I actually read Magician a few years ago for another reread that I was doing. It wasn't totally 'suck fairy' territory back then, but it hadn't aged well when compared to some of the newer works coming out in the epic fantasy field.
The way I see it Feist was part of the 3rd wave of epic fantasy writers. Tolkien was the first, followed by Brooks and Donaldson 30 or so years later. Hot on their heels were Eddings and Feist.
What I've always felt sets Magician apart from other Tolkien imitators out there at the time, was the creation of another world, inspired by feudal Japan, the world of Kelewan. The world of Midkemia with its elves and dwarves and medieval inspired pre industrial society, is very Tolkien. Kelewan was fairly new for the time and a good half of the book is set there. Sadly Feist never really utilised Kelewant to it's full extent I felt. He did co write a trilogy with Janny Wurts that was set there and it came up occasionally in some of his other books, before he destroyed the planet, but was never fully explored. Readers never really got to see much of the Thun for instance.
Magician, Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon are referred to as the first trilogy in the author's Riftwar which was published over 30 years and as many books. I tend to think of Magician as a big standalone and the other two as a duology, and this reread didn't change that opinion.
Magician is largely the story of Pug and his part in the Riftwar, whereas Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon tend to concern themselves more with events concerning Prince Arutha and his battles with a dark elf who has world domination designs on Midkemia. There are sections of the second two books that do deal with tying up some of the loose ends that Magician left around the characters of Pug and his friend Tomas, but they're really Arutha's story.
I had a lot more problems with the other two books this time around. They haven't aged well, even less so than Magician and the suck fairy had sprinkled a good deal of its dust over their pages. A lot of the problem centres around Arutha. He's just a very bland character and the books rely heavily on the presence of the young thief Jimmy the Hand.
An example of how my thinking about the books is how long it took to read them. They're not particularly big tomes, combined they probably cover the length of Magician. Despite that it probably took me as long to get through them as it did to get through all 17 Dresden Files books earlier this year.
Glad I've reread them to find this out, but I won't be hurrying to read them again. I did still like Magician, but doubt I could put myself through Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon again.
Into the realms of horror and science fiction with the G's.
