Book Review – The Magicians Guild

The Black Magician Trilogy - Book One.
I love books with thieves in them. I like the idea of a thieves guild, run by a mastermind that often times has a heart of gold. Or at least looks out for the poor and downtrodden. Add a magician’s guild that services the rich and you have instant conflict, and who doesn’t love conflict?

The story starts off with Soneae, her family and the rest of the poor who live in the slums being pushed out of their homes/hovels/the streets in the annual “Purge” mandated by the King and carried out by the magician’s guild. As expected most of the magicians are a pompous bunch, believing that the slum dwellers deserve what they are getting as they are all thieves and cutthroats anyways. Soneae overhears the guards talking about a trap laid for a group of troublemakers that Soneae used to run with. She catches up with her old friends Cery and the leader of the gang Harrin. The gang escapes and as the magicians prepare to start the Purge the gang shows their defiance by pelting the magicians with rocks, rotten fruit and whatever they can get their hands on. Everything bounces off the shields the magicians have set up, until Soneae gets angry and throws a rock that gets through the shield and knocks a magician unconscious.

Cery helps Soneae avoid the magicians that are looking for her by introducing her to the thieves’ guild. They protect her until her budding magical powers get out of control. Soneae then has to decide if the magician’s really do want her, and if she wants them.