Matthew Hunter

The Magician’s Guild by Trudi Canavan is a fantasy novel built around a very common premise, but presented with uncommon skill. Consider a world wherein the practice of magic is dominated by a guild that restricts training for magery to those citizens of the upper classes, allowing effortless oppression of the lower classes. Inevitably, someone from a less distinguished social class discovers a talent for magic, and finds her life irreversibly changed.

“The Paladin” is the tale of an aging swordmaster, living in reclusion, trying to deal with a prospective student who wants him to return to the world and deal with the Evil Usurper. The plot is hardly original, although there are a few interesting twists. Even so, the story is well told and thoroughly enjoyable. It’s worth noting that it dates from a time when fantasy novels could be simple, straightforward, and well-written; that was enough.

The Postman has a rugged post-apocalyptic setting based on a post-nuclear-war USA that almost - but not quite - survived total collapse. Gordon, a loner who trades old tales of prewar culture in bardic style for his meals, meanders about from village to village, looking for someone who is trying to build something more than a subsistence society. Falling into misfortune, Gordon uses the uniform of a long-dead postal worker to weave an elaborate lie that will enable him to survive.

I picked this up hoping for a mildly interesting tale of intrigue, and what I got was the renaissance through the eyes of a feminist who really, really wishes she could grow up to be a swordswoman. The Privilege of the Sword is not a bad book exactly; it’s an unrealistic premise handled reasonably well with a light dose of intrigue and humor on top. Interesting, particularly for the attention to detail given to the fencing, but not very meaningful.

In The Chronicles of Covenant the Unbeliever Donaldson wove a compelling tale of a fantasy world threatened by a malevolent being known as Lord Foul, and capable of defending itself ultimately through the intervention of one man – a man outcast from human society, a man whose survival demands that he abandon hope and forsake love, a man who does not even believe that the Land is real. In The Second Chronicles of Covenant the Unbeliever, he returned to the Land when it is threatened once more.

For 9 years, a group of five children have played what they call the Secret: a hidden world of make-believe, whose universe they have created for themselves, filled with dragons and unicorns and kings and dire plots and sorcerers both kind and cruel. All goes well as they wile out their summer hours inventing and improvising and practicing their lines, until one summer the children, now teenagers, are split up. It should be the end of the Secret, at least for that summer, and so it seems to be… until one of the children stumbles upon a magic sword lying within a hedge, and crawls through to discover herself in another world.

An interesting independently published ebook, The Stars Came Back is a tale of space adventure with distinct military, political and moral themes. Stylistically, it occupies an unusual dialogue-heavy space somewhere between a novel and a screenplay; the author has mentioned that he originally wrote it as a screenplay and as it grew in length the style adjusted somewhat. Though written in a manner reminiscent of a Heinlein juvenile, it is not a coming-of-age tale; almost all of the characters are adults, though they still have room to grow and change.

The Stone of Farewell suffers from the usual problems of a middle book in a trilogy; the characters are caught midway between their youth and their maturity, the plots of evil seem ascendant, and neither the beginning nor the end are entirely satisfactory. Still, this is by no means a poor example. Simon’s quest to recover the sword Thorn from beneath the Rimmer’s tree has succeeded, at the cost of some lives and much trouble.

Legend says that only three things can destroy the Secret Country: the Border Magic, the Crystal of the Earth, and the Whim of the Dragon. Only the last remains, as the five children are summoned once more to the land of their own make-believe. This time, however, it will be different. For as they fled at the end of The Hidden Land, the note they left behind will reveal them as imposters.

I was first introduced to CS Friedman’s work with the Coldfire Trilogy, an excellent exploration of the consequences of introducing humans into a world where magic is shaped by belief – and thus gives life to our worst nightmares. I quickly located her other extant works, The Madness Season (with which I was similarly delighted) and In Conquest Born… which was a story with potential, but which ultimately disappointed me.