The Novice

Not gonna lie, this was super lukewarm for me. The Novice is about Fletcher, an orphan adopted by a blacksmith. They live in a small medieval type town on the edges of the kingdom. In this world, humans are warring with orcs, and not really getting along with dwarfs or elves either.

So, you know, Lord of the Rings.

To help fight the orcs, there are soldiers called Battlemages. Battlemages have been tested for an affinity for summoning and can summon demons from another world. They capture them and use them to help them fight.

So, you know, Pokemon.

Fletcher has never been tested-he lives too far away and they don't test orphans for reasons having to do with bloodlines and the implications of people not from certain noble families having Battlemage blood. But Fletcher is given a summoning scroll out of gratitude for a kindness, and he accidentally summons a demon--something he's not supposed to be able to do.

He leaves home and travels to the main city, where there's a school for training Battlemages. There, he is able to reach out and make friends with a dwarf, an elf, and other humans, which was incredibly uncommon given the bad history between the races. But Fletcher is just generally a good guy. I mean, a really good guy. He sticks up for people, he's not racist or prejudiced, he tries to include everyone. Except maybe the nobles at the school, who are, in all fairness, absolute douches. Because, you know, entitlement.

The book wasn't bad. I just didn't get into it. You could definitely see the author was heavily inspired by other fantasy worlds. There were also strong elements of the Eragon series at work (I didn't enjoy that either). I think it's a great story for someone who is new to fantasy (or even new to reading) and hasn't seen many of these elements before, but I read A LOT of fantasy. For me, it felt like I'd read the same story before.

I will comment on a couple of things I think it handled well.

First, Fletcher wasn't the most talented Battlemage at school. I think it was cool that the author didn't write Fletcher to be more powerful than everyone else. When they were determining levels, my expectations were conpletely turned on their heels when he turned out to be just average. He gets better using technology because it's the only way he can win the competition they have to be in at the end of their year. Plus, this new tech only comes about as a result of his friendly collaboration with dwarfs. 👍

Second, I think the racism aspect was handled very well throughout this book. It's definitely iffy (but necessary!) to handle social issues in books, and if they're not done well, there's a lot of blowback. Go look at some reviews of The Black Witch by Laurie Forest. I couldn'teven finish it because it was so problematic. I think Matharu was sensitice, had an open main character, and showed the benefits of cooperation between different races (in addition to the reality of many people being against it).

Again, I can see the appeal this story had for a lot readers, and clearly tons of people love it. It just didn't thrill me 🤷‍♀️