Three Books in One
Note: QOTW Reply almost as long as a book...

Am I allowed to choose three books? It's really one long story which had to be split into three (originally four as the first one was published in two parts). No it's not Lord of the Rings.

All right, let's just say the first book was the important one, and that I had to read the next two to finish the story (or something).

Having read all three books of Lord of the Rings in slightly more than a week, whiling away the hours at work, on a night shift in a quiet petrol station, I decided that long books were good, preferably with wizards in them.

It was another late night, I was at the time out of work, and doing some voluntary work at my local Heritage Railway, running the buffet car. Too skint to drive a car and too late for the last bus, I elected to stay the night in the old caravan which was used to store extra stock for the second-hand bookshop. How I found the book in question still remains a mystery. I think I must have just spotted the cover while clearing my bed of excess volumes but I picked it up - the cover illustration was a little old-fashioned, but it had a big city, men on horseback, and distant mountains. "A bit like Lord of The Rings?" I wondered. I was wrong - but also right.

It's got wizards, talking dragons, elves, dark elves, goblins, orcs, great heroes, rags-to-riches, ancient legends, people from distant worlds, kings, dukes, local-boy-makes-good, and so much more.

The book? "Magician" by Raymond E. Feist. If you've never heard of it before, give it a try. It's part one of "The Riftwar Trilogy" (part 2: "Silverthorn" and part 3: A Darkness at Sethanon"). I'd never heard of the books or their author but I decided to start reading. I made myself a cup of hot Bovril in the buffet car (bear in mind it's 9pm, dark, in the middle of nowhere and I can't afford a pint), and started to read.

I read about a young boy, saved from a storm, and how he was taken in by the local wizard (or Magician as such men are known in that world), and his decision to learn the path of magic. I read page after page (I won't spoil any more for those yet to sample this literary delight) and before I knew it I was on my fourth cup of Bovril (and third visit to the Gent's) and then I heard a sound outside and realised it was the morning birds singing as the sun came up. Retiring to the caravan I tried to sleep but couldn't, so I opened the curtains and let some light in to continue reading, eventually falling asleep with the book open. When I woke later my finger had never left the page.

The next couple of nights continued in a similar fashion until I got to the end and found myself without a sequel. Turning the caravan upside down (not literally) I went through boxes and boxes of books to find it, in my desperation putting them back in something far removed from the Dewey Decimal System. I eventually found the entire trilogy for sale as a bound volume (wrapped in an elastic band) at the local market for a fiver and settled back in to the story.

There are many other trilogies and standalone books by the same author set in the same fictional universe. I have not read them all - just some - but good things come to those who wait.

So how did this change my life? As a lover of long stories, contained in books thick enough to get lost in, I thought Lord of the Rings and some of Stephen King's thicker works were about the best one could get. Now I know better.

I'm currently reading a six-books-in-one guide to php and mysql, in case anyone's interested...
( Amos E Wolfe makes vinyl signs and things like that, Fri 16 May 2008, 1:37, 2 replies)

Oh yes...
In total agreement - I love the Magician trilogy and pretty much everything else he has written. He's not a great writer - no fantasy author ever is - but the stories he tells are so gripping that you find yourself lost in them for days.
( DarkSon a time and date will follow this username on, Fri 16 May 2008, 10:22, closed)

Thanks
For writing what I wanted to...
I've read that trilogy so many times I know some of the words by heart. I lent it to my wife's god-daughter and my copy is older than she is.
( Weejock, Fri 16 May 2008, 14:26, closed)