A poisoned bolt has struck down the Princess Anita on the day of her wedding to Prince Arutha of Krondor.To save his beloved, Arutha sets out in search of the mytics herb called Silverthorn that only grows in the dark and forbidding land of the Spellweavers.Accompanied by a mercenary, a minstrel, and a clever young thief, he wil confront an ancient evil and do battle with the dark powers … with the dark powers that threaten the enchanted realm of Midkemia.
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“A thing of despair fashioned in a shape of utter horror descended from the sky.” – What a great line.
It’s been so long since I last read this, that it was like reading it for the first time. This is a middle book, that works really well to setup for the finale in ‘Darkness at Sethanon.’
In general, I loved the book. I think the pacing could have been a little better, especially at the start, but that’s a quibble.
As is usual for a Feist novel, themes of love, courage, duty and sacrifice in the face of tremendous, supernatural evil are front and center.
I enjoyed seeing Jimmy the Hand emerge as an important character in this book, he’s one of my favorite characters in the series.
Looking forward to the next book.
The next step in the Riftwar Saga after Magician:Apprentice & Magician:Master, Silverthorn takes a bit of a turn away from the story of Pug, at least for a while, to focus on the characters of Arutha and Jimmy.
Arutha’s bride-to-be Anita gets poisoned, and it’s up to Arutha and company to follow the clues and discover an antidote hidden in the far reaches of Midkemia. Will they make it in time?
It’s kind of odd how this story is considered the middle chapter of a larger cycle of a saga. Where the first two books had a definite strong direction with the foundation and growth of character in Pug, Silverthorn instead delves more into political intrigue and the relationship between two of the Riftwar’s supporting characters, Arutha and Jimmy. But this subplot is done very well, and I can see that both Arutha and Jimmy are destined for great things in the ongoing saga that is the Riftwar Cycle. Pug is in fact part of the story, and the journey he goes on is very important, it’s just less of a focus this time around. But if you are a fan of Pug thus far, you can tell in this story that he’s headed somewhere major.
I’m not saying that the different direction was a bad thing. It is actually kind of refreshing. Where this story slumps a fair bit is with the antagonists. What starts as a seemingly political attack on Anita leads to revelations that far larger things are going on, things that in theory are very interesting. But the agents of this evil are pretty weak. A sub-race of Elves are involved, followers of a dark path, and led by a certain mute, muscular, maniacal enemy. But this enemy was quite the let down, and in no way a comparison to the antagonists from the previous two books, or even compared to what has been hinted to come. Because of this, I never really felt the heroes were in any major peril, and the story suffered a bit because of that.
But I am very much looking forward to where the overall story goes from here.
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