Looking for a new fantasy author to get into. Any Raymond Feist fans here? What books do you recommend? The Firemane saga sounds kinda dark and interesting. (King of Ashes)
I've done the original trilogy numerous times, but I'm currently (still) making my way through the whole series.
I'm on the first book of Demonwar at the moment. I just don't feel the same connection with the newer characters that I did with the OGs. The last ones I really liked were Tal, and his antagonist (especially in book 3 of Conclave).
Incredible world builder and plotter, I sometimes feel his characters are a mixed bag.
Agree with the other suggestion that starting at the start with Magician is a good idea. Daughter of Empire is probably my favourite Fiest book which he wrote with Janny Wurts.
You know, when I was a kid, my parents got me Daughter of the Empire for my birthday. I read it and was absolutely hooked and saved up and read the trilogy. Such a deeply satisfying trilogy. Years later, I discovered Magician was part of the series, so I bought it. I had no idea it was supposed to be read first. Of course it was amazing, and I read the whole series.
BUT. I had probably a very different attitude to the Empire than most readers reading the Magician side of things, feeling deep sympathy for a system that effectively threw warriors into a meat grinder. I still think of Mara and her beautifully written character arc decades later, and particularly her relationship with Keyoke. His description of their relationship is so lovely (I won't give it away!), and I've thought of it often through life as how many step or adoptee parents might describe their relationship with a child.
Couldn't like that trilogy very much. Despite her justifications, Mara acts very much like every other villain, only that she has literal plot armor thanks to the entire Divine Pantheon being explicitly out to protect her.
I was a huge Feist fan a teenager and bought any book I could get my hands on but for some reason I could never find the series with Janny Wurts. I now have it on Kobo and need to read it at some point.
It has been almost 20 years since I read them so it is rough to remember in detail but probably Magician or Darkness at Sethanon.
That feels a bit obvious though. Like I said in another comment I enjoyed Krondor the Betrayal which rarely gets any love. Probably because I played the game first.
As a young teen I read the Magician books up through the serepentwar saga and the demonwar saga and all the books in between. I very much enjoyed them. High fantasy adventure with a sort of anime style 'there's always a bigger more powerful being to fight' trope. But fun to read and they move very fast.
I did a reread a few years back, much older now,though, and found them a bit too simple. They are quite classic in style and tropes.
Very enjoyable if that's what you're looking for but in a similar vein to R.A. Salvator or the Dragonlance books imo, so if you were looking for something heavier or more adult I wouldn't recommend.
The three books he did with Hickman about the Tsurani culture derived from those books are better and more interesting imo.
Absolutely glorious and i ack the omission, honestly i give Janny Wurtz most of the credit for that trilo, Feist just set the table, but you're right it belongs on there.
Are you kidding? Feist is amazing! Start with Magician’s Apprentice! (Some countries/editions just call it Magician because Apprentice and Master are in the same volume)
Conveniently it's also probably where you should end.
I'd say that only Magician and Daughter of the Empire are worth reading.
Mmmmaybe the two books after Magician but after that Midkemia goes completely off the rails anime style where every new series is the introduction of X new big bad.
Tend to agree, although Rise of a Merchant Prince was part of the inspiration for Scott Lynch to write The Lies of Locke Lamora, so I have to give it points for that. Because I enjoyed Faerie Tale I would have liked to see him write more non Midkemia stuff, too.
It's good! Well, the earlier stuff at least. I read it up to the serpentwar saga. The Empire trilogy particularly has stayed in my mind since the '90s. I tried to get back into it with audiobooks, but didn't much like the reader, so i'm just waiting on a chance to pick up the books. Unfortunately, life.
His first book was his best imo. The rest of it is just ho hum but you do genuinely end up loving alot of the characters
There is a series he could wrote with Janny Wurts thats gives the bad guys point of view from his first 3 books which imo is 3 of the best books in the entire genre and has my 2nd favourite female character in all of fantasy.
Magician is amazing. The introduction of the world, how magic works, the character evolution is well done.
After that... it goes up and down a bit. Everything through to the end of the Serpentwar Saga is pretty solid.
Then is starts to get steadily (albeit slowly) lightweight. Things happen, but there's less detail than before, and the story becomes fairly loose. Firemane I found disappointing for reasons I won't spoil here, but in part because of how light and fluffy it felt in comparison to his earlier works.
