Book completed

[eve_prime]

Magician: Apprentice, by Raymond E. Feist. Riftwars 1a. Since I wasn't going to read the Mary Russell books at bedtime, I thought the Riftwars books would be pleasant to reread; I had quite enjoyed them maybe 20 years ago. Well, no... times have changed. The story of a boy who grows up in a castle and becomes apprenticed to a magician, in a world with very conventional medieval European-style royalty, and with neighbors who are elves, dwarves, dark elves, and goblins, felt jarringly "vanilla" after all of the more creative fantasy I've read since then. Legends & Lattes also has elves, dwarves, orcs, hobgoblins, gnomes, etc. but doesn't feel "vanilla" at all - for one thing, the women are allowed to DO stuff. Legends & Lattes pushes back against stereotypes, while Magician: Apprentice just works within them, although many scenes are pleasant enough. The book does get more interesting around page 106, when something definitely unusual happens (the kingdom gets invaded by warriors from another world, who come through a dimensional rift), but after that it's all "can we get the allies we need or will politics and personalities get in the way" and then lots of warfare. Not even good bedtime reading. At some point I'll probably read the other half of Magician, and then I can go on to the Empire books, which I do remember as much more interesting (and I'm pretty sure it does eventually give a rationale for why the invading people are a hybrid of Earth's Japanese and Aztecs, which seems pretty clunky in this first book).