The Artful Apprentice

Schooled in Magic, Book 19

By: Christopher G. Nuttall

Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert

Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's Summary

Every magician who wants to be great goes through an apprenticeship...a period of training under a master who will hopefully raise them to mastery themselves.

For Emily, the time has come to begin her long-awaited apprenticeship with Void. She must master her powers or risk being destroyed by them. But as Void introduces her to levels and layers of magic she never even knew existed, she finds herself fighting desperately to keep up, to defeat challenge after challenge, to prove her worth to study under him, and to survive a training course that has killed lesser magicians.

When Void sends her on a mysterious solo mission to a kingdom she's never visited, she finds herself facing a choice that could destroy her or unleash a nightmare that could destroy an entire kingdom.

©2020 Christopher G. Nuttall (P)2020 Podium Audio

Meh, Half of the book is pointless filler...

(I put in punctuation and spaces but they don't show up so blame audible for the block of text.) So, no spoilers of exactly what happens. Here is the book in 3 sections.

Section 1, Emily learns magic and stuff from void, but not really. She gets "tested" which means he puts her into situations to see if she can get out of them, however none of the situations use any of the new spells she learned from him... actually there isn't a single spell named in the book, not even one, that once you read this book you can say "Emily learned (enter name here) from Void" so what does she learn in the first part? Nothing that we know of.

Section 2, as another "test" Emily needs to solve a murder mystery in Voids place. However it is like one of those cheesy murder movies where everybody blames everybody but nobody is actually to blame and there is some third party to which you didn't know about and had no actual chance of knowing is the culprit meaning that this ENTIRE section is a waste of time. Emily doesn't learn anything she has no growth, nothing, just waste of time. You can skip this ENTIRE section and it doesn't matter.

Section 3, The end/last 7-ish chapters. You find out what was really going on and why section 2 was pointless and you wasted your life. Here, Emily blames someone else who was under a slave/loyalty oaths of death and compulsion for the reasons to why everything is happening. He defends himself and says "what should I have done?" she says he she have just let the oaths kill him. At this point you smack your forehead and go, "But hey Emily can't they just put another person after he dies under oath and enslave them to do the same thing?" but no Emily is too dumb to care. Also the entire last 7 chapters is once again narrated in a hyperventilation type voice... so you want to scratch your ears out as Emily talks to herself in her mind about all the things that could have been done to prevent the tragedy. Even though there was literally nothing that could have been done because Slave binding pain of death oaths that can just be places on someone before they knew what they had to do.... Then the book ends, Emily having "passed"??? her test.... where she used no new magic, even though it has been months with Void and still hasn't learned anything.

So You can read like the first 10 chapters, skip to the last 7 and that's all you really need to know about the plot. Disappointed. I will say that The narrator, other than like 1 chapter in the middle, only talked like she was hyperventilating at the end unlike most of the other books. So I didn't have to fast forward too much... Emily is like 25 now, went to war, killed hundreds, killed like 5 necromancers.... you would think she would stop hyperventilating. Instead of inventing guns she should have invented paper bags... Please Tavia, stop that already....

Really well written

With how fast the author is writing these books, I was worried about the quality of the story. But I was excited to keep listening the entire time.

another fun story in the series

first, the review that said she learns no new spells is wrong. i guess if you set off to want to hate on a story you hear what you want to hear. spoiler

she learns an entire new branch of magic. This is another fun tale in the series. netflix, amazon or Disney should xonsider picking this up for a series. if each book is two episodes you have many seasons here :)

Spell binding

Emily is again tasked to her limits. Void is teaching her as he promised. The twists and turns keep you eagerly awaiting the next trial.

This was amazing!!!!

I loved the entire book and couldn't put it down it was hands down the best book since the very early books. We get to witness so much character growth from Emily here. I am so impressed with this book. It tackled so many things and aspects that I love about this world. Finally NO MORE of the WHINY Emily, nope this is a strong and powerful adult Magician!!! I can't wait for the next one to be made into an audiobook as well.

I love this series

I love this series and love the narrator. It's engaging and exciting, it really keeps your attention. I hope he keeps writing them.

issues

I enjoyed it just like the others the only issue I had was the end credits. was this not written by Christopher g nuttel in the credits it is said someone else wrote it

Schooled in magic

All around a good book slow to build then too quick to end wish the dragon had played big part towards the end. But maybe in the next book.
Author and narrator both do fantastic job.

amazing

Tavia Gilbert is an amazing narrator. im disappointed she didn't continue the series. ugh

Yet.another enjoyable adventure

I am constantly amazed that this series remains fresh and intriguing book after book. Emily has to solve a locked room murder mystery.

doesn't work so bit of a pointless review another

yet another glitch in the audible matrix , have enjoyed the series tho so who knows when they get things working will probably be good