The Ambassador's Mission

didn't like the original serie

This is a dequel trilogy to The Black Magician trilogy which I re-read in the past few years. The original trilogy follows Sonea, a girl from the slums who is discovered to have magic and it taken to the Guild (and surrounded by nobles) to learn magic. The originally trilogy was my original introduction to adult fantasy books, and it was genuinely life changing. It opened up a new world of books and renewed my waning interest in reading.

To start, the original trilogy commented on the discrepancy between classes through self centred attitudes of the nobles. I found that to be one of the reasons I enjoyed the first trilogy so much, along side Canavan's writing and my deep love of Sonea. In this second trilogy, old favourite characters are there alongside Sonea's son, Lorkin. Lorkin is a young man with the ambition of finding ancient magic, but he doesn't yet have a strong personality on the page. This did hold the book back somewhat, as I do not feel any attachment for Lorkin. I am not particularly worried that this is a long term issue, because I remember finding the first book in The Black Magician trilogy slow therefore it is likely that the later books in the trilogy will develop him further.

All in all, I think this is a good start to the trilogy and I have high hopes for it to get better. I think I currently own all of Canavan's back list books, and I would quite like to read as many of them as possible in 2019.

This is the second read of this book and it's just lovely to read. It doesn't have the punch of the first trilogy but it's wonderful to be back in this world. The writing is very well done and the character and world building is excellent as always. Definitely recommend anything by this author.