2)
Author	Trudi Canavan
Genre	Fantasy, young adult
Publisher	Orbit Books
Publication date	2002

The Summary

Sonea is now a novice in the Magician’s Guild but has a hard time because the other novices are all members of wealthy families and she grew up in the slums. One novice in particular, Regin, is a vicious bully. He accuses Sonea and her guardian Rothen to have an improper relationship, forcing her to move out of Rothen’s rooms and to the Novice’s Quarters, closer to her bullies. Sonea however is devoted to her studies and gets promoted to a higher class. These novices are friendlier until Regin also gets promoted and frames her for stealing. Sonea could ask for a magician to read her mind and prove her innocence, but this would mean they would find out about High Lord Akkarin practicing black magic. Rothen’s son Dorrien comes to visit his father and befriends Sonea. Together they set a trap to catch Regin trying to frame Sonea for theft again. This and him teaching her levitation and showing her secret places on the Guild grounds brings them closer together.

Meanwhile, Administrator Lorlen learns of murders happening in the slums, murders that show evidence of black magic. He suspects his friend Akkarin is involved, which makes him both worried about Akkarin and everyone else since a black magician is a threat to everyone around him.

At the start of the story, Dannyl is sent to Elyne as Second Ambassador and receives a secret assignment from Lorlen: to investigate ancient magic and retrace Akkarin’s journey in Elyne a few years before. He is assisted by Tayend, a young librarian who used to be Akkarin’s assistant. It is revealed later on that Tayend is a “lad” or homosexual. Dannyl is surprised by this but after a close encounter with death, realizes that he, too, has feelings for Tayend.

Back in the Guild, High Lord Akkarin grows suspicious of his friend Lorlen and his strange behaviour. He force-reads Lorlen’s mind and learns that Sonea, Rothen and Lorlen himself know that Akkarin is a black magician. He takes on Sonea’s guardianship, thus making her a hostage to prevent any of them taking action against him or telling anyone else about his secret. He also gives Lorlen a blood gem, a ring that enables Akkarin to hear and see everything that happens around Lorlen and to mind-speak with him without anyone else hearing.

Sonea is now known as the High Lord’s favorite, even though she is terrified of him and avoids him, and gets bullied more and more by Regin and his friends. She doesn’t defend herself however. Her private Warrior skills teacher, Yikmo, discovers this reluctance to use her powers to defend herself is caused by the fear that she might hurt someone. Akkarin is aware of the bullying but does not step in because he notices Sonea’s powers increase because of it. When Dorrien returns to the Guild, he encourages Sonea to challenge Regin to a formal duel in which she beats him through skill, gaining the respect of the other novices. The story ends when Sonea witnesses Akkarin kill a man from the rival nation Sachaka. The High Lord tells her this was a spy sent to kill him but Sonea doesn’t know whether to believe him, which sets up the story for the third book.

The Impressions

Unlike the first book in this trilogy, The Novice focusses on more than one storyline, in more than one location. I liked this because it allows for more world creation and character development. A nice example of this is Dannyl’s ambassador mission to the nation of Elyne. Not only is he facing the task of retracing the High Lord’s travels, he is also confronted with a different attitude towards homosexuality, and his own feelings. Lorlen has to deal with his inner turmoil too: his best friend turns out to be using black magic, which is forbidden in Kyralia and the Allied Lands, and might also be a serial killer. Add to this the blood gem Akkarin gives him later on which lets the High Lord hear Lorlen's thoughts.

Although the pacing in this book feels higher because of the different storylines, the overal progression is still quite slow. Sonea’s story is filled with her being bullied by Regin and her being afraid of High Lord Akkarin. So when Dorrien visits the Guild and they strike up a friendship, it is a welcome change to finally have something positive happen to Sonea. The romance part is a bit predictable but hey, we’re not reading world class literature here. Back to the bullying now. In my review of the first book I wrote “yes, we get it, Sonea doesn’t have control over her powers”. While reading this book, I kept thinking “yes we get it, Regin is a mean boy.”

Sonea is again rather passive. It is Dorrien who comes up with the plans to deal with Regin. And when Regin and his friends ambush her, Sonea tends to let them hurt her and even curls up on the ground while they hit her with magic strikes. This is not something we’d expect from the main character and heroine of the story. We do get an explanation later why she is reluctant to use her powers. Yet characters are repeatedly mentioned to “use all their power for this or that” indicating it is possible to control how much power you put into your magic strikes. So is Sonea a very determined pacifist or is this a plot hole?

The previous book set up High Lord Akkarin as the Super Bad Guy and this book tries to reinforce this image. He is mysterious and not very talkative, even with his best friend Lorlen. But to me Akkarin doesn’t give off the Super Dangerous vibe. I am not sure if this is on purpose or rather clunky writing. He feels more like a Misunderstood Guy With A Big Secret. Speaking of clunky writing, the amount of chuckling in these books is annoying.

The Conclusion

Like The Magician’s Guild, this book is a nice and easy one to read if you’re into fantasy and young adult novels. The addition of more storylines is very welcome because it creates a more three-dimensional world that does not revolve entirely around one young novice. As with the previous book, my biggest issue is again the slow pace and its repetitiveness, even though it did improve. By now I am curious about Akkarin's story, so on to the final part of the trilogy!