Verdict: Don't bother.
The first book of Trudi Canavan's Black Magician trilogy follows the life of Sonea, a young slum girl. She lives in a city where the poor are kept in line by the Magicians' Guild, but it turns out she can do magic herself, and hijinks ensue. If you want a proper blurb, read the back of the book.
I liked the first book. Sonea is a decently-written, almost memorable young girl, and not only are there some good moments in the book, but you end up sort of caring what happens to her. That's why the second book is such a crushing disappointment.
This may be a mild spoiler, but it's on the back cover of the second book. The second book starts with the main character studying at the Magicians' Guild. The plot is mildly interesting, but there are several small problems and one really big one. For starters, the language gets a bit embarrassing at times, especially when one of the wizards goes on a boat with rooms in it. I admit that knowing something about sailing ships and having read some first-class nautical fiction may spoil a person, but everything even remotely sea-going in the book is, at best, not quite horribly wrong. As I said, it's a bit embarrassing.
Sonea's life in the magicians' guild comes over all Harry Potter, which I suppose is to some degree unavoidable, but therein lies the one thing that made me stop reading the book: in the second book, she's not the same character any more. In the first book, she's a tough, resourceful, streetwise slum kid, who, unlike the usual computer role-playing game incarnations of such, is somewhat believable. In the second, the street kid has been replaced with a scared, whiny little brat. To give you an idea, in the first book, when someone lays hands on her, she punches them in the face; in the second book, when a spoiled kid calls her a name, she starts crying and hides in her room.
For Harry Potter, going to magic school brought about a miraculous transformation from nerd to jock. In Cavanan's character's case, it does the exact opposite and transforms her into a sissy. Now, if the point was that her old skills and connections are useless in this strange new world and she's confused, that would be fine; I'd even expect it. What I can't stomach is that through the simple act of being accepted into a school, she completely jettisons her old personality. The plain fact of the matter is that there are two different protagonists in the first two books, and for a character-driven story, this is a bad thing. It's a crying shame, as after the first book, I was looking forward to the sequel; about a third of the way in, I couldn't be bothered to keep reading.
The first book was an entertaining read and showed promise, but on the whole, I'd advise against reading it. If you like it, you'll just be horribly disappointed by the sequel.
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