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Thief's Magic

Thief's Magic 1

by Trudi Canavan
Publication Date: 13/05/2014
4/5 Rating 1 Review

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International No.1 bestselling author Trudi Canavan returns with her most powerful and thrilling adventure yet. In a world where an industrial revolution is powered by magic, Tyen, a student of archaeology, unearths a sentient book called Vella. Once a young sorcerer-bookbinder, Vella was transformed into a useful tool by one of the greatest sorcerers of history. Since then she has been collecting information, including a vital clue to the disaster Tyen's world faces. Elsewhere, in a land ruled by the priests, Rielle the dyer's daughter has been taught that to use magic is to steal from the Angels. Yet she knows she has a talent for it, and that there is a corrupter in the city willing to teach her how to use it - should she dare to risk the Angels' wrath. But not everything is as Tyen and Rielle have been raised to believe. Not the nature of magic, nor the laws of their lands. Not even the people they trust.
ISBN:
9780356501116
9780356501116
Category:
Fantasy
Publication Date:
13-05-2014
Publisher:
Little, Brown Book Group
Country of origin:
United Kingdom
Pages:
560
Dimensions (mm):
234x153mm
Trudi Canavan

Trudi Canavan lives in Melbourne, Australia.

She has been making up stories about things that don't exist for as long as she can remember, and was amazed when her first published story received an Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Short Story in 1999.

She has since published the bestselling Black Magician Trilogy: The Magicians' Guild, The Novice and The High Lord, and is now a bestselling author in the UK and the US.

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I was very excited to read this first book in a brand new series from an Aussie author I have heard so many great things about. While I was very impressed with the world-building, the stories themselves left me a little disappointed. This is a totally new world no reading of Trudi Canavans previous works is required.

Tyen is a student sorcerer who occasionally accompanies his teacher on archaeology trips, sourcing riches for the academy. On one such trip he uncovers a magical artifact a book bound in human skin that can read the mind of whoever holds it, and communicate via words on its pages. Tyen, usually loyal to the Academy to a fault, decides to keep the book to himself for a little while, but he must make a run for it once his crime has been discovered. In Tyens world, magic is used widely to power machines of all types a sort of magic-punk society.

In another world, Rielle is the young daughter of a dyer a lower family in the heirarchy of wealthy families. In this world, the use of magic is tightly controlled to only the male priests of the temple, and the ability to use magic or see its after-effects by anyone else is seen as a taint that must be punished and eradicated. Rielle has kept the fact that she is able to see Stain, or the after-effects of magic use, a tightly guarded secret, but her life is turned upside down when one day she is approached by a tainted man on the run from the priests.

While I enjoyed the worlds built around each of the characters and the differences between them, I was rather baffled by the dual nature of the story. There are two distinct stories in this book that never interact. Im assuming that they will at some point, but I was disappointed that it didnt happen during this book.

The most interesting facet of this book is the two different cultures shown in each of Tyen and Rielles stories. The same kind of magic exists in both worlds and is accessed in the same way, but each culture approaches the use of magic in a different way controlled in Rielles magic-rich world by the enigmatic Angels, or usable by anyone in Tyens world, where magic seems to be running low.

I think the main thing I didnt like about Thiefs Magic is that both Tyen and Rielle were painfully naive and, lets be frank, a little dumb. They continued to trust people and institutions who they had already heard conflicting reports about, and I just found some of their decisions to be annoyingly short-sighted. But then, they arent heroes, just ordinary people who are dealing with some difficult situations.



I will be looking out for further books in this series as Im interested in finding out what happens to Tyen and Rielle separately and if their paths ever cross.

I enjoyed the society and a world building of Thiefs Magic, even if the execution didnt quite do it for me.

Contains Spoilers No
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