Die Autorin Trudi Canavan stammt aus Australien. Ihr Heimatland ist die Fantasy betreffend etwas eigen. In einem Interview von 2011, als viele australische Schriftstellerinnen den Weltmarkt stürmten, beschrieb sie, dass in Australien eine klare Genderdiskrepanz in der Literatur zu beobachten ist: Frauen lesen und schreiben Fantasy, Männer lesen und schreiben Science-Fiction. Merkwürdig, denn in Europa und Nordamerika ist gerade die High Fantasy ja noch immer eher „Männersache“, wie man so schön sagt. Scheint, als müsste ich mich mal in Down Under umschauen, um weibliche High Fantasy meiner Bibliothek hinzuzufügen. Canavan gilt als Vorreiterin, ihre „The Black Magician Trilogy“ feierte global Erfolge. „The Novice“ ist der zweite Band, in den ich große Hoffnungen setzte.

Sonea ist ein historisches Phänomen. Als erstes Kind der Slums wird sie in der Magier-Gilde von Imardin ausgebildet. Nachdem ihre beachtlichen Kräfte unkontrolliert aus ihr hervorbrachen, fiel es ihr schwer, ihr Misstrauen den Magier_innen gegenüber zu überwinden. Doch nun ist sie eine von ihnen, eine Novizin. Leider wird sie von ihren Mitschüler_innen, Sprösslingen der Adelshäuser, nicht mit offenen Armen empfangen. Jeden Tag lassen sie sie spüren, dass sie anders ist. Nur ihre Freundschaft mit ihrem Mentor Lord Rothen hilft ihr, die grausamen Streiche zu erdulden und sich auf ihr Ziel zu konzentrieren. Gemeinsam tragen sie die Bürde des Wissens um die finsteren Machenschaften des Gildenmeisters Akkarin. Auf Geheiß des Gildenverwalters Lorlen bewahren sie das Geheimnis. Ihre einzige Chance, Akkarin das Handwerk zu legen, ist Lord Dannyl, der als Botschafter nach Elyne berufen wurde und dort heimlich in der Vergangenheit des Gildenmeisters forscht, um herauszufinden, wie dieser von schwarzer Magie verführt wurde. Wird er ihnen die dringend benötigten Antworten liefern, bevor Akkarin die Gilde korrumpieren kann?

