my thoughts on trudi canavan's the black magician trilogy:
i loved it. hands down one of my favorite fantasy series i've read in a really, really long time
the premise: sonea, a girl from the extreme lower classes of kyralian society, discovers that she has magical ability after participating in a resistance act against the country's guild of magicians. the guild only ever accepts students from the rich house families, so the discovery of sonea's powers is extremely surprising. the guild try to catch her to bring her to the guild's university in order to train her in magic. with the help of the thieves, those who run gangs and the black market in kyralia, she tries to hide. there are also dark forces at hand that sonea and the guild won't discover until it may be too late, and all of it centers around the guild's high lord, akkarin.
this series handles the class element extremely well. sonea never loses her desire to fundamentally change the guild, and it is changed. by that i mean utterly decimated and having to be completely rebuilt :)
the lower classes, especially the Thieves, are so vibrant and are never forgotten and its EPIC. ceryni, one of the main POV characters, is one of my favorite little guys ever
this is finally an example of a fantasy world that doesn't fall prey to the "and this country is fictional entirety of asia, this country is the entirety of africa, this is finland this is france" etc problem. it's extremely well done in my opinion and it means that a good majority of the characters are people of color
we get to see so much of the world outside of the main country, kryalia, because one of the main pov characters (dannyl) becomes an ambassador for the guild and travels all over the place!!!
even the feud kyralia has with sachaka is handled pretty well. i think the author could have gone further but at least sachakans are given some justice in that its acknowledged their hatred of the guild and kyralia is understandable and what happened should have never.
i just love sonea so much. shes such a strong character !!! her personality is so vibrant!!! shes been through so much :(
ive loved akkarin so much since day 1. my mysterious magician doing illegal magic ... who's also a hottie in his early 30s
everything in these books is so purposeful. i actually really love that no detail is irrelevant but also, this book isnt like full to the brim of insane amounts of detail. its just enough to make the world feel so solid and lived in
MAGIC SCHOOL. MUCH BETTER MAGIC SCHOOL THAN THAT PUTA. it's magic university and it's even better actually !
i need more people to read this please so we can all talk about it
