Re-visiting Midkemia

So for whatever reason I decided to do a re-read of Raymond E. Feist's Magician: Apprentice, the first (half) book in the Riftwar Saga. I originally read it and it's sequel (second half), Magician: Master back in 2012 and boy, did I ever need a refresher. Like, I'm reading Apprentice and there are just huge, huge chunks of the plot that I simply forgot. I remember important events, but not what happens between them.

An oddity about Magician: Apprentice is that it's only the first part of a book. Both it and Magician: Master are actually a single book call simply Magician, but when it was published in the U.S., it was split into two parts for whatever reason. I'm guessing it was due to size and printing big ass doorstoppers back in the day wasn't optimal. If that's the reason, then it shows how far both book making and the fantasy genre has come because the two halves combined would probably total less than a thousand pages, or one Wheel of Time book. Easily less than a Sanderson. Easily.

Another thing about the two books is that they tell a self-contained story. I admit that I may be in the wrong here, but I'm pretty sure you could read just these two books and skip the other two in the saga, Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon. Of course, if you wanted to read the other Riftwar books, you probably would have the read those two, but if not, then no big deal.

Probably.

Maybe.

Eh.

But man, I am tearing through Apprentice like dysentery through a medieval army encampment. I'm closing in on 200 pages and that's with me switching between it and a Kurt Wallander book. I don't plan on jumping straight to Master after I finish Apprentice, but it won't be a long wait.