I'd recommend the Daughter of the Empire series that he co-wrote with Janny Wurts. It's an in-depth look at the enemy faction from the Magician series. Magician feels like young adult and generic fantasy, while Empire has more mature themes.
Pretty average really. Fairly predictable story arcs, some interesting characters, relationships and concepts but all in all it comes of as fairly middle of the road fantasy that often carry's a few too many YA tropes for the most part.
The world building and magic systems are very good, so if that's your bag then it's worth the read.
It's worth remembering they are a bit dated, so much of what now seems to be very heavily trodden ground wasn't so much the case at the time of writing.
I just read Magician and to me, that book is nearly the perfect definition of "OK." Interesting world building but it was difficult for me to care about the characters on their merits. It felt kind of generic, although it's possible that it wouldn't have felt that way if I hadn't read so much sci-fi in my life. I do think you can do better but you probably won't regret reading it either.
Really enjoyed Magician as a kid, and IMO it still held up in my 20s.
It’s a nice, easy-reading, 80s/90s fantasy story. Not trying super-hard to surprise/shock the reader, not performatively cynical, no real political angle. So it can be a nice change of pace from contemporary stuff which tends to lean hard into one of those.
I enjoy the classic fantasy of a lot of his books especially the early ones. There is a comfort food type vibe to them for me. I started reading his stuff in high school and will always have a soft spot them.
I do find the later books that I don't have that same nostalgia for to not be nearly as good when compared to a lot of other contemporary authors. I will force myself one of these days to read them just to see how it all pans out and no doubt be disappointed.
The thing to remember when reading early Feist is that what may seem to be overused fantasy tropes were not all that common when the books were written. Also, they are excellent.
They re-introduced me to fantasy as a teenager, and I recently re-read Magician, and I still like it. I also recently re-read Faerie Tale and it is also great!
I hadn't read anything by him before, but I started the Riftwar saga a few days ago. I'm about halfway through the first volume, "Magician" (the one-volume edition).
The story is told in a relatively straightforward way and reads extremely smoothly, even though you can somehow tell it was written in the '80s. It always gives off a bit of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign vibe.
I like it.
Thankyou you, I had no idea he had stuff outside of the RiftWar Cycle!
I've been reading and reading various RiftWar books for a LONG time and they're some of my favourites . I recently ish started going through in order from the start on audio books and am getting towards the end.
I love them. I'm sure they're not for everyone, some people expect a lot from books, but for me it's got good world building (both the 'world' and the wider universe), great characters, epic stories. There's enough intrigue and mystery without needing too much brain power, they're very easy to enjoy.
As with a lot of older fantasy you do need to accept some tropes in the early series...ya know, the young farm boy in a small village then an event puts him the in the centre of everything etc as a start, but it's not too cheesy with it.
I think he was great but suffered 2 issues as he went on, power creep and he wrote himself into a corner, may also have been a bit if nostalgia mixed in
I loved the magician series growing up and was quite surprised to learn that many people hate it. I'm about to start my first reread in a long time but I honestly doubt my opinion will change, if for no other reason than nostalgia
I have only read Magician (Apprentice and Master) so can only comment on it/them. It is very traditional/classic fantasy full of tropes but at the same time has some very cool ideas/worldbuilding. It manages to be both epic and cozy in scale at the same time somehow. Comfort Fantasy.
I enjoyed the rift war cycle in a similar way to how I enjoy Jason Statham movies, which is to say I know they’re not high literature and there are some plot holes, but they’re enjoyable reads and I burned through the whole lot in about 8 months
I read them about ten years ago and I thought the Magician books were enjoyable but I remember absolutely nothing about them except there was a character named Pug. It's like Taco Bell, enjoyable but that shit went straight through me.
Surely the best place to start is with the Magician books, the first 3-4 depending on UK/US publishing as sometimes the first book is split in two. They are fun classic fantasy that has an interesting "two worlds" concept. The Daughter of the Empire trilogy tells the other side of that arc and is a great story.
Don't expect the emotional depth of Robin Hobb, or the political complexity and foreshadowing of Martin, or the characterisation and dialogue of Abercrombie. But what Feist gives you is a gripping bildungsroman adventure of a young boy becoming a powerful magician in a classic fantasy setting, with a big focus on friendship and family.
The series went on for 20+ books set in the same world with some arcs and standalones much better than others.
Loved the first Trilogy , enjoyed the next and the sons of Krondor duo … but then found diminishing returns and lost interest. I think the first Trilogy was an excellent bridge between more (what might now be called) young adult fantasy , and then darker , denser adult fiction?