„The Novice“ war ein famoser Spaß. Der zweite Band entpuppte sich für mich als absolute Wohlfühl-Lektüre, die mich hervorragend unterhielt und meine Hoffnungen, dass die Geschichte der „The Black Magician Trilogy“ nach der etwas langatmigen Etablierung des Universums in „The Magician’s Guild“ Fahrt aufnimmt, voll erfüllte. Ich habe das Buch wirklich genossen. Wie könnte ich auch nicht, schließlich verblüffte mich Trudi Canavan am laufenden Band. Ich wusste nie, wohin sich „The Novice“ entwickeln und was als nächstes geschehen würde. Es gelang ihr, ihre mitreißende Mischung aus Teenagerdrama, Mordermittlung, Geheimnissen und ganz viel Magie vollkommen unvorhersehbar zu gestalten, sodass ich von allen Wendungen ehrlich überrascht war. Das ist mir schon lange nicht mehr passiert und dafür danke ich der Autorin von Herzen.
Die Geschichte spielt hauptsächlich in Imardin, der Hauptstadt Kyralias, in der die Protagonistin Sonea nun eine Novizin der Magier-Gilde ist. Sie wusste vorher, dass sie es als Slumkind zwischen all den adligen Söhnen und Töchtern schwer haben würde, aber das Ausmaß der Ablehnung, das ihr entgegenschlägt, konnte niemand prophezeien. Ich litt aufrichtig mit ihr, da sie mir jetzt deutlich sympathischer war und sie nicht nur von ihren Mitschüler_innen drangsaliert wird, sondern auch die meisten ihrer Lehrer_innen an ihr zweifeln. Ich zürnte ihnen allen solidarisch, obwohl ich es ein bisschen schade fand, dass Soneas private Probleme ihre Ausbildung überdeckten. Ich hätte gern mehr ihres Unterrichts miterlebt, bin diesbezüglich aber wohl einfach „Harry Potter“-verwöhnt und fand auch ihr persönliches Drama sehr spannend, deshalb handelt es sich hier lediglich um einen kleinen Kritikpunkt.
Parallel zu Soneas Perspektive in Imardin, die durch Lord Rothens und Verwalter Lorlens Blickwinkel ergänzt wird, begleiten die Leser_innen Lord Dannyl, der als Botschafter der Gilde durch die Nachbarländer reist und die dunklen Praktiken des Gildenmeisters Akkarin aufzudecken versucht. Sein diplomatischer Auftrag war ein cleverer Schachzug Canavans, der es ihr erlaubt, die an bekannte Kulturen des mediterranen Raums erinnernden Nationen rund um Kyralia vorzustellen. Einzig Sachaka bleibt ein Mysterium, was mir sofort verdächtig erschien. Die Vermutung, dass Akkarin dort mit schwarzer Magie in Kontakt kam, liegt nahe. Wie genau sich schwarze Magie in diesem Universum eigentlich definiert, behält Canavan weiterhin für sich. Niemand scheint zu wissen, welche Fähigkeiten damit verbunden sind – seltsam, denn sonst sind die magischen Grenzen in traditioneller High Fantasy meist sehr klar abgesteckt. Daher weiß auch niemand, was Akkarin plant. Persönlich bin ich ja ziemlich sicher, dass er nicht der skrupellose Schurke ist, für den gerade Sonea ihn hält. Ich glaube, er hat gute Gründe, schwarze Magie einzusetzen, selbst wenn ich mir noch nicht vorstellen kann, wie diese aussehen mögen. Ich werde mich wohl bis zum finalen Band „The High Lord“ gedulden müssen.

Trudi Canavan erklärte, müsste sie ihre Bücher für jemanden beschreiben, der/die keine Erfahrung mit Fantasy hat, würde sie sie irgendwo zwischen „Harry Potter“ und „Herr der Ringe“ einordnen. Ich finde, auf „The Novice“ trifft diese Kategorisierung ausnehmend gut zu. Der zweite Band der „The Black Magician Trilogy“ ist klassische, nicht allzu anspruchsvolle High Fantasy, die moderne Schwerpunkte anspricht und somit einen greifbaren Realitätsbezug herstellt. Homophobie und Mobbing sind wiederkehrende Themen, die die Handlung jedoch nicht dominieren. Canavan findet die Balance zwischen einer altmodischen, magisch beeinflussten Gesellschaft und ihren zeitgemäßen, wirklichkeitsnahen sozialen Konflikten, was mich intellektuell ebenso wie emotional begeisterte. Ich fühlte mich mit dieser Fortsetzung pudelwohl und freue mich, dass sich mein Optimismus auszahlte. „The Black Magician Trilogy“ bietet offenbar doch genau den Lesespaß, den ich von Anfang an darin vermutete.

This is a fictional story about a teenage boy who is in an airplane crash and gets stranded. All he has to protect him is his hatchet. He must learn to survive on his own. I think this book would be good for children between 4th and 5th grade. According to Fountas and Pinell, it would belong in the R level, which is where most 4th graders should be. When I was in 4th grade, my teacher read it aloud to the class and we understood the plot and vocabulary used.

An activity I would do with my students while reading Hatchet would be to create our own survival packs! What would we need if we were stranded in the woods? What would we eat? Where would we sleep?

Trigger warning: Mention of rape/abuse of minors. Not implicit, but it is fairly important to the plot later on and not what the reader might be expecting.

