Review - The Magician's Apprentice by Trudi Canavan (Orbit)

The Magician's Apprentice by Trudi Canavan
Published by Orbit
Hardback - 608 pages
Published February 2009
Copy loaned from library


I started reading The Magician's Apprentice with a big sense of excitement. With Trudi Canavan winning the Auraelias Award for Best Fiction, I was hoping that the award was well deserved.

The Magician's Apprentice follows Tessia, a young girl who is an assistant healer in her village. When she suddenly displays a natural affinity to magic, she is taken under the wing of the local Magician Lord Dakon as his apprentice. Soon after, their village is decimated by a rogue magician named Takado, and a bitter war begins between Tessia's native land of Kyralia and the cruel imperialists of neighbouring Sachaka. Her talents both as a healer and as a magician are put to the test and strained to their limits as the army fights against the odds for the fate of their land.

This story is set as a prelude to the events in Canavan's bestselling Black Magician Trilogy, and as such should be a useful setup to the events that occur in those novels (I have yet to read anything else by Canavan, so I'm not sure if she does this). What I can say from reading this first is that it is excellent as a stand alone novel, and I'm sure that I will enjoy the future books even more with the knowledge of the world that I now have.

Canavan's strongest asset in this novel is that there is no one main hero. True, her focus is mostly on the younger healer turned magician Tessia (and how her being female affects her role in society - I've seen a number of female fantasy authors do this so I know there's no real agenda there, it's just making a point that comes with the alternative perspective) but there is also a very strong multiplicity of characters that are equally in the spotlight, such as her master Dakon, and his other student Jayan.

Because of this war into which they've suddenly become embroiled, this close knit cast of protagonists have a relationship that you don't see much of in the genre. Not only are they great characters, they're characters that know each other. They know their fears, they make assumptions about their behaviour, and it feels very natural and very real. The growing and changing relationship between Tessia and Jayan, for example, would have been predictable and boring in the hands of another writer, but Canavan makes sure that the way they interact and their attitudes towards each other are what you would expect from real people.

I love Canavan's different approach to how magic works in her world. Instead of a mage simply having power built into him, they must obtain more power (once they've reached the sufficient level of training) by taking power from apprentices, or from slaves in the case of the Sachakans. This means that no magician is all powerful, and that they have a finite amount of power to call upon. This gives them a weakness that is not often seen when it comes to those with magical abilities.

I find Canavan's world fascinating in that she seems to have based many customs and cultural elements from those around her. Her native Australia is representative of the land of Kyralia, with Sachaka taking influences from Japanese culture (the Japanese like names of many characters are a bit of a giveaway, but it's also their treatment of women and their political customs that points to this). There is an in depth focus on the politics and intrigues within the magician's circle of allies, but it is done in a way that is both informative and enjoyable to read.

After a certain point, she splits the story into two parts; one following the war between Kyralia and Sachaka, and another involving the forced marriage of a Sachakan woman and her subsequent empowerment and rebellion. Though I found this hard to follow and a little confusing at first, I can see that it was a good move since it shows the reader that, even though the Sachakans are meant to be the antagonists, not all the people of that land are evil. This gives the reader an even greater sympathy for these characters, since they are involved in a war they don't want and are likely to lose everything in the process. Although it was well written and had some fantastic characters, it felt a bit disjointed in places, especially when jumping from one scenario to the next.

In conclusion, The Magician's Apprentice was an absolute pleasure to read. I became immersed in the logistics of the war between the two lands, I was enthralled by the alliances and rivalries between characters, and she integrates magic into her world in a way that feels completely believable. Highly recommended, and I can't wait to read the first of the Black Magician novels.