This book ofthe Riftwar Saga takes a bit of detour. The evil forces have struck directly at the royal family, and Arutha must undertake a quest to find the extremely rare Silverthorn to cure her. Feist takes the opportunity to explore more of the area around the Kingdom in the process, and broaden the scope of the conflict between MIdkemia and Kelewan. While not making a lot of progress on the overall plot of the series, this is still an excellent book. ( )

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. ( )

Arutha has been made Prince of Krondor just in time to bail teenaged street thief Jimmy the Hand out of a tough circumstance - one that requires him to become respectable. Arutha is about the marry Anita, and there is much rejoicing. Except Jimmy stumbles upon a would be assassin at the wedding - too late! A bolt from a crossbow meant to kill Arutha has instead wounded and poisoned Anita. Arutha and Jimmy set out with a small group of people to find the cure and learn more about these strange assassins.

I am a fan of this book, a fan of the characters, and a fan of the cover of my edition of the book. This book takes place after Magician (Magician Master if you are reading paperbacks), but has enough context to be read as a starting point in and of itself.

This is a great book for people who like high fantasy, featuring some interesting twists on common archetypes. It can be read by advanced middle school readers or on up to adults. ( )

The characters of the Magician Books battle a new enemy in this book. The book centers around Prince Arthura's poisoned wife and the quest to find the cure. There seems to have been some criticism of this book for being a fantasy cliche (something which people seem to say about a lot of Feist's books), but that's a pretty easy accusation to make with fantasy works -- they all seem to have the same basic them. I guess that's what a genre is -- a shared theme. The book is well written and quite readable.

Wikipedia page on Silverthorn has this rather startling accusation to make:

"Since its release, the term 'Silverthorn' has been adopted to describe any book in a series (although typically the middle book of a trilogy) that has served little purpose other than to set up a climax in the final book. This term can also be applied to a similar phenomenon in film or television series. This style of book typically has little overall substance, and is often quite poor when compared to the other books in the series."

That's a pretty unfair thing to say. This book has a story that stands on its own, and progresses the plot of the overall series as well. If I was to make the "does little but setup the next book in the series" accusation, I would point the finger at Tilley's First Family, which does nothing apart from setup Iron Master.

http://www.stillhq.com/book/Raymond_E... ( )

I picked this up because I had hazy but generally good feelings for Magician. This book is written competently enough, but didn't particularly grab me. It seems typical EFP (extruded fantasy product) fayre, largely interchangeable with any other random fantasy novel. But it took me an age to drag myself to the end, as I wasn't particularly interested in finding out what happens. I only finished it because Pratchett's "Making Money" came out in paperback... ( )