The High Lord

The Black Magician Trilogy, Book 3

By: Trudi Canavan

Narrated by: Richard Aspel

Length: 21 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

Life should have been easier for Sonea, now that Regin ignored her and the rest of the novices treated her with wary respect, but she cannot forget what she witnessed in Akkarin's underground room, or his warning that Kyralia's ancient enemy is watching the Guild closely. The last few years have been good for Cery. He has a respected position among the Thieves, and connections in high and low places. When an exotic stranger offers to help him with a secret task, Cery knows he should refuse, but life would be boring without the occasional risk...

As Akkarin reveals more, Sonea does not know what to believe or what she fears most - that the truth is as terrifying as he claims or that he is trying to make her his accomplice in black magic.

©2004 Trudi Canavan (P)2009 Bolinda Publishing

Critic reviews

"A wonderfully and meticulously detailed world, and an edge-of-the-seat plot, this book is a must for lovers of good fantasy." (Jennifer Fallon)

Great end to a great trilogy

I really enjoyed this book series. I read the books and then sought them out in audiobook format. I really liked Sonea as a character and It was wonderful to actually get to know Akkarin. The book moved at a nice pace, not to fast of slow. The fighting scenes were really interesting to read. I liked that they weren't your classic run and dodge events. I am glad we get to revisit this world again in Canavan's next trilogy. I have read all the books set in this world and I will again too.

awesome conclusion

great conclusion to the series. spoiler alert! the ending made me quite sad but I suppose it had to be expected

SPOILER

Which scene was your favorite?

the whole invasion and how the Theives help defend the city leading up to the final battle

Any additional comments?

Everything you think of up to this book changes. The High Lord turns into the hero and helps save the City, everyones misunderstanding of the High Lord comes out and they praise him in the end.

Best of the them

I enjoyed the first two books, but I didn't love them. The High Lord's story... I loved this book, the story line was perfect. The depth to the characters their decisions and the ramifications of them real and tragic. It was what I was looking for in this trilogy. I would have liked to seen this as the second book (I think it took too long to get to this point) and a third book as a follow up to this one. That is the story I want to read / listen too next. I know there is a second trilogy, but from the reviews I fear it skips to much time to fill the gap.

If you are new to the series I would suggest pick up the second and this one. They give you enough back story to explain what you would miss in the first.

Wonderful book

Where does The High Lord rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

The whole Black Magician's trilogy was a wonderful group of books. At the end of the series, it made me long for more. I found that Miss Trudi wrote another series with Sonea as a main character. I am interested in reading that. I am currently enjoying Terry Goodkind's "Sword of Truth" series.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Never underestimate someone with humble beginnings.

Great Trilogy

A truly well thought out trilogy that I would recommend to any who are looking for a good book to listen to, I hope that you will see the characters in future books.

was good but ending could have been better.

What made the experience of listening to The High Lord the most enjoyable?

the story was nice and stuff started to happend and knowing it was wrapping up made it more intense.

Who was your favorite character and why?

akkarin: his character is the only one we follow which have actual depth, and seems to have reasonable decision making, sadly that kinda gets crushed at the end which well tok a lot of the joy out of the book

SPOILER!!!
when at the end they know that there is extreme amount of power gathered in the arena barrier they can simply just draw it makes absolutely ZERO sense to not draw at least most of it if not all, to insure victory, there was no reason they didn't do this long ago and considering akkarin have had 8 years to figure this out it is kinda a let down it isnt used.

Have you listened to any of Richard Aspel’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

the other 2 books in the serie, and he does a really nice job :)

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

not really.
it was good and consistant but the story have some big holes and it is very stagnent in its telling, so you dont get the up and downs. it is not very good at making you "love" the characters. i think that is because their reasoning to do stuff is not really their, they seem more like scripted entities that just goes with the flow then humans or animals with feelings and reactions:

as an example SPOILER!!! HUGE SPOILER!!! SKIP THIS PART IF YOU DONT WANT HUGE SPOILERS:

when akkarin "goes" at the end, it makes no sense that she doesnt try to pull the power from the arena and revive him;
i see no reason why magic of such enormous amount wouldnt be able to revive a person a few minutes after their death, hell if you freeze people down (again can be done with magic, drawn from the building right behind her) it can take up over 30-60minutes for the body to start deteriating to the point where it cannot be revived, and that is just with our technology and ignoring that with magic you can recreated and save people from injuries which no medical help would be able to save.

