Rating: 
Summary: Masterfully Written
Review: This book was simply amazing. At times it felt like I was reading one of the Lord of the Rings books but besides that everything seemed creative and original. Feist threw many very good ideas together in the book. He did a good job in making everything nice and understandable. While I was reading the book I felt like I was actually connecting with the characters. If you like fiction books then picking this up would be no mistake.
Rating: 
Summary: A classic story, but awkward writing.
Review: "Magician," Feist's debut novel, is widely revered as a fantasy classic. However, from a more detailed vantage, it remains only a classic story as the mediocre prose wilts under close reading. The plot of young boys like Pug and Tomas rising to their fanciful childhood aspirations of great warriors and sorcerers has been done before and since, but Feist fills his story with poignant details that make the character's growths seem real. The world of Midkemia comes alive with rich detail and history, the creation of Feist and a group of role playing gamer friends in the late 1970s. (To his credit, Feist has always acknowledged "The Friday Nighters" for their role in building Midkemia). Several of the supporting characters, including Arutha, Jimmy, and Amos Trask, are so well drawn that they nearly eclipse the two main characters. The political machinations in the Kingdom, the siege of Crydee, Trask's ship voyages, and Pug's growth as a magician all highlight the swiftly paced plot. In the preface to the 10th Anniversary "Author's Preferred Edition," Feist states that as a new author, he wrote "Magician" with no idea of traditional novel length and scope of characters. This raw approach provides some of the novel's faults, including the awkward length, but it also gives the story a naive charm as it works to a conclusion on its own pace. Feist also insists that he is not a great writer but rather a skilled storyteller, and "Magician" succeeds because it is a "ripping yarn;" an exciting story. If read quickly, the story still shines, but upon examination Feist's prose wears thin, including clumsy phrasing, passive voice, wooden dialog, and abrupt point of view shifts in the same scene. If he were spinning this tale around a campfire, the "ripping yarn" itself would supercede the words. However, on a written page, a careful reader stumbles over the mediocre writing. "Magician" remains an entertaining story for a quick read, but the rough prose keeps it from true classic status.
Rating:
Summary: A Marvelous Book ! worth buying!
Review: I must say that this book is the first fantasy genre novel I have ever read.Its language structures and words are simple to understand.The story is awesome and I totally hooked to it for weeks as the story of the characters were so lively and real....Pug ,Tomas and Carline many more.I salute Raymond E. feist for his creativity and I am going to be his fan for a long time and going to collect all the Ritfwar novels. Is there any big difference between the two part series of Magician and the single one? The one I just finished reading was the reviewed edition published in 1997 and some 16000 words were ommited. :)
Rating:
Summary: A classic start to a great universe.
Review: In a couple of words; this story is fantastic! Raymond Feist surly knows how to construct a story which is both intriging, moving and intense with action and suspence. Every single character has a life of there own, no character is second hand, all with there own dept and force. I loved it to the very end and hope to read the rest of the books which follow on from this. It should be magnificant. It is amazing how Feist has created a world with a long and eventful history so unique to all other books written as fantasy. It is like Lord Of The Rings, but we get much more adventure and less exposition and endless dialogues, but I'm not saying that in LOTR that is bad! Those who haven't read it, should! for it is a thrill!
Rating:
Summary: Remarkable Book
Review: Magician (Especially Feist's preferred addition) is a masterpiece of fantasy. The characters, plots and rich descriptions of Midkemia draw the reader in from page one, and never lets you go until the end, no matter how many times you read it. With this book and with the ones that followed, Feist places himself in the elite group of fantasy/sci-fi writer's whose works are nothing short of masterpieces. Buy it and read it, you won't be disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: Draining
Review: Reading Magician took a lot out of me. I could only read it in 50 page bursts. There are so many threads to the plot that are woven, unraveled and rewoven together. For all of its details, descriptions, characters and plot developments, many of the most interesting threads I fear are left dangling. Book 1 held my attention better than Book 2. By about page 400 I was ready for the book to be over but I felt I had enough invested in it to finish.
Rating:
Summary: Remarkable, comparable to Tolkien
Review: This book is the first volume of the Riftwar trilogy (total 4 volumes), an epic tale composed of fast-moving action and vivid imagination.
Pug, an orphan from Crydee becomes an apprentice to the master magician Kulgan. Pug becomes an unlikely hero, thrown into the age-old battle that pits good versus evil, and the forces of Order against Chaos. Fast paced, with multiple plot lines. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A great work of high fantasy!
Review: This book, originally published in two parts (Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master), tells the story of a war between worlds. Midkemia is a world of elves and dwarves, knights and castles, dragons and hedge wizards, which suddenly finds itself invadered by a human empire from another world, an oriental world whose vast empire has power beyond Midkemia's imagination. This is also the story of a group of young people on Midkemia, who grow up during the war, and develop beyond anything they might have imagined. This is a great work of high fantasy, perhaps the greatest since the Lord of the Rings. Author Raymond Feist succeeds in this story in bringing to fascinating life not one, but two worlds. I loved the world of Midkemia with its forgotten history of potent magic, and the world of Kelewan with its oriental flavor. Overall, I found this to be a fascinating and highly entertaining read. If you are interested in fantasy literature, then I must say that you have to read this book!
Rating:
Summary: Brilliantly written, excellent fantasy story.
Review: This is one of my top five books. If you have not read any fantasy books before but would like to get started, then this is the book for you. You will be hooked. The character development, especially of Pug and Thomas is excellent. I have read this book many times and no doubt will reread it again.
Rating:
Summary: ...from a First-time Feist-reader...
Review: this refers to the Feist-revised edition of Magician (1997 UK Voyager edition) was quite a good journey, though i sometimes thought parts of it could be written better, like when people spoke like it was the 21st century with some expressions, even though it was apparently the 'past' - though this was only an infrequent occurence. Also thought the ending was handled well, as I had no idea what to expect (ie. on how the story would be resolved). I do think that this story is not as strong as Lord of the Rings due to the simple difference that evil was conquered in LOTR by essentially human endeavour and the human spirit to survive and defeat evil, rather than the fantastical notion that evil forces in The Magician could only be pushed back by a human that mastered the scrolls of magic past - thus morphing the young magician's apprentice into a 'more-than' human and another young chap that donned fantastical dragon armor morphing him into a 'more-than' human as well (quotations my own). Obviously unbelievable on this planet earth, but then again this is FANTASY of course! Note however that Tolkien humanized Hobbits by giving them the human traits of hope, strong character and willingness to prevail, which any young or old human reader can strive for. Since I personally don't know of any ancient Dragon Armor lying around, nor can expect to imagine meeting any 'chosen-one' who would master magicians spells of ages past - too fantastical - I had to take what I was reading with a grain of salt, knowing that all this would be very hard to BELIEVE in. Having said all that, it is a well-written book with several good story-lines as well as strong characters, and Feist does, I think, a good job of delving into the characters lives, and I was most impressed that he was able to weave the story in such a way that we could actually believe that some 15 to 20 or so years have taken place between pages 1 to page 680 (or whatever the last page was). I would read another book by Feist, certainly.
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