Amph The Hall of Worlds, Midkemia and Raymond E Feist

Raymond E. Feist is one of my favorite Authors.

His opening book Magician is a tale that covers over seven years of two young mens life and how the choices they and others around them make, affect their future.

The first book follows the lives of our main characters Pug and Tomas and how they deal with coming of age in a border frontier town and the subsequent start of a war that spans two worlds.

One of these boys will become the most powerful Magician Midkemia has ever seen, the other will become one with the preserved conscious of one of the most feared individual Midekemia and the universe has ever known.

The series is now onto it's third Major war and it is rumoured that Feist is intending to take the battles of Midkemia through to a fifth and final conflict between the great magicians of the Universe and it's gods.


Magician is a book I have loved since I first read it and the following novels have been as engaging as the first.

Not all have been consistantly great but all have helped progress the history of Midkemia and it is a world I visit almost as much as the EU.

 

Ever read Faerie Tale? Wonderful book! Not read this one though, I'll have to pick it up next time I'm at B&N

~PK~

 

I've not read Faere Tale as it doen't fall within the world of Midkemia, I believe it's meant to cross over into our world.

It is a book on my list to read but there's about 10 books in front of it.

 

Magician pwns! I prefer the first part: The Apprentice.

 

And I remember when it wasn't in parts. I read Magician as a standalone book sometime in 1987, and was drawn into is completetly. As a teenager who never seemed to fit in with anyone else, Pug's character, his need to fit in but never quite doing that, resonated really well with me.

I remember when they released the 10th anniversary version of Magician, with more in it than the original version. Something like an extra 10,000 words, which is a lot in a book, but it added to the story in fantastically small ways.

I've followed the Midkemia novels for a long time, though I don't have the Krondor series in my collection for some reason, and I am eagerly awaiting the final two volumes. The first of his last ever trilogy to do with Midkemia, if I understand it correctly, is superbly written, and has Pug and his family once again taking centre stage in the fight to save the world from Evil. I capitalise that word on purpose, as will become apparent to those that read his books.

For those that haven't read them, I do recommend the alternative books that he's written based on Kelewan, the Mistress of the Empire series. They intersect well with the Riftwar saga and are very enjoyable.

Like FatBurt above, I haven't read Faerie Tale simply because real-world stuff didn't appeal to me at the time, I just wanted more about Midkemia.

 

Midkemia is brilliantly described, as well in Magician as in other novels of the Riftwar saga. But my favourite description of magical worlds in when Fiest describes history of Kelewan and how the people of Kelewan came there using the Rift.

 

I have to agree that his description of when they arrive in Kelewan is excellent, the way that everyone just sods off and does their own thing describes the Kelewan society very well (As it is in Magicians time )


I also love the idea of Greater and Lesser magic and how it is used and mastered in Midekemia and Kelewan.

One culture embracing and revering Magicians to almost godlike status the other looking upon the with distrust and sometimes fear.

 

Read The Messanger yesterday. I'm trying to work out why I did.

 

The Messenger


Never heard of that one. Is it a novel or one of the comic books that get sent out every now and again?

 

One of Legends 2's 11 authors.

 

Part of a compilation of works then.


Try getting hold of Magician for an example of how good his work actually is.

 

First printed in 1982, eh? That's old! Recently revised, around 15,000 words added. But it's the dark elves I don't like, not at all. I can't read the archetypes, especially elfs.