Any additional comments?

well i found it good but there is a bounch of plot holes which i have a heard time with.
it would be incredibly easy for akkarin to beat them with black magic even for the main character.
simply just get the king to order the entire city to go through the gate and give them power 1-2 days in advance (they had almost 3 days to run on if they wanted), all mages doing the same, and pulling power from buildings and arena etc.

it is said its the biggest town, so big even the king stayes to defend it, meaning there most also be a considerable amount of normal soldiers laying around and considering he wasnt sure weather or not their country would be attacked: one would think that an army is on standby...

in short we are talking tens of thousinds if not houndread of thousinds of people to draw power from.
even if they are weak it is MORE then enough to outdo the attackers in just 1 day of this:

20 slaves lets say each with 10 times str= 200 a day drained = 73.000 +- a year; of energy for the attackers... if they kept their energy without using it which we know they don't.
lets assume akkarin and sherier can drain 1 person every 5 seconds (they are going on a line ordered by the king) that's only 2,2 days to archieve that same strength (if we assume it was pure normal people:
draining from the wizards of the guild which there was about 1.000 of they would have gained that in 5hours.

so in 5 hours they got the power that the attackers gather in 1 year.
in short it just seems kinda silly :/

all the big death seems needless as well, which is annoying, they die purely out of spite against living and allowing others to safe tehm (or pure mindless stupidity).

the exciling as well seems wierd and stupid; even if the king was that stupid it makes no sense that old very knowledgeble wizards would allow for such a stupid move.
....

the magic seems to be working less consistant at the end here:
so you can manipulate object on the other side of a closest shield but sometimes you cant ?! say what?.
if i can manipulate any object on the other side of a closest shield then i can just destroy your body from the inside, even if we say i cant do that i can manipulate the air around you so there is no air or it is boiling hot inside your shield, or the ground that you walk on turns into sharp or pointy object flying through your body etc....
seriously if that was possible at all the whole idea of "defensive magic" would not exist..

another thing is: how do a mage suddenly get so much stronger when they grap another person? is it magic? we most assume so, if that is the case it should only work when your magic is winning over anothers magic which it doesn't...

i could go on forever but i won't:
it was simply to say the consistantcy of the magic isnt good anymore and it makes some big holes in the story ^^

my advice would be to speak with some old time P&P players since we are very used to try and figure out how rules can be abused and finding holes in ruleset systems etc.
and if it is a fantasy system we are very trained in finding these.
on top of that we are so used to good stories through the rpg that it would be a huge advantage:


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as an endnote:
the whole serie was very enjoyable and i would give it a 4/5, worth hearing and supporting :)
it lasted long enough for you to get what you wanted and not so long that you where just wishing it would end.

great trilogy

this Trilogy was really good I enjoyed every minute of it the ending of the high Lord could have been a little less sad but overall I enjoyed them very much

Loved the story but the narrator needed editing

Would you consider the audio edition of The High Lord to be better than the print version?

I did not read the printed version

What was one of the most memorable moments of The High Lord?

Seeing Sonia come into her own at last!

What three words best describe Richard Aspel’s voice?

Excellent, Character, Dry mouth

Any additional comments?

The narrator's constant gulping was extremely distracting. By 18 hours in I was losing my mind trying to finish listening to the story and his constant swallowing. The narrator read the first two books on the series and his dry mouth was not a problem, or was edited out. This issue was a deal breaker.

Nostalgic

Narrator performance was completely different from how I read it as a child, but it was interesting to hear it in a different style. He has an impressive range of voices and accents. My only qualm is that the voices he used for certain characters were inconsistent throughout the series.