By the numbers medieval fantasy/D&D story/colonial narrative. The next book may subvert some of the tropes present in this one, but I'm not engaged enough to continue. ( )

3.5 Stars ( )

Pug and his friend, Tomas, are coming of age in the castle/keep of Duke Borric, and must stand for the choosing of apprentices. Tomas gets picked to be trained as a soldier, but Pug is left unchosen until the resident wizard decides to take him under his wing. And so they begin their lives as apprentices, dealing with noble bullies, a spoiled princess, and the oncoming threat of an invasion from another world.

Pug and his friends are great characters, and their adventures make for a very enjoyable read. The book nicely sets up the series, and I may even keep going with it eventually, but I have to say that Feist has cribbed *heavily* from Tolkien, so much so and so blatantly so that it passes from annoying into amusingly ridiculous. After they discover that their world is potentially under an immense threat from a strange evil race, Pug, Tomas, the wizard, and a ranger (ahem) set out on a long journey to bring the question of what should be done about it to Those in Charge. On the way, they try to cross through a mountain pass but have to backtrack because of heavy snowfall (ahem) and instead decide to take the path that leads underground and through the dwarf mines (AHEM), where they run into a giant heap of trouble from a deep and secret Evil Thing (seriously?). Meanwhile our hobbits, er, Pug and Tomas, get separated and start separate journeys, and Tomas stumbles onto a dragon hoard complete with dragon, and comes out the other side of the encounter with Magic Chainmail (oh ffs, REALLY?!). So, yeah. It's like Feist doesn't even try to cover the fact that he's cheating heavily off Tolkien's test paper. But in the end I didn't even mind because Feist's original bits are pretty darn entertaining and he at least weaves the Tolkien bits in nicely to his own story. ( )

A fantastic epic fantasy, with battles, admirable friendships, clever plotting, and interesting worlds.

This book was quickly becoming one of my favorites, until it veered away from its focus on Pug. Being the titular character, I expected to follow him throughout, but we lose his journey around 2/3 of the way through. The others that we encounter are intriguing, but just unexpected.

I loved the relationships, for the most part, especially the friendships and the loving sibling relationships. There were long-standing friendships and new ones struck, all of which are endearing. The interplay between keep boys and nobles of the keep are great to read about, and the overall societal struggles and interactions.

The beginning made me wonder if Ranger's Apprentice was inspired by this book, as there were some similarities. I love Ranger's Apprentice. Whether or not it drew inspiration from Pug's tale, both are great stories and characters to read about.

Hail Arutha. ( )

This was my first book by Raymond E. Feist. It was an amazing introduction to the world of Midkemia. It has to be read together with the second part, magician: master because it touched a lot of stuff but didn't finish it yet. So I can't recommend it as a stand-alone.
The book followed the point of view through several characters, some better than others. I definitely liked more characters from the second half of the book.
The only downside for me was that I've expected more magic involved in the story, due to the name Magician. But I guess that it gets better because this book isn't a completed story. Also, some decisions by the main characters were a bit questionable.
I definitely look forward to reading the second book of the Riftwar trilogy, Master. ( )