Published: November 1, 1982
Publisher: Spectra
Series: The Riftwar Saga #2
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 523 (Kindle)
My Rating: 5 Stars
Synopsis:
He held the fate of two worlds in his hands…
Once he was an orphan called Pug, apprenticed to a sorcerer of the enchanted land of Midkemia.. Then he was captured and enslaved by the Tsurani, a strange, warlike race of invaders from another world.
There, in the exotic Empire of Kelewan, he earned a new name–Milamber. He learned to tame the unnimagined powers that lay withing him. And he took his place in an ancient struggle against an evil Enemy older than time itself.
Magician: Master picks up with the character arc I really wanted in Magician: Apprentice – Pug is back! Pug is also enslaved by the Tsurani in another world, working in a swamp alongside both captured Midkemians and Tsurani. Fortune favors Pug however, because he and another prisoner named Laurie are taken from the slave camp by an influential family in order to train them in all things Midkemian. There’s some deeper Tsurani politics in play here that weren’t apparent in Magician: Apprentice because we didn’t have any POV chapters from them.
The whole of Magician: Master is a way to expound on the Tsurani culture and humanize them so that they are more than these fuzzily detailed foreign invaders. Pug has been in this strange world for years and things aren’t so strange at this point. He’s had to adapt to survive and entering the household of the Shinzawai alongside Laurie with the sole purpose of training Kasumi Shinzawai to speak Midkemian, sit a horse, and generally understand the culture might be the strangest thing that’s happened to him yet. It all comes back to politics – some of the Tsurani want to make an overture of peace, but the Warlord in power wishes otherwise. Things do get stranger (but more exciting for the reader) when a visiting magic practitioner, called Great Ones in this society, discovers that Pug has a talent for magic and sweeps him off for training.
On the flip side in Midkemia, we continue to follow Arutha, Tomas, and many of the other characters from Magician: Apprentice as they wage an endless war that is going further and further in the favor of the Tsurani. On top of this, politics further complicates things (it always does, doesn’t it?) because King Rodric grows more insane and Guy du Bas-Tyra flexes his influence further, thus alienating the West from aid and influence.
This book takes place over the span of years – I think a total of 10 years passes from the start of Apprentice through the end of Master – so characters are changing a great deal and the story zooms in on particularly interesting bits in the timeline. There’s not a lot of wasted time and things like Pug’s training in the Tsurani magic school take place over the span of a chapter or so. The important bits are there but you don’t have to slog through years of tedium – the payoff is what matters! This, along with jumps between character POVs, can be somewhat disorienting at times because things aren’t labeled like ‘2 years later’ and there aren’t headers indicating POV changes. I would find myself reading a paragraph or so before my brain finally caught up!
Overall, I found this to be the stronger of the two books and it had tremendous payoff at the end which I was surprised to find wasn’t a cliffhanger. This pair of books, often bound up as one, could easily be read without the need to read further installments. Now, there are a TON of books set in this world but it’s my understanding that some of the spinoffs and later additions aren’t of the same quality. I will definitely be finishing the original Riftwar series, which includes Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon because I have lovely editions from The Broken Binding arriving in June and July.
Powder & Page 
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