#60 Trudi Canavan: Novice

[bellinghman]

Trudi Canavan: Novice

Paperback: 592 pages
Publisher: Orbit (1 Jul 2004)
ISBN-10: 1841493147
Category(ies): Fantasy

The second novel in the trilogy.

At the end of the previous book, Sonea had become a novice member of the Magician's Guild. But she also holds a dreadful secret - that there is a Black Magician in the Guild. How she deals with this knowledge, and how she also deals with the bullying is the content of the first half. The second half finds her in deeper danger, but perhaps beginning to realise that what she thought was the truth may conceal something more grey than black and white.

This is a single book, but it could have been published in two parts. There's a perfectly acceptable point (between parts 1 and 2) where this could have been split into two books. Or it could have been combined with the other two parts of the trilogy to produce a single large novel, because none of the parts are stand-alone. The themes have gone a bit deeper than the first book, but that first book is a necessary foundation. And there's the start of a great friendship between some of the other characters.

A nice improvement on the first.