Book #23 of 2021: Minor Mage | DNF: The Eye of the World

[thistlechaser]

Minor Mage by T. Kingfisher. While on the surface this was a simple, cute story, it had a really nice heart to it that made me think.

Set in a world where every town has a wizard, Oliver's wizard master/teacher took him on too late, the wizard was already old and senile. So, unfortunately when he died, Oliver only knew three mostly useless spells. But Oliver, with help of his armadillo familiar, taught himself how to use herbs to do a lot of things that he should have been able to do with magic.

The town experiences a bad drought, and so a mob of townfolk send Oliver (a very young boy, 12 I believe), off to a distant mountain to bring back rain.

While all the magic stuff was interesting, what I found most enjoyable was Oliver as a person and how he dealt with the adults in his life turning on him like that. At every turn on his journey, adults (who should have helped such a young boy traveling alone) just made things worse. [The adults made things worse in an understandable, believable way, not "every single adult is awful because this is a YA book" way.]

The whole journey was fun, and the ending was wonderfully magical, but it was the human aspect of the story that really put the whole book over the top for me.

DNF

The Eye of the World: Book One of The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. Amazon is making a show based on this book series, and since it's such a famous series, I figured I should read it. I knew nothing at all going into it, I started it blind.

First: A YA book takes me about 6 hours to read, an adult book 8. This book would have taken me 18 hours... Between the length and the writing style, it felt very very much like Game of Thrones to me. Every little detail of the world was described in such detail (like GoT spending 10 pages describing a meal), it really bogged things down.

The story seemed fine, if bland and unoriginal. Bunch of teenagers end up having to fight the evils of the world. I DNF'ed it at 10%, which when a book is this long was still four nights of reading, but the story still barely got into the plot at all.

I didn't hate it, but nothing about it hooked me. DNF 10%.

Partial book credits:
Point reached in DNF book: 10%
Previous abandoned book total: 627%
New total: 637% (six books)

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

Glad to hear you enjoyed Minor Mage! It's nor my favorite Kingfisher (in a similar vein, that's Summer in Orcus), but it's one I also liked, especially the armadillo familiar.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ooh thanks for mentioning Summer in Orcus. I'm all caught up on her books that I have on my Kindle, so time to get more of hers. I've liked almost everything I've read by her so far.

And agreed, I really liked the armadillo.

[jeane nevarez (from livejournal.com)]

I never saw a book with an armadillo familiar before, the idea is so cute I have to try that one. And Wheel of Time- oh, man. I tried that series back when I was in college, read two or three of them and then gave up. Liked some of the world-building, got very tired of the characters (repetitive descriptions that never changed) and the plot dragged on me. When you have to look up names in a glossary five pages long in the back of the book, it gets way too complicated for me to stay interested.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Agreed. If you have to look up either names or terms in a glossary, I'm going to tap out and drop the book.

I hope you enjoy Minor Mage! Having an armadillo familiar was so unique, I loved it.