The Novice by Trudi Canavan
Unlike all of the other novices in the Magician's Guild, Sonea comes from lowly beginnings, the slums, though she has a few friends in high places in the guild. Unfortunately, those allies can't protect her from the campaign of bullying and lying rumors spearheaded by another novice, Regin, and there may be more than just teenage malice and class snobbery behind it. There seems to be no way Sonea can win and she can only take whatever the other novices dish out, especially since a lot of the teachers get turned against her. Meanwhile, the guild administrator is looking for proof that the High Lord is using forbidden black magic, even though he'd rather not believe it since Akkarin is a friend of his, and he's using Dannyl's recent promotion and travel abroad as ambassador to have Dannyl look into Akkarin's research years ago.
Things only get worse as Akkarin steps into Sonea's situation and isolates her further while forcing her to protect his secrets to keep her loved ones safe.
Trudi Canavan's The Novice starts out slow and somewhat uninvolving but definitely doesn't remain so. It probably didn't help that the beginning did some recapping of the previous book, The Magician's Guild. As the dangers mounted, I worried about most of the protagonist characters.
I even started to find Dannyl's journey and research interesting. I personally found the bullying sections difficult to read for emotional reasons.
I'll definitely pick up the next book, The High Lord.
Things only get worse as Akkarin steps into Sonea's situation and isolates her further while forcing her to protect his secrets to keep her loved ones safe.
Trudi Canavan's The Novice starts out slow and somewhat uninvolving but definitely doesn't remain so. It probably didn't help that the beginning did some recapping of the previous book, The Magician's Guild. As the dangers mounted, I worried about most of the protagonist characters.
I even started to find Dannyl's journey and research interesting. I personally found the bullying sections difficult to read for emotional reasons.
I'll definitely pick up the next book, The High Lord.