High Mage

You ever re-read series? I do, I know some people only read a book once, but I tend to be a little bit of a speed reader even when I'm reading for pleasure so I can get new details and nuances on a second or even third reading sometimes.

I also sometimes... crave? Hanker for? I don't know the word but get an abiding itch to reread something. Usually because it has a particular mood, or setting, or system, or character or just a certain feel that I want to experience again.

So that's how I ended up re-reading Trudi Canavan's High Mage trilogy. 

The first book starts off with a city slum girl who joins a gang of street kids throwing stones at the mages who are about to form walls and walk them through the city to help the city guard force all slum dwellers out of the city completely for winter.

The mage walls function as shields, so the stones that the kids throw never penetrate, it's like cursing out an inanimate object for all the good it does. 

Until this angry, angry girl who is sick of seeing this happen every damn year, puts all her rage into one single stone, and knocks a mage clean out!

There are no mages outside the mages' guild. None. So her little instinctive magic act results in a city-wide man-hunt and turns her life, her friend's lives and half the city upside down.

It's a compelling read, rather well written and the protagonist is relatable, even when she's at her weakest, and even at her strongest, she never feels inhuman or a like she's just a spineless plot-victim.

I read the trilogy in two days flat (and pulled one very late night in the process which I regretted the next day!) and then immediately went hunting for something similar that I borrowed from the library more than ten years ago and could never remember the name of. I just needed more of that novice struggling through life changes and magic etc. etc. sort of feel, and the forgotten book had the same sort of tone?

It took some Google-fu (well, Duckduckgo-fu, to be precise) for me to identify the Lost Book: Mercedes Lackey's Brightly Burning. 

I don't love all of her stuff, but Brightly Burning was still a good read, even so long after the first time I read it. There's definitely some real heart wrenching scenes in the latter half of the book.

Brief synopsis: bullied young boy comes into magic powers in a rather terrible way but recovers well under the care of the Herald's (magic) Collegium (school) before being dragged back into instability due to the nation's need for his still barely-controlled talents.

After that, I dipped back into the Deverry books by Katherine Kerr, but have stalled out on the second one. The first (Daggerspell) is great, a really good mid-fantasy realm with some very unique world-building that does something different to the usual 'heroes and elves and wizards in Tolkien-esque Fantasy-Land'.

The second however (Darkspell), drags a little in the last third and I'm kinda busy at the minute so finding the time to read it requires a smidge more motivation than the book itself provides. When  I've got the time, I'll finish it up and hopefully book 3 picks up the pace again!

Feel free to comment with any other good magecraft apprentice books, I'm still in mood for more!