Review: Love it!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 11, 2011
J. M. Radcliffe's self-published novel, The Guardian's Apprentice is the story of a middle aged guy finding out he's a wizard. This is no Harry Potter though, Keegan's education in the world of magic beyond the Veil is a trial by fire. Three trials by fire to be exact. This is an action packed magical adventure complete with dragons, snarky cats, talking ravens and dark mystery.All in all this is a very solid fantasy. The world is well developed and we're quickly introduced to it through the trials and travels of Keegan, the main viewpoint character. The magic system isn't well defined, but it's pretty clear that it is the standard fantasy magic far with hexes and spells and incantations and whatnot. The main character and his cohorts are well fleshed out, and though some of the supporting characters are fantasy archetypes.I was really surprised by a few twists in the story! I thought that I knew what was going on and then suddenly I realize that things got turned on me. Usually I either figure these things out, or the twists are stupid and arbitrary but after looking back I realized that there was a lot of foreshadowing for this one. It was really fun to be surprised like that.The only problem that I had with this one was that Keegan is taken out of his world(the normal world) so quickly that we don't really get a good impression of what his life is like before he's brought over. There's a little too much telling and too little showing there, and it's all together too brief so that we don't get to fully see how Keegan changes over the course of the novel. We know that he's changing but we were only told how he acted before, we don't get to see it for ourselves. That was a little disappointing.But it didn't stop my enjoyment of the book! I'm in love with it and can't wait for the next in the series. I'll be picking up his anthology of short stories set in the world; Beyond the Veil Anthology - the world of The Guardian's Apprentice.