The Ambassador's Mission by Trudi Canavan (The Traitor Spy Trilogy: Book 1)

Continuing a series is always a perilous decision for a writer, as sometimes they can simply push the story beyond what was feasible and other times they can create something better. Trudi Canavan has added to her 'Black Magician trilogy' twice now, first with the prequel 'The Magician's Apprentice' and now with the first book in her new series set in the same world, 'The Ambassador's Mission.'

The series, entitled 'the Traitor Spy trilogy' starts out twenty years after the end of the Black Magician trilogy. Several old characters are revisited and Sonea and Arkin's son, Lorkin, is introduced to us.

Lorkin is one of four characters that we follow, along with Sonea, Dannyl and Cery. Cery's story interlocks with Sonea's, which interlocks with Lorkin's which interlocks with Dannyl's. The jump between perspective is often fast paced and frantic and often leaves the reader wanting to hurry through someone's perspective simply to get to back to the other.

This is both good and bad, because sometimes a less than enthralling perspective can be skimmed, and good because many times the change in perspective brings us back to another perspective we wanted to be reading in the first place. It's all very confusing.

None of the storylines drag for very long, if at all in Lorkin's case, and we often feel deeply in touch with the characters we are following. Canavan manages to entertain and entice readers with an easy going storytelling style that rarely leaves you confused.

Some might suggest that this means the book is not intricate or intelligent, and in reality Canavan doesn't write with the same polish that authors like Rothfuss and Erikson strive for. The writing style is simple and unimposing, though it is still intelligent.

The story itself is clever and really had me hooked from the second third onwards. Whether just because the World Cup has been pulling a lot of my attention or something else, I was unable to really get into the book until that second third popped up, but when it did the book disappeared quickly and I really wanted to get back to reading it every time I was away from it.

There is no need to have read the previous novels in Canavan's Kyralia series, though it is nice to see things coming to fruition or returned to after what is actually several hundred or thousand years. Everything is there for the reader to enjoy this book immensely, and readers of Canavan's earlier works will really enjoy this book.

8/10 The story itself is clever and really had me hooked from the second third onwards.