The Magicians' Guild - Trudi Canavan

[goodreads]

Title: The Magicians' Guild
Author: Trudi Canavan
Genre: Fantasy, YA
Rating: 8/10
# pages: 465
Date read: September, 2008

Summary: This year, like every other, the magicians of Imardin gather to purge the city of undesirables. Cloaked in the protection of their sorcery, they move with no fear of the vagrants and miscreants who despise them and their work - until one enraged girl, barely more than a child, hurls a stone at the hated invaders... and effortlessly penetrates their magical shield.

What the Magicians' Guild has long dreaded has finally come to pass. There is someone outside their ranks who possesses a raw power beyond imagining, an untrained mage who must be found and schooled before she destroys herself and her city with a force she cannot yet control.

Review: Very, very slow to start. So slow in fact, that I considered giving up on it, until I read another review saying that it would pick up after about the first 100 pages. So I stuck it out, and the reviewer was absolutely right. It picked up and became great. I loved the rest of the book, and will definitely try to get my hands on the rest of the series.

Trudi Canavan gets major bonus points for understanding how to write a good first book in a series. The plot is nicely closed off, while still leaving an obvious red thread for the sequels (sort of like Harry Potter - each book (especially the first ones) is self-contained, but Voldemort makes a common thread through all of them). If you're on the lookout for a new fantasy series, I can recommend this one.

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