Entertaining in a kind of dull and familiar way. Magician read like a collection of fantasy cliches and stereotypes that really only worked when Tolkien did it in The Lord of the Rings. This novel alone is a very long story to waste your time on, and I definitely won't give another moment of mine to this author. ( )

Feist’s first novel, written in 1982, and the first volume of the Riftwar saga.

As other reviewers have noted here, it’s easy to criticise this for the genre clichés (e.g., the orphan protagonist, the coming of age tale, the dwarven mines etc), and the sometimes bland, characterless and lazy prose (e.g., “his emotions written on his face”). Some of the characters facing some of the biggest dilemmas as the book nears its end still felt to me like little more than cardboard cut-outs, and this did disappoint me, and undercut some of the dramatic tension that these developments might otherwise have inspired. I was particularly disappointed by the way in which the female characters felt like caricatures of everything a princess in a fantasy novel is expected to be, and yet I suppose many of the male characters similarly lacked depth.

And yet there was also a lot to like in this novel. The sobering reality of a protracted war, that commences just as our protagonists are entering adolescence, and forces them to put all the futures that might have been on hold, to deal with their current reality. The fascinating world-building and descriptions of the Tsurani culture, which seemed to me to combine some of the most interesting aspects of the Japanese culture with ancient Rome.

This wouldn’t be first in my list of recommendations to introduce a friend to the fantasy genre, but it’s nonetheless a book that I found worth persevering with. ( )

This trilogy wasn't quite as good as the Empire trilogy but I still loved it and it was interesting to see the events unfold from the point of view of the Midkemians. ( )

Your typical farm-boy-saves-the-world fantasy tale. Done quite well though. ( )

It is amazingly descriptive and has a huge range of awesome characters with their own stories. A massive series. ( )