I loved this book! Really loved it. Yes, it is practically a trashy teen romance with lots of cliches. I’m not denying that. However, I’d rather have something like this – which doesn’t need to try very hard to do what it sets out to do – than some kind of overambitious dystopian future with countless plot holes which falls apart in a few chapters. This book was consistent, and I liked that.

I enjoyed all of the characters to some extent, even the horrible ones. (They weren’t horrible all the time.) I also really loved the dynamics between the protagonist and her love interests more than naything. Ren was a great character to read about, and her interactions with Jesse and Jeremy were really, really cute. We had a pretty large cast and lots of directions to take the plot, and it felt like everyone was important in some way or another.

This book tries to make out that it’s something more than just teen romance, but…it isn’t, really. It’s about Ren finding love in America and there’s no two ways about it. There’s this subplot about a serial killer on the loose but strangely enough it’s mostly in the background whilst we focus on Ren making out with Jeremy, or Jesse, or whichever half-naked shirtless hot boy she’s enamoured with. Like, I was 2/3 of the way through the book before they were like “Oh shit, somebody else has been murdered. Ren, don’t you think you should be going home now before you get killed too?”

The story being this: Ren is working as a nanny in America for the summer. Here, she ends up getting romantically involved with two of the many hot guys who lives here, and…well, that’s the bulk of the book. There’s a serial killer in town who goes around murdering foreign nannies. Just like her. You can imagine how that works out.

It’s strange that the serial killer is mostly in the background the whole time and does almost NOTHING until the last chapter (in fact, I almost forgot he was there). He kills one girl in the entire book, and he doesn’t even do a good job of it. (She runs away and only dies of her wounds much later). The murder seemed almost like an afterthought, but I understand that wasn’t the focus of the book. It’s also not easy to guess who the killer is, because of the large cast and there’s so many characters that he could be.

There’s another subplot where one of the boys has been preying on underage girls. I say “preying”, but rape and abuse are involved (though in the past tense, that is, since it’s crimes he’s committed before). Nobody has filed any charges against him because he is very rich, has a lot of connections, and has a powerful lawyer that will protect him from any consequences.

This guy was actually more iconic than the fricking serial killer, I swear. You really wanted to see him thrown in prison for his crimes, he showed no remorse for anything he did and actually bragged about it. He also got more focus than the murderer did. If anything, he was a lot more interesting because he was one of the main characters, too. The scenes where they finally confront him are some of the most intense ones in the entire story.

Let’s take a look at the core of the book - Ren’s two love interests.

Love Interest Number One: Jeremy. He’s one of the first boys that Ren meets in the story, and is a total gentleman from the very beginning. He opens doors for her, compliments on her appearance all the time, takes her out to parties, makes her feel like the world revolves around her, makes out with her quite a bit and she’s always swooning over him. He sounds like the perfect boyfriend.

Love Interest Number Two: Jesse. Practically unapproachable “bad boy”. Most people avoid him because he has a reputation for being aggressive and violent. Prior to this book, he literally beat the shit out of another guy, landing him into hospital. He’s done time in juvenile prison as a result and also has a restraining order. Yeah, it’s that bad. But wait, he also plays guitar and sings in a band, and that makes him cooler. When Ren meets him for the first time, she finds him pretty intimidating already (but he also has his shirt off at the time and she can’t stop looking at his muscles).

Guess who she’s more attracted to? You think it’s the guy who treats her like she’s the centre of his world? The non-violent one?

Nope. Guess again. She goes for the violent bad boy who’s done time for assault. Seriously. What is wrong with her? Who in their right mind would do that?! Even her friends think she’s nut for going for him. He may be her second choice, but she gets attracted to him pretty fast.

However! We get a plot twist, and it turns out Mr Nice Guy was just using Ren to score points with another dickhead friend of his, so actually he’s no longer nice or a gentleman at all. It also turns out that Mr Violent Guy had a very good reason for wanting to put that other guy into hospital – but the fact remains that he still lost control and beat him to a pulp, meaning that he’s still very violent and our protagonist seems to forget that.

