Merlin's Apprentice: The Mage

by Susan McCauley

Overview

Young Pip must embrace his magical powers to rescue his family from slavery-or help the king save the realm-a decision that will tear his world apart.

Desperate to keep his family together when the slavers arrive, Pip hides his power so he can be sold with them. But when his father and brother are sold to different mages and the slavers attempt to separate his mother and sister, Pip loses control and injures a slaver with magic. The uproar catches the attention of the southern king's druid advisor, Merlin, who quickly offers a place to Pip, his sister, and his mother. On the road to King Arthur's court, bandits attack their camp, and his family is further torn apart. Pip has no choice but to work with Merlin-who may not be the evil mage Pip assumes him to be-to learn to harness his powers so he can help King Arthur stop Mordred. Only then might Pip have a chance to rid the world of slavery or to see his family together again.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781951069155
Publisher:	Celtic Sea, LLC
Publication date:	01/10/2023
Pages:	202
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.46(d)
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

Editorial Reviews

2022-03-16
A young mage sees his family enslaved and joins King Arthur’s fight against evil.

In this dynamic fantasy series opener for middle-grade readers, Mordred of Arthurian legend is recast as the sinister king of northern Britain. He decrees that all “ordinarius,” or nonmagical, families will be sold into slavery and their goods and property forfeited. Those with magic will be forced to join Mordred’s mages in his upcoming war against King Arthur in the south. Villager Pip Gwynhoed, 12, is the only one in his family with magical abilities. He wants to stay with his relatives, but when they are separated on the auction block—realistically depicted—Pip loses control of his untrained gift. Drawn to Pip’s raw power, Merlin appears, takes him as his apprentice, and buys the boy’s mother and sister, freeing them all for a perilous journey to join Arthur in advance of Mordred’s forces. When Pip’s mother and sister are brutally taken by bandits along the way, the tween’s desperate attempt to find them threatens his own life. With vivid scene-setting, McCauley expertly draws readers into a perilous, sometimes ruthless world as experienced through the eyes of a boy consumed by guilt and grief over his family’s plight and the uncertainty about who he is becoming. Pip is haunted by ravens that twist “in the sky, their wings nearly blacking out the pale winter sun.” He sees Arthur’s “massive hill fortress” with wooden battlements reaching “like fingers into the sky.” It may be a predictable trope that Pip is seemingly central to a prophecy—he does, after all, carry a powerful runestone passed down from his magus grandfather—but there is no loss of authenticity in the protagonist’s character development. Pip’s struggle to rise above his personal anguish to fight for all who suffer under wicked Mordred’s cruelty rings true. But the author ups the stakes and sets the stage for the sequel when it appears that Pip may pay a high price for Arthur’s solution to preventing others from seizing magical power.

A deft twist on familiar source material and a tween hero’s relatable struggle with destiny.

Kirkus Reviews