Salamander eBook David D Friedman
Download As PDF : Salamander eBook David D Friedman 
Magister Coelus, the College’s young and brilliant theorist, finally has a student capable of learning theoretical magery at the level at which he can teach it. He invites her to help him with his current research project, which promises to funnel through the hands of one mage more power than any mage has ever had. Ellen, who knows more about both the theory and practice of magic than a first year student should know, refuses, arguing that the Cascade will do more harm than good.
When news of the project reaches Prince Kieron, brother and heir of the king and Royal Master of Mages, he insists that it be completed in secret and employed, if at all, only under royal authority. Word has also reached Lord Iolen, Kieron’s competent, cold-blooded, and ambitious nephew, with his own ideas of how and by whom the Cascade should be used. Ellen and Coelus must together face the conflicting threats and demands of two arrogant and powerful men, the peril posed by the very existence of the Cascade, and their feelings for each other.
Forty years earlier Olver, a founder of the College, took the first steps in converting magery from a craft to a science. It is for his successors to deal with the consequences.
Salamander eBook David D Friedman
A brilliant young woman works with her mentor, a clever but unworldly theoritician of magic, to foil dynastic plots and ensure that a powerful new way of doing magic doesn't fall into the wrong hands.Overall, I enjoyed this. I'm a fan of the growing "magic school" subgenre, I like clever protagonists, and the writing was reasonably competent.
I say "reasonably" competent because, while the author mostly knows where to put his commas, he occasionally gets apostrophes wrong with plural nouns ("magister's wing" when there's more than one magister, for example). He's also sloppy with his quotation marks. These are minor issues, though, given that I didn't notice any homonym errors, the bane of indie (and, increasingly, traditionally-published) books.
What I didn't like was the infodumping of theory of magic, literally in the form of lectures (both from faculty at the magic school and also from the clever young woman to her friends at lunchtime). Infodumps are dull at the best of times, and this particular author uses a dry dialogue style without contractions - which also leaves most of his characters sounding the same. Also, the first three chapters consist largely of these infodumps (at least, that's how it felt), and there were one or two more later in the book.
It's true that much of the content was relevant to the resolution of the plot later on, but there are better ways of presenting this background information than in big lecturing chunks.
I mentioned that the characters mostly sound similar (though one of them, a farmer's son, does drop words out of his sentences, which makes him distinctive). At least one of them, Edwin, also turns up without introduction or description and never seems to do much. The remainder, though, are distinct in their personalities and I found it easy to keep them straight in my head.
I picked this book up because the author talked about it in a comment on someone else's blog and it sounded interesting (yes, that does occasionally work, authors). It was good enough that I'd read another in what I assume will be a series, though I'm really hoping for less infodumping next time.
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Salamander eBook David D Friedman Reviews
Introducing this world through questions and answers in dialogues between Ellen the magical prodigy and her peers, Friedman constructs one of the most original and coherent systems of magic that I have ever read about. I'm impressed by the attention and thought he put into creating something that is like an alternate form of physics in a magical universe with different laws of nature.
The characters are enjoyable and I wanted to know what would happen next, but I'd guess at least 50% of this book is dialogue. Friedman likes to describe characters reasoning out actions- everyone has a tendency to state their well-considered, logical thoughts and then await their opponent's perfectly logical responses. The lack of emotional, rash words or actions is unreal, but I still found the arguments amusing and sharp.
The book starts off strong. Ellen's responses to various threats are well calculated and I was excited to see what would happen next. The 2nd half of the book seemed off balance in terms of the action- quite a lot happens in terms of large groups of people maneuvering and plotting but is not described in detail. I get the feeling that as a fantasy writer Friedman is more about ideas than about the craft.
Although the book could have been better executed, the ideas are creative, original, and entertaining. I think the book positions itself well as the first among many others in a series.
The strengths of this book start with some appealing characters. Two young women students of magic are quite charming and each has an area of expertise, although only one of them has a magical area of expertise. The lead male character is a very good example of that SF cliche, the scientist/engineer who may be a bit unaware outside of his field.
Also, the "magic as science" approach is very well-done. Not everyone takes this approach and there is resistance to it at the big school of magic where most of the book takes place but the scientific approach works and makes for an interesting story element.
The biggest flaw in the book is that the bad guys are so badly outclassed that the reader is almost never in doubt how things will turn out. The other problem I had was that almost everyone in the book, in almost every speech that he or she makes, is so _reasonable_ The author must know some unreasonable people, in fact I know that he does. He should study what we say and what we post on usenet to get an understanding.
A brilliant young woman works with her mentor, a clever but unworldly theoritician of magic, to foil dynastic plots and ensure that a powerful new way of doing magic doesn't fall into the wrong hands.
Overall, I enjoyed this. I'm a fan of the growing "magic school" subgenre, I like clever protagonists, and the writing was reasonably competent.
I say "reasonably" competent because, while the author mostly knows where to put his commas, he occasionally gets apostrophes wrong with plural nouns ("magister's wing" when there's more than one magister, for example). He's also sloppy with his quotation marks. These are minor issues, though, given that I didn't notice any homonym errors, the bane of indie (and, increasingly, traditionally-published) books.
What I didn't like was the infodumping of theory of magic, literally in the form of lectures (both from faculty at the magic school and also from the clever young woman to her friends at lunchtime). Infodumps are dull at the best of times, and this particular author uses a dry dialogue style without contractions - which also leaves most of his characters sounding the same. Also, the first three chapters consist largely of these infodumps (at least, that's how it felt), and there were one or two more later in the book.
It's true that much of the content was relevant to the resolution of the plot later on, but there are better ways of presenting this background information than in big lecturing chunks.
I mentioned that the characters mostly sound similar (though one of them, a farmer's son, does drop words out of his sentences, which makes him distinctive). At least one of them, Edwin, also turns up without introduction or description and never seems to do much. The remainder, though, are distinct in their personalities and I found it easy to keep them straight in my head.
I picked this book up because the author talked about it in a comment on someone else's blog and it sounded interesting (yes, that does occasionally work, authors). It was good enough that I'd read another in what I assume will be a series, though I'm really hoping for less infodumping next time.
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