I guess if she’d read on in the book then she might have a reason for dating Jesse for plot reasons, but it still doesn’t make sense. The first time she meets Jesse, he literally looks like he wants to kill her…I mean, come on. This isn’t healthy. This just sounds like she’s attracted to really violent men. Good thing that the violent guy wasn’t actually that violent after all, but man, it just feels a bit off.

Even so, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was romantic, it was cute, it had conflict – and just the right amount, too. It didn’t try to shove tons of drama and conflict down our throat like some YA books I could name, and it never made me feel bored at all. It was just right. There was a love triangle, obviously, but it actually made sense and didn’t feel forced.

I cannot tell you what a breath of fresh air it is in a YA novel to have a love triangle which actually feels like it BELONGS there. So far, I’ve only found this to be true in actual romance books which revolve around the romance and very little else.

I guess one criticism was that Ren was pretty similar to most female protagonists you find in a YA novel, and didn’t seem very unique. But you know what, I didn’t care. The romance was done well enough that it hardly seemed to matter. And I can’t fault the book for that.

All in all, I’ll give this a 4.

I can't believe I sat through this entire book.

This is an example of what happens when an author tries to mimic a YA dystopian future, but doesn't flesh out the world enough. This is what happens when the author concentrates on all the wrong aspects completely. This is also what happens when the author puts in a very shoddy and superficial love triangle, has the main character make constantly bad decisions (despite being supposedly "clever" and "flawless", by the admissions of everyone else around her), and manages to cram far too much content into too few pages.

It's disappointing, really, because the first chapter was really well-written. The world seemed well thought-out, it was a novel idea, but by gods that's where it ended. About two-thirds of the way through the book, it felt like the author had no real idea what she was doing, and it just felt like an utter trainwreck by the end of it. With a sequel planned, no less.

Here's the setting, then: the book is set in a world where people are branded for being "Flawed". That's for making morally unethical decisions - be it lying, stepping out of line of society, stealing from society (that's also in a metaphorical sense, too, which leads to all sorts of trouble). It also includes helping out another Flawed person.

In this world, Flawed people are treated like subhumans. They are constantly monitored, are bound by a strict curfew, must stick to a diet of bland food, are despised by the rest of society, and no more than two of them are allowed to be together at one time.

Oh, and they are *physically* branded when they become flawed - the courts have a branding iron placed upon a part of their body, branding the letter F on their body, and they must wear a red armband so everyone knows they are Flawed.

The first chapter of the book begins with our main character witnessing one of their close friends being arrested for being Flawed, for no other reason than because she took her ailing mother to a different country to administer euthanasia to them. So far, so good. We can already tell that the justice system is fucked up. Tell me more.

Our main character is called Celestine North. She's a model member of society and is deemed to be near-perfect. Class-A student. 

What happens is that she sees an old man suffering on a bus, and helps him to his seat. An old man who is Flawed. By doing so, she has aided a Flawed person, and is deemed Flawed herself. And punished accordingly.

Despite being only 17, the major courts are very angry at her and have her branded 5 times at different places on her body (mainly because this becomes a very public case for the media, her father works in the media as well), especially when she refuses to admit that she was wrong.

This, uh, seems a bit excessive. 

Not to mention that the main villain, Judge Crevan, goes further and puts a sixth brand on her spine without anaesthetic, which is quite illegal and fucked up.

Basically, that chapter was very hard to read and is mainly about the main character being tortured excessively because that's apparently the only way the author can make this impact upon us.

This part also takes half of the book.

We already know this happens from the synopsis on the back of the book. By the time it happens, the book is half over. Uh...I'm sure you could have made your book a bit longer? It hardly feels like anything happened except Celestine's court case...

Somehow, the next half of the book concentrates on how Celestine finds a way to fight back against this tyrannical organisation. Almost as if she's hardly weakened at all from being branded six times and subjected to prejudice and torture. There's also a graphic bullying scene which is also very hard to read through.

