[Review] Thief's Magic - Trudi Canavan

  

Titel: Thief's Magic

Series: Millenium's Rule #1

Author: Trudi Canavan

Publisher: Orbit

Format: Kindle, 560p, english

Synopsis: GoodReads

Review: 4*, GoodReads, LovelyBooks, Amazon

Buy: Amazon

 

FORGET WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT THE NATURE OF MAGIC.

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 an 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... and not even the people they trust.

AN EPIC NEW FANTASY ADVENTURE BEGINS.

-->GoodReads

To be honest it took me quite a while to get into this book. I had a really hard time with it in the beginning, although I don’t really know why. I just couldn’t connect with Tyen and struggled through it for a few weeks.

But then suddenly the story changed to a new character and I really started to enjoy the book. I liked the setting more and I felt it a lot easier to read about Rielle than Tyen. I enjoyed the whole artsy-type community a lot more than the industrial setting in Leretia.

Tyens part of the book seemed a little steam-punk-y, which I usually like, but in this case it just wasn’t as well done.

I also had a hard time connecting with Tyen, as his instant connection and attachment to Vela just seems incredibly naïve to me and I don’t understand how he would just believe everything she told him.

As Arthur Weasley always says “Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.”

The magical system/theory in this book is very interesting, as magic is drawn from your surroundings, which in itself isn’t that new, but when you take magic it leaves soot/stain behind, as all the magic is taken from that area. It’s great that throughout the book we see a few different societies, and while each one has to deal with the diminishing of magic, each one handles the use of magic differently.

Somewhere around the middle of the book however I became more interested in Tyens story and actually preferred his story line to Rielles, although I still enjoyed her parts of the book.

Rielles story seemed more and more like some teenage drama tv show, while Tyen started on a real adventure, which of course hooked me even more.

But while the book became a lot easier to follow and I’m really looking forward to reading the next book in the series, I just didn’t really connect with either of the protagonists. Both seemed pretty naïve and somewhat childish.

I was also quite surprised and a little annoyed by the fact that, even after finishing the book, I don’t have any idea how the two story lines might be connected. I have a vague idea for how the two settings might coexist in the world the author built, but I can’t see the stories interweaving.

Still I rated it 4 stars as I ended up finishing it pretty quickly once I got into it and enjoyed myself a lot.