Feist has an incredibly rich world - but that isn't a surprise seeing as he is only one of the co-creators of the world.
You'll find the first trilogy a great read and then after that you'll find character archetypes being re-used and plot points being re-used. Then towards the latter parts of the series a lot of the world building just seems kind of random and a lot of the writing just seems like he phoned it in. There is a big drop off in quality in the latter books.
If you want to read Feist then the first trilogy is a must and the Empire series (that he co-wrote with Janny Wurts) is a must too. After that you can dip out of the entire thing if you want as not a whole lot of the books are worth it.
Well worth trying. Like others my first books were the Empire books. Then you do the magician series. If you don't like him by then, abort the mission.
I recently started finished Robin Hod's the Assassin's Apprentice and I kept thinking of Feist. It has been decades since I read Feist and it may all be just fond memories, but the feeling was real.
Feist was pretty formative in my fantasy reading so I have opinions on this. And people ask for opinions on his books often enough that I have the following pre-prepared.
The Original Riftwar Saga is a wonderful story. A fantastic piece of genre history. Yes, the world is derivative. Almost all fantasy was back then. But the story it tells is expansive, epic, and magical. And yet somehow Silverthorn, in the middle, is as prosaic a fantasy story as exists. Go to place, get magical doodad, save person. Not bad, but not worthy of the trilogy. Worth reading as a part of a larger whole.
Skip the Legends of the Riftwar books. They're completely ancillary and not great. If you really really love Jimmy The Hand you can read that one.
The Empire Trilogy is the best of it. Janny Wurts really helped elevate Feist.
The Riftwar Legacy is fine. It mostly gets by on the strength of Jimmy and Locky's friendship.
Many people dislike Krondor's Sons and I can understand why. Personally, I think this one is worth it for a certain character it introduces and for the groundwork it lays for the Serpentwar.
The Serpentwar Saga is the best the Riftwar Cycle will ever be again. It's not better than the original trilogy or Empire, but I enjoyed it a lot.
The Conclave of Shadows is the last part of the Riftwar Cycle I can honestly say I enjoyed. I consider it a step down from Serpentwar, but still enjoyable.
The Darkwar Saga - You should probably stop.
The Demon War Saga - Please stop.
The Chaoswar Saga - Why?
The Firemane Saga - This was supposed to be a new thing. Did you... Why did... This isn't helping!
The Dragonwar Saga - I don't know. I don't want to know. I'm done.
Well worth reading. Haven't read King of Ashes, but the Daughter of Empire trilogy with Janny Wurts is excellent and the first 3 or so of the Magician series are worth it. Epic fantasy, not dark fantasy though.
I would definately say his early stuff is (start with Magician, or Magician: Apprentice if the split up version) is particularly good and the Firemane Saga trilogy is one his more questionable works quality wise, so I definately would not start there. It definately would fall into the category only getting to it and the later books in his normal Midkemia series his like the earlier stuff enough that you still feel like continuing.
The Midkemia series as a whole gets worse as it goes on. He has a thing for bringing the same characters back over and over again. Either literally from the dead or just having a duplicate character born in the family to replace an old character.
That said it’s overall in my top 5 fantasy series all time. I pick at it a lot because I love what he built.
I read Magician: Apprentice and enjoyed 3/4 of the story but then the final portion read like war reports from the front rather than the previous engaging narrative. Is that what the rest of the series will be or does it return to the more personal engaging narrative style?
One of my favourites when I as younger. Depends on what you’re looking for. Yes it’s tropey but don’t go in expecting Malazan or anything and you’ll be fine
I read it when it was new and have re-read it about 5 years ago for the 4th time total. I even played an old '93 PC game about it lol. I just looked that up while typing this and it's 9/10 on Steam lmao. It's a good long series, I'm very happy to have read it. I wouldn't start with Firemane, you really should start Feist at Magician Apprentice
His early stuff is fantastic. His later stuff (what I've read of it) is okay
Magician trilogy is great, empire trilogy is great. Personally I'd stop there
Kings Buccaneer and Serpentwar were mostly fine.
I started at Serpentwar haha. I think the saga is good
I've done the original trilogy numerous times, but I'm currently (still) making my way through the whole series.
I'm on the first book of Demonwar at the moment. I just don't feel the same connection with the newer characters that I did with the OGs. The last ones I really liked were Tal, and his antagonist (especially in book 3 of Conclave).
This is where i almost gave up. Ended up skimming through it. Last saga was fun again.
It felt like after the 1st 2 Riftwar Saga (1st 2 trilogies basically), the other 3 trilogies were just repeating the same trope over and over again.
But yeah, I personally re-read The Empire Trilogy so many times, and still hold fond thoughts of The Magician Trilogy!
Incredible world builder and plotter, I sometimes feel his characters are a mixed bag.
Agree with the other suggestion that starting at the start with Magician is a good idea. Daughter of Empire is probably my favourite Fiest book which he wrote with Janny Wurts.
You know, when I was a kid, my parents got me Daughter of the Empire for my birthday. I read it and was absolutely hooked and saved up and read the trilogy. Such a deeply satisfying trilogy. Years later, I discovered Magician was part of the series, so I bought it. I had no idea it was supposed to be read first. Of course it was amazing, and I read the whole series.
BUT. I had probably a very different attitude to the Empire than most readers reading the Magician side of things, feeling deep sympathy for a system that effectively threw warriors into a meat grinder. I still think of Mara and her beautifully written character arc decades later, and particularly her relationship with Keyoke. His description of their relationship is so lovely (I won't give it away!), and I've thought of it often through life as how many step or adoptee parents might describe their relationship with a child.
That's awesome. Wurts and Fiesr really complement each other perfectly in that series.
I discovered them in this order too and very much enjoyed them all.
Couldn't like that trilogy very much. Despite her justifications, Mara acts very much like every other villain, only that she has literal plot armor thanks to the entire Divine Pantheon being explicitly out to protect her.
The Daughter of the Empire trilogy is so much better than anything either he or Wurts delivered alone.
That's interesting, I haven't actually read any other of her stuff but I feel she really added a new element to fiests world.
You should try one or 2 at least, shes IMO and excellent author.
Second this. The magician quadrilogy is great
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In some instances Magician was split into two volumes : Magician Apprentice and Magician Master. That was my own experience with the series.
Same here, when I read it (30 years ago) it was Magician: Apprentice and Magician : Master)
I was a huge Feist fan a teenager and bought any book I could get my hands on but for some reason I could never find the series with Janny Wurts. I now have it on Kobo and need to read it at some point.
Do you have a favourite of Fiests books?
It has been almost 20 years since I read them so it is rough to remember in detail but probably Magician or Darkness at Sethanon.
That feels a bit obvious though. Like I said in another comment I enjoyed Krondor the Betrayal which rarely gets any love. Probably because I played the game first.
Oh nice, I haven't actually read Krondor the Betrayal so I might need to give it a go.
Oof, the dialogue was drawn from the game. It felt painful to me.
As a young teen I read the Magician books up through the serepentwar saga and the demonwar saga and all the books in between. I very much enjoyed them. High fantasy adventure with a sort of anime style 'there's always a bigger more powerful being to fight' trope. But fun to read and they move very fast.
I did a reread a few years back, much older now,though, and found them a bit too simple. They are quite classic in style and tropes.
Very enjoyable if that's what you're looking for but in a similar vein to R.A. Salvator or the Dragonlance books imo, so if you were looking for something heavier or more adult I wouldn't recommend.
The three books he did with Hickman about the Tsurani culture derived from those books are better and more interesting imo.
I haven't read his newer work, yet.
Hickman? Janny Wurts
Faerie Tale - very good.
Magician/Silverthorn/Darkness - classic epic fantasy.
ETA Also, the related Empire trilogy w Janny Wurtz - exceptional.
King's Bucaneer/Prince of the Blood - good enough.
Honored Enemy - brilliant.
Serpentwar - good to great start, fails to stick the landing.
Everything after - meh.
Are you forgetting the Empire stuff? Hard to imagine it belongs in meh, I think it's his best work by a wide margin, personally.
Absolutely glorious and i ack the omission, honestly i give Janny Wurtz most of the credit for that trilo, Feist just set the table, but you're right it belongs on there.
Are you kidding? Feist is amazing! Start with Magician’s Apprentice! (Some countries/editions just call it Magician because Apprentice and Master are in the same volume)
The whole Riftwar and Serpentwar Saga (including their spinoff / side character books) are great.
After that it’s hit and miss.
He was my introduction into fantasy so I will always have positive things to say.
If you read him back when it came out, yes , now only if you like classic fantasy.
I always like to start at the beginning and with Feist that’s Magician.
Conveniently it's also probably where you should end.
I'd say that only Magician and Daughter of the Empire are worth reading.
Mmmmaybe the two books after Magician but after that Midkemia goes completely off the rails anime style where every new series is the introduction of X new big bad.
Tend to agree, although Rise of a Merchant Prince was part of the inspiration for Scott Lynch to write The Lies of Locke Lamora, so I have to give it points for that. Because I enjoyed Faerie Tale I would have liked to see him write more non Midkemia stuff, too.
It's good! Well, the earlier stuff at least. I read it up to the serpentwar saga. The Empire trilogy particularly has stayed in my mind since the '90s. I tried to get back into it with audiobooks, but didn't much like the reader, so i'm just waiting on a chance to pick up the books. Unfortunately, life.
His first book was his best imo. The rest of it is just ho hum but you do genuinely end up loving alot of the characters
There is a series he could wrote with Janny Wurts thats gives the bad guys point of view from his first 3 books which imo is 3 of the best books in the entire genre and has my 2nd favourite female character in all of fantasy.
Faeiry Tale was a fantastic book, highly recommend. And I'm a picky reader!
Amazing book
I definitely read a bunch of these many years ago. I retained none of it. Make of that what you will, I think it is a vote for just OK
Magician is amazing. The introduction of the world, how magic works, the character evolution is well done.
After that... it goes up and down a bit. Everything through to the end of the Serpentwar Saga is pretty solid.
Then is starts to get steadily (albeit slowly) lightweight. Things happen, but there's less detail than before, and the story becomes fairly loose. Firemane I found disappointing for reasons I won't spoil here, but in part because of how light and fluffy it felt in comparison to his earlier works.
I'd recommend the Daughter of the Empire series that he co-wrote with Janny Wurts. It's an in-depth look at the enemy faction from the Magician series. Magician feels like young adult and generic fantasy, while Empire has more mature themes.
I haven't read it in years, but I really liked Faerie Tale.
I came here to say this, I read it last year and it holds up well
Pretty average really. Fairly predictable story arcs, some interesting characters, relationships and concepts but all in all it comes of as fairly middle of the road fantasy that often carry's a few too many YA tropes for the most part. The world building and magic systems are very good, so if that's your bag then it's worth the read. It's worth remembering they are a bit dated, so much of what now seems to be very heavily trodden ground wasn't so much the case at the time of writing.
I would read Magicians Apprentice first, that book god me hooked from page one it should do the same for you.
Feist is awesome, I have a full bookshelf of his stuff.
I did lose interest after like 15-20 books or so, but if you get that far, you'll be as happy as I am. Time well spent reading that series.
Magician, silverthorn, darkness at sethanon are excellent
Ditto the daughter of the empire series and the serpent war saga
The rest are merely ok
I really enjoyed them as a teenager but they got a bit repetitive and a couple of characters in particular suffer from power scaling problems.
One I feel is a bit underrated is Krondor the Betrayal which was also a video game. The rest of the Krondor books are mid to bad though.
Loved that game.
I'm a fan. I haven't read Firemane yet, still slowly working my way through the Riftwar Saga (I'm about a dozen books in).
Very good. A great world to jump into.
Worth a read through!
Glad to see Faerie TaLe get a mention. Its different for Feist, but of his work I think it’s my favourite, possibly because it is so different.
I liked him back when I was in school. Revisiting him decades later, I found him incredibly derivative and pretty boring.
I just read Magician and to me, that book is nearly the perfect definition of "OK." Interesting world building but it was difficult for me to care about the characters on their merits. It felt kind of generic, although it's possible that it wouldn't have felt that way if I hadn't read so much sci-fi in my life. I do think you can do better but you probably won't regret reading it either.
It's weird seeing it without the 'E.', but I loved Magician's series. Haven't read the rest.
Lol I used to read his books when I was young (13-14) and they helped get me in to fantasy….. then around the same age I tried game of thrones 😳
I think I actually grew up between the front and back cover of game of thrones
Really enjoyed Magician as a kid, and IMO it still held up in my 20s.
It’s a nice, easy-reading, 80s/90s fantasy story. Not trying super-hard to surprise/shock the reader, not performatively cynical, no real political angle. So it can be a nice change of pace from contemporary stuff which tends to lean hard into one of those.
I enjoy the classic fantasy of a lot of his books especially the early ones. There is a comfort food type vibe to them for me. I started reading his stuff in high school and will always have a soft spot them.
I do find the later books that I don't have that same nostalgia for to not be nearly as good when compared to a lot of other contemporary authors. I will force myself one of these days to read them just to see how it all pans out and no doubt be disappointed.
The thing to remember when reading early Feist is that what may seem to be overused fantasy tropes were not all that common when the books were written. Also, they are excellent.
They re-introduced me to fantasy as a teenager, and I recently re-read Magician, and I still like it. I also recently re-read Faerie Tale and it is also great!
I hadn't read anything by him before, but I started the Riftwar saga a few days ago. I'm about halfway through the first volume, "Magician" (the one-volume edition). The story is told in a relatively straightforward way and reads extremely smoothly, even though you can somehow tell it was written in the '80s. It always gives off a bit of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign vibe. I like it.
That's how it started. Midkemia was the setting for a game him and his friends played in university.
Thankyou you, I had no idea he had stuff outside of the RiftWar Cycle!
I've been reading and reading various RiftWar books for a LONG time and they're some of my favourites . I recently ish started going through in order from the start on audio books and am getting towards the end.
I love them. I'm sure they're not for everyone, some people expect a lot from books, but for me it's got good world building (both the 'world' and the wider universe), great characters, epic stories. There's enough intrigue and mystery without needing too much brain power, they're very easy to enjoy.
As with a lot of older fantasy you do need to accept some tropes in the early series...ya know, the young farm boy in a small village then an event puts him the in the centre of everything etc as a start, but it's not too cheesy with it.
Huge fan. Feist was my Tolkien growing up. Really introduced me to the fantasy setting.
Pug, Thomas, Arurha... many other great characters!
I quite enjoyed the early stuff. Some of the somewhat later stuff was alright.
I haven't kept up with all his writings and never heard of the one mentioned in the post.
I think he was great but suffered 2 issues as he went on, power creep and he wrote himself into a corner, may also have been a bit if nostalgia mixed in
I loved the magician series growing up and was quite surprised to learn that many people hate it. I'm about to start my first reread in a long time but I honestly doubt my opinion will change, if for no other reason than nostalgia
I have only read Magician (Apprentice and Master) so can only comment on it/them. It is very traditional/classic fantasy full of tropes but at the same time has some very cool ideas/worldbuilding. It manages to be both epic and cozy in scale at the same time somehow. Comfort Fantasy.
Faerie Tale
It's stand alone, though he has many good series books.
I enjoyed the rift war cycle in a similar way to how I enjoy Jason Statham movies, which is to say I know they’re not high literature and there are some plot holes, but they’re enjoyable reads and I burned through the whole lot in about 8 months
I read them about ten years ago and I thought the Magician books were enjoyable but I remember absolutely nothing about them except there was a character named Pug. It's like Taco Bell, enjoyable but that shit went straight through me.
How does one forget Nakor?
Surely the best place to start is with the Magician books, the first 3-4 depending on UK/US publishing as sometimes the first book is split in two. They are fun classic fantasy that has an interesting "two worlds" concept. The Daughter of the Empire trilogy tells the other side of that arc and is a great story.
Don't expect the emotional depth of Robin Hobb, or the political complexity and foreshadowing of Martin, or the characterisation and dialogue of Abercrombie. But what Feist gives you is a gripping bildungsroman adventure of a young boy becoming a powerful magician in a classic fantasy setting, with a big focus on friendship and family.
The series went on for 20+ books set in the same world with some arcs and standalones much better than others.
Loved the first Trilogy , enjoyed the next and the sons of Krondor duo … but then found diminishing returns and lost interest. I think the first Trilogy was an excellent bridge between more (what might now be called) young adult fantasy , and then darker , denser adult fiction?
My introduction to fantasy as a teen. The opening trilogy to the Riftwar Saga (Magician, Silverthorn, A Darkness at Sethanon) is great.
Feist has an incredibly rich world - but that isn't a surprise seeing as he is only one of the co-creators of the world.
You'll find the first trilogy a great read and then after that you'll find character archetypes being re-used and plot points being re-used. Then towards the latter parts of the series a lot of the world building just seems kind of random and a lot of the writing just seems like he phoned it in. There is a big drop off in quality in the latter books.
If you want to read Feist then the first trilogy is a must and the Empire series (that he co-wrote with Janny Wurts) is a must too. After that you can dip out of the entire thing if you want as not a whole lot of the books are worth it.
Well worth trying. Like others my first books were the Empire books. Then you do the magician series. If you don't like him by then, abort the mission.
I recently started finished Robin Hod's the Assassin's Apprentice and I kept thinking of Feist. It has been decades since I read Feist and it may all be just fond memories, but the feeling was real.
I did not enjoy his Magician’s Apprentice book so never continued
Feist was pretty formative in my fantasy reading so I have opinions on this. And people ask for opinions on his books often enough that I have the following pre-prepared.
The Original Riftwar Saga is a wonderful story. A fantastic piece of genre history. Yes, the world is derivative. Almost all fantasy was back then. But the story it tells is expansive, epic, and magical. And yet somehow Silverthorn, in the middle, is as prosaic a fantasy story as exists. Go to place, get magical doodad, save person. Not bad, but not worthy of the trilogy. Worth reading as a part of a larger whole.
Skip the Legends of the Riftwar books. They're completely ancillary and not great. If you really really love Jimmy The Hand you can read that one.
The Empire Trilogy is the best of it. Janny Wurts really helped elevate Feist.
The Riftwar Legacy is fine. It mostly gets by on the strength of Jimmy and Locky's friendship.
Many people dislike Krondor's Sons and I can understand why. Personally, I think this one is worth it for a certain character it introduces and for the groundwork it lays for the Serpentwar.
The Serpentwar Saga is the best the Riftwar Cycle will ever be again. It's not better than the original trilogy or Empire, but I enjoyed it a lot.
The Conclave of Shadows is the last part of the Riftwar Cycle I can honestly say I enjoyed. I consider it a step down from Serpentwar, but still enjoyable.
The Darkwar Saga - You should probably stop.
The Demon War Saga - Please stop.
The Chaoswar Saga - Why?
The Firemane Saga - This was supposed to be a new thing. Did you... Why did... This isn't helping!
The Dragonwar Saga - I don't know. I don't want to know. I'm done.
Well worth reading. Haven't read King of Ashes, but the Daughter of Empire trilogy with Janny Wurts is excellent and the first 3 or so of the Magician series are worth it. Epic fantasy, not dark fantasy though.
He’s honestly all three at various points in Riftwar
Feist was great when I was a kid. As noted the Magician and Daughter of Empire books are good, albeit a bit derivative.
Over time I bored of Feist as his characters began to repeat themselves. Solid A-/B first few books then B-/C moving onward.
I would definately say his early stuff is (start with Magician, or Magician: Apprentice if the split up version) is particularly good and the Firemane Saga trilogy is one his more questionable works quality wise, so I definately would not start there. It definately would fall into the category only getting to it and the later books in his normal Midkemia series his like the earlier stuff enough that you still feel like continuing.
The Midkemia series as a whole gets worse as it goes on. He has a thing for bringing the same characters back over and over again. Either literally from the dead or just having a duplicate character born in the family to replace an old character.
That said it’s overall in my top 5 fantasy series all time. I pick at it a lot because I love what he built.
I’ve only read magician, so take my opinion with the grain of salt, but I found it was okay.
I DNFed magician. Flat characters, weak prose, very tropey.
I read Magician: Apprentice and enjoyed 3/4 of the story but then the final portion read like war reports from the front rather than the previous engaging narrative. Is that what the rest of the series will be or does it return to the more personal engaging narrative style?
One of my favourites when I as younger. Depends on what you’re looking for. Yes it’s tropey but don’t go in expecting Malazan or anything and you’ll be fine
Riftwar and to a lesser extent serpentwar decent, after that you can tell hes filling contractual obligations
He’s written a lot of books, some are great, some are good, some are OK, a few aren’t great.
Magician series was great. Empire was great. Everything after that is somewhat recycled.
Best in the market. Hands down.
The Betrayal at Krondor video game is an underappreciated gem.
I read it when it was new and have re-read it about 5 years ago for the 4th time total. I even played an old '93 PC game about it lol. I just looked that up while typing this and it's 9/10 on Steam lmao. It's a good long series, I'm very happy to have read it. I wouldn't start with Firemane, you really should start Feist at Magician Apprentice
He was probably almost as instrumental as Tolkien in getting fantasy books being taken seriously imho.
He's just... Tired.
Weak characters, honestly none of them are even remotely better than average.
Decent world and world building.
Good plots, most of the time.
Nice guy, pedestrian writer.
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