You're telling me that this one character has been put through to hell and back and, without even a thought for her own safety or anything, immediately starts trying to bring down Judge Crevan for administering that sixth brand illegally - I mean we could have some more thoughts from herself on the matter, maybe? Just a little? It just felt like she did it for terms of plot alone...

Nothing was fleshed out enough. There's another Flawed boy called Carrick, and Celestine somehow falls for him. They say one sentence to each other. That's all. Yet she somehow spends most of the book searching him out because she feels a connection to him - she doesn't even KNOW him. it's ridiculous.

Which makes one love triangle after another - her boyfriend Art who mysteriously disappears after her trial, then comes back, then finds out she is going to a party with another boy, then throws a jealous fit and disappears (and he NEVER returns again). And then another love triangle with Art and her sister?? Are you serious? Why put him in the book at all?!

There are also so many plot holes because apparently criminals have a separate justice system of their own, and once they serve their time, they get to have a normal life. As in, they're not Flawed. It doesn't make sense. How can you make someone Flawed for helping another Flawed being, and say that makes them lower than a murderer? Why is the criminal not also Flawed? It makes no sense at all...

A lot of the book was also based on the political impact.

This is where the book really fails, because Celestine is made out to be this great paragon of a rebellion against the organisation, even though nothing like that actually happens. If the book had been twice as long and the rebellion happened near the end, then maybe it would have made sense...but barely anything is fleshed out at all! It's somehow fast-paced without anything happening.

Like, her teachers at school refuse to teach her because she's Flawed. The one teacher who agrees to home-school her turns out to have political motives for her to speak at some kind of gathering of the Flawed and it just gets ridiculous. I got the impression that the Flawed aren't allowed to have gatherings like this, but apparently it's legal? There wasn't enough detail about any of this at all.

Oh, and don't get me started on Celestine herself.

She makes so many bad decisions. She goes around poking her nose into all of these situations which would see her in tons of trouble, and gets almost nothing for her efforts. She is easily tricked into attending a party by one of her classmates (who then kidnaps her and locks her in a shed to try and make her miss her curfew). And she keeps trying to search for that one guy called Carrick for no real reason other than because he was her age and happened to be in the same cell as her. (Again, they never said a word to each other.)

I see a lot of people hating on Celestine, but she's not a terrible character. She's just extremely bland and not that compelling of a protagonist. Her sister, Juniper, is actually rebellious and seems to know what to do, and I'm surprised that she doesn't have a bigger part to play. Her granddad is cool too. It's like everyone except Celestine is a decent character.

Near the end, the story dives into ever-more ridiculous territory as Celestine somehow single-handedly starts a riot just by standing up to a police officer (just one), has a long extended conversation with her teacher's Flawed husband (he appears just one chapter before the end and yet talks for several pages about plot-important stuff, even though he is also really drunk at the time and I couldn't take anything seriously here), and finally we discover that the other judges are turning on Judge Crevan and are willing to help out Celestine if they join their side.

Like, all these people are so willing to help Celestine. It's not as if she's alone. All these political sides everywhere, except I don't care at all because the author has forgotten to flesh out all of the other parts of the world. It just doesn't add up at all. It's just a really badly-written dystopian future (it feels more like a dystopian present) and so little is left out.

I don't know why Celestine acts so stupidly throughout the book, yet everyone excuses her actions and says what a clever girl she is because she studied mathematics. (The teacher's husband tells her that she can use mathematics to work out how to get out of her situation. I did mathematics at university. He's an idiot.) I don't know why the author chose to delve into the political side and leave out everything that could have been interesting.

I don't understand the reason for the terribly-written love triangle, or the love interest that never appears until the end, or the boyfriend who disappears in the second half of the book, or the desire to make the villains so ridiculously evil and sadistic that I can't take anything seriously anymore. 

By the end of it, I had come to the conclusion that this book is so bad that it's good. And good god, I am not reading the sequel.