Title: The Magician’s Guild
Author: Trudi Canavan
Series: The Black Magician Trilogy #1, The Black Magician World #3
Rating Out of 5: 4 (Really good read!)
My Bookshelves: Australian authors, Fantasy, Mages
Pace: Slow
Format: Novel
Publisher: Orbit
Year: 2001
5th sentence, 74th page: He taught me lots of stuff, though.

Each year the magicians of Imardin gather to purge the city streets of vagrants, urchins and miscreants. Masters of the disciplines of magic, they know that no one can oppose them. But their protective shield is not as impenetrable as they believe.

As the mob is herded from the city, a young street girl, furious at the authorities’ treatment of her family and friends, hurls a stone at the shield, putting all her rage behind it. To the amazement of all who bear witness, the stone passes unhindered through the barrier and renders a magician unconscious.

It is an inconceivable act, and the guild’s worst fear has been realised – an untrained magician is loose on the streets. She must be found, and quickly, before her uncontrolled powers unleash forces that will destroy both her, and the city that is her home.

The Magician’s Guild was a great introduction to a new author. I’m always on the hunt for authors who have good, strong, female heroes. Trudi Canavan does this perfectly in The Magician’s Guild. Not only is Sonea’s tale one of the oppressed gaining power against the oppressors, it’s also a great story of inner power and doing the right thing.

I love the investigation of classes through the idea of Magicians of Imardin and the city’s undesirables and the way that Sonea is able to permeate through these boundaries. It’s not just about the two sides of a difficult story; the biases that each side have had created by their circumstances, it’s also the journey of one uniquely vulnerable heroine to find out what her future may hold.

Sonea isn’t an in your face, tough heroine. She spends much of the book running from her circumstances and fleeing her fear of the unknown. But it was this that I found endearing. By telling the story from Sonea’s point, and the point of her potential mentor, you could both understand her fear, and hope for a better future.

I’m really looking forward to reading the other two books in this trilogy – I think that with such an amazing start to the series, it will be a fantastic journey.

Image source: Trudi Canavan