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Okay, so, in Arcane by Sever Bronny:
An abused orphan boy grows up in obscurity until it is revealed to him that he is a warlock and he enrols in the Academy for the Arcane Arts. His elderly mentor used to be the headmistress and he makes two close friends, who join him in his adventures throughout the book. A self-named necromancer is the big bad, and turns out also to have been the previous protege of our hero's mentor, before he turned evil and started a band of likeminded warlocks, who want to take over the world. There's also a snotty prince, who refers to the trio of young friends as 'gutter-born'.
So far, so familiar...
However, the high fantasy setting provides some uniqueness and the path of the story quickly diverges from the expected, when two villages are completely massacred by the bad guys, and the three young warlocks and their mentor have to go into hiding.
So, while I started off thinking this was going to be a retread of old material, it found its own identity and forged a new story.
The straight white boy is still the hero (sigh), but both his friends and his mentor are female, so that makes a nice change. The character dynamics are fun, the magic system is interesting and both the global and personal stakes are high. The narrator was pretty good, so I expect I'll carry on with this series, at least for a bit, to see where it goes, even though this first instalment was pretty violent for a book with 14-year-old protagonists.
Weirdly, by the end, I would have to pitch this book series as Harry Potter crossed with Game of Thrones...
An abused orphan boy grows up in obscurity until it is revealed to him that he is a warlock and he enrols in the Academy for the Arcane Arts. His elderly mentor used to be the headmistress and he makes two close friends, who join him in his adventures throughout the book. A self-named necromancer is the big bad, and turns out also to have been the previous protege of our hero's mentor, before he turned evil and started a band of likeminded warlocks, who want to take over the world. There's also a snotty prince, who refers to the trio of young friends as 'gutter-born'.
So far, so familiar...
However, the high fantasy setting provides some uniqueness and the path of the story quickly diverges from the expected, when two villages are completely massacred by the bad guys, and the three young warlocks and their mentor have to go into hiding.
So, while I started off thinking this was going to be a retread of old material, it found its own identity and forged a new story.
The straight white boy is still the hero (sigh), but both his friends and his mentor are female, so that makes a nice change. The character dynamics are fun, the magic system is interesting and both the global and personal stakes are high. The narrator was pretty good, so I expect I'll carry on with this series, at least for a bit, to see where it goes, even though this first instalment was pretty violent for a book with 14-year-old protagonists.
Weirdly, by the end, I would have to pitch this book series as Harry Potter crossed with Game of